This is a photo I took from a neighbor’s yard a few years ago. This will be the 3rd time I have used it to mark today….my 3rd crapaversary of having stage IV cancer. There were a lot of people who didn’t think I would be here today. I was one of them, to be quite honest. I would love to give you an update as to how things are going, but I honestly don’t know. Thus far, the cancer has not caused me any signs or symptoms….just the side effects of the drugs I have been and am on currently. I am staying very active…going to anywhere from 10-13 YMCA classes per week. I am also back to 5 miles walks with Tallinn (and he is loving that!) My medications I am on make me tired and moody, give me very realistic dreams EVERY NIGHT, and make my joints hurt…especially my feet by nighttime. All in all, very tolerable. I have scans on Thursday morning and hope to hear the results soon afterwards. If all is good, I can feel free to plan out my life for the next four months. Interestingly enough, I had a chronic cancer meeting today at A Time to Heal. I had been meeting with these other stage IV folks throughout the last 2.5 years during COVID on zoom. This was the first time I had met many of them in person. I am the youngster of the group, but I have such a wonderful time with them all. It was a wonderful 90 minutes of time together.

When I came home, I had a package waiting for me from one of Joe’s fireman brothers….someone he went through the Olathe Firefighting Academy with. A couple of months ago (June 11th) some of the OFD firefighters did a Flight for Air Climb there in Kansas City to benefit cancer. A few of Joe’s classmates and coworkers did this climb…wearing Joe’s memorial t-shirts and their full bunker gear. This is NOT easy. They sent me a message and a photo before they started and then after they finished. I know that Joe would have been there with them if he had been alive…doing his small part to raise money for cancer because of me. They were doing this for me in his stead. Today, I received some photos from that day….along with some other OFD photos, one with Joe in it. Gold in the form of photos…I treasure them. James also sent me his bib, bracelet, and medal for the climb, because he felt Joe would have given me his. The back of the bib was signed by all the OFD firefighters who were there along with their badge numbers. All of this was explained in a wonderful letter from Joe’s classmate and firefighting friend, James. It was one of the most thoughtful things I have ever received. My heart is full. My Joe surrounded himself with the best people….and they are missing him still. Thanks, OFD….and James, especially, for making this momma’s heart a little less broken on this yucky crapaversary.

I am the defacto scorekeeper for the company softball team….perhaps because I actually know how to do box scores. (Thanks to Pastor Braband who showed me how at Detroit Tigers games when I was in the 7th grade…..back when they were a great team!) The game was at 7:30 p.m., so it was perfect timing for me to get out right before the game started and take some photos of the harvest moon in an open field. Isn’t God’s creation magnificent?

I have been trying to find some times and places within the Omaha area to take some photos of Lily for her senior photos. I usually hijack her on the afternoons she gets home from school early. This time we went to a bridge Tallinn and I walk over almost every day. The colors are starting to change and the weather cooled down (for our false fall….we still have 80 degree weather coming back before fall settles in for real here). Lily does NOT wear sweaters. She also does not wear turtlenecks. So a turtleneck sweater? Yeah, she was thrilled. However, it was chilly, so between bouts of complaining how itchy the sweater was, she was happy she wasn’t cold. We also stopped by the OPPD Arboretum. Lily loves to collect buckeye nuts from the Ohio Buckeye tree they have there. This was another bribe…I would help her look for buckeyes if she would let me take a few photos of her there as well. Lily was nearly 17 before she got her ears pierced. She never wore jewelry until she finally got earrings. However, her sister-in-law, Michelle, in a really touching and thoughtful gesture, gave Lily her big brother Joe’s senior class ring when she started her senior year. I found a longer silver chain for her to put it on. Joe would be cheering her on this year, so this was her nod to him that he is still by her side.

Lily and I made a quick trip (it is about a two hour drive one-way) to Jefferson, Iowa to Deal’s Orchard. I saw that they had sunflowers and also zinnia fields. They have a lot of fun things for young kids to do, but we wanted to see the flowers. It was so pretty! Because of the dry, hot weather, they had apples, pumpkins, zinnias, corn, and sunflowers….all blooming pretty much as once…which is pretty unusual. Lily and I had a wonderful time wondering around for about an hour or so before we headed back home. Our first person we chatted with was the farmer of the orchard. He was really nice and was impressed that we drove all the way from Omaha. He wanted to know if we had ever heard of Vala’s….well, you would have to live under a rock in the Omaha Metro area to not have heard of Vala’s. We may have to go one last time before we move. It is a fall amazement park. Anyhow, the farmer realized we were only here to see the fields so only had them charge us for half price. We had such a great time walking around and taking pictures of the zinnias. Here are a few photos from our excursion.

This is not only the shortest verse in the Bible (John 11:35) but was also the name of the all-day retreat I attended today in Elkhorn, Nebraska. Jesus, in His humanity, grieved the loss of His friend, Lazarus, even though He knew He would raise him from the dead. The whole idea was that Jesus is by our side through our grief journey. We started at 8 a.m. and ended a bit after 6 p.m. I think one of my table mates said it for all of us…”I think I could just sleep for 3 days now!” Grief is exhausting! In the “real world”, I am constantly putting on a mask that doesn’t show the sorrow I feel all the time. I used to be a pretty smiley person but now I actually notice it and feel it in my face when I smile…which shows it doesn’t happen often enough anymore. Wearing that mask is tiring. Trying to find an acceptable public answer to “how are you?” is exhausting. But today there were no masks necessary. Truth trumped all, even if it was ugly and uncomfortable. Everyone was coming from the same tragic event of losing a child….some (and I cannot even imagine) losing more than one child. There were about thirty people present and I swear we all could have filled a pool with the tears that flowed freely all day. There was no holding back as men and women shared their stories – we were all intimately touched because we knew what they were going through. Anyhow, I wanted to share with you some of the insights I learned today…in general and personally.

We started the morning with breakfast. They had tall, white pillar candles in glass containers with our child’s name and photo on them. We were each called up to the front to bring our lighted candle to put on the front table for the day. It was like there was a spot for our children to brightly glow on our talks and gatherings throughout the day. As we placed our child’s candle on the table, we were each given a small wooden cross that fits perfectly in your hand to hold and pray with. We had speakers throughout the day and small groups where we could tell the stories of our child…and our loss and how we feel we are coping at this point. Some of the takeaways I got was there are really two stages of grief: the person you were before your child’s death and the person you are now, after your child’s death. Yes!! A statement that really resonated with me was “it’s okay if you put your cross down and rest sometimes.” That is huge. You don’t have to carry it ALL….all the time. Also…the four C’s: you did not CAUSE this, you could not CHANGE this, you could not CURE it, and you could not CONTROL it. Let all that “what if” stuff go and just grieve. We were charged to do the following: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”….then dare to be quiet. Twice….once at the beginning of the day, and then once at the end of the day during the Mass, they sang the litany of our children. A slide show was shown of our kids as we asked each of them to pray for us from heaven. I have to admit it is still startling to see Joe’s photo on a big screen with someone singing his name and asking him to pray for us….how did I get here? It still seems so surreal sometimes. How can he really be gone?

While we had our lunch break, we not only ate wonderful homecooked food from the parishioners volunteering in the kitchen, but we also did a craft project. We were given a small clear plastic Christmas ornament and we added colored sand to it. It is obviously too heavy to put on a tree, but it had colors in it that reminded me of Joe. I chose neon green (his favorite color for a long time growing up), dark green (for the army), blue (because Michelle feels blue reminds her of Joe in a comforting sort of way), orange (he was a ginger after all), red and gold (both for his firefighting….his yellow bunker gear and red…well, for fire and the fire engine he rode on). These started out as interesting layers of sand, but as they got handled more and more, the sand started to mix together…making it unique and more my Joe. We had an opportunity to spend time writing letters to our child….but I do that several times a week already. They suggested we also write a letter to God. I thought that might be a better use of my mental and spiritual energy. I went up to the sanctuary to be in a quiet place and think on what I wanted to say to God. It was then I realized I was really angry with God. I hadn’t been able to put a pin in it before. I was the one with stage IV cancer. I was the one who was sick and living on borrowed time. Why would God take Joe and leave me? Joe had a beautiful wife, a wonderful job, and was just starting to hit the “sweet spot” of his young adult life. Gone. I had prepared for my impending death. I had my funeral written, letters to my kids, my obituary….it was all done. Now, we were helping Michelle and Joe’s friends go through the painful task of selecting songs and poems, pictures and mementos to share at his Celebration of Life. When I stripped away the absolute despair for the loss of my Joe, I was mad. I am not so sure it is too healthy spiritually to be mad at God, but if anyone can handle my wrath, it is God. So I went to confession. I was a weeping, snotty mess talking to the priest about this anger I was carrying. He suggested I had hardened my heart….you read about that so much in the Bible…how the people hardened their hearts against God. I was in shock that I might have become one of them. I remembered back to a homily last weekend at my church given by Deacon Wayne Reed, someone I helped teach confirmation class with for two years….a person I admire and consider a friend. He mentioned that a mustard seed is so small but grows into such a large bush…we have all heard the parable of the mustard seed. However, he went even further to say that the mustard seed has a very hard outer shell. In order for it to grow, that shell must crack open. So after my confession, I was kneeling in the sanctuary…praying for the softening of my heart, the cracking of my shell….and I felt the top of my left shoulder get warm….as if someone had put their hand there. I knew there was no one physically. However, I had a strong feeling my Joe was there, trying his best to let me know he was with me and always would be. And….I lost it….for the umpteenth time today. Hopefully that was a small crack in my armor. As we sat down in small groups today I mentioned several times that I am just a “hot mess.” What today showed me was I am not alone in the messiness of life after the death of a child. I met some really wonderful people today. I hate that I met them because they also lost a child. However, I walked away with some goals for my struggling faith life (I am in a desert right now) and with some newfound people that share such an intimate bond with me.

I came home to a package from the oncology social worker at the hospital I receive my cancer treatment and care from. I had finally reached out to them and told them I was struggling. They didn’t know about Joe’s death and immediately jumped into action, getting me websites, addresses, phone numbers, etc for local and national resources. Why didn’t I do this sooner? The package also included a couple of small books on grief, and then one on surviving the holidays. That has kind of been the elephant in the room the last few weeks. This is the time of year I start addressing my Christmas cards and start working on my annual family Christmas letter. Ugh. Where do I start? How do I not make it sound as awful as it feels? How can I do justice to Joe and his life? I am already changing how I sign cards to family….I used to write out all our names…but it just seems to be too hard to not sign Joe’s name with ours, so now everything is “The Messina Family” or “Rich, Cyndi and Kids.” Tiny little things like that will have me in a puddle of tears. So Christmas. Yeah. That will be tough. As much as I detest the idea of reading this book on making it through the holidays, I know it is something I really needed. Today was exhausting. I am heading to bed with the hopes, as I do every night, that Joe will grace my dreams and let me know as is well with his soul. Then I will get up tomorrow morning and once again hop onto Facebook and check to see if there are any “memories” having to do with Joe. I know people may get tired of me sharing these “memories” of Joe, but memories are all that I have right now, and I treasure all of them. Today was a very heavy day…emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I know this was kind of a heavy post as well. I have been taking lots of photos of beautiful things…one of which happens to be my daughter. I will be working on those photos to post soon. I leave you with a photo of the things I received today that were physical. The emotional and spiritual gives were much bigger.

Well, due to all the traveling, I missed the sunflower fields that I have been going to for the last several years here in Nebraska. But fear not! I knew of another field….a HUGE field down in Kansas that was open to the public. I drove 3 hours down there last year on my own and it just blew me away. I literally was driving on a dirt road, turned a corner and there were thousands of sunflowers waving in the breeze….a whole field of bright yellow just glowing from the earth. This time I took Lily. I have been taking photos of her in the sunflower fields every year for the last several years. This being her last year at home, possibly, and me needing a chance to try and get some senior photos done for her, I thought we could make the road trip. We arrived about 45 minutes before the sun began to set. I have to insert here that I was really really proud of Lily. She does not like bugs. She can spot one a country mile away. There were A LOT of bugs. She was really pretty good about getting into the middle of the field and letting me take photos. I am ALMOST disappointed that I didn’t get a photo of her wigging out over a bug being too close to her. Anyhow, I took a lot of photos and as we were leaving, we turned around and saw a full moon rising over the foggy field across the street. It was very striking and I couldn’t do it justice. It was a really pretty end to our excursion.

Due to wildfires in the western part of the United States, we had a lot of smoke that blew over the Midwest. This allowed us to have spectacular sunrises and sunsets…with brilliant red colors reflecting through the smoke from the sun. Although we pray for the people affected by these wildfires and those fighting them, I wanted to share God’s beauty that gave us this amazing sunset a couple of weeks ago.

While we were in our final days in Ireland, we got news that Rich’s Uncle Chuck had passed away. He had been sick for awhile now and had valiantly fought cancer for many years. We both flew to DC from Ireland and while I flew home the next day to Omaha, where my parents were watching Lily as she started her senior year, Rich flew to New England to be with family as they said goodbye to Uncle Chuck. Rich wasn’t gone long. He came back about 2 days later, the same day that I left with my parents to drive 9 hours to Elkhart, Indiana, to see my sister, Pam, and her family. We drove there on a Friday, stayed through Monday and drove back to Omaha on Tuesday. Of all the times I have visited my sister in the decades she has lived in that area, I have never been to Notre Dame. The Saturday morning we were there, Notre Dame was playing Ohio in Ohio at night….so the campus was pretty quiet. I had three things I wanted to see. I wanted to see the on the campus: the Golden Dome (Main building), the Grotto, and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. My mom hadn’t slept well and was looking for a nap. My dad was looking to get some exercise, so I brought him with me. My dad has pretty bad eyesight due to a stroke, and so we walked around the campus with me explaining to him what I was seeing. Luckily, the three things I wanted to see were right beside each other. What I didn’t think of was the fact that it was an away game weekend, so there would be weddings on campus. Sure enough, one was just finishing as we arrived. We walked around the campus grounds for awhile and by the time we got back to the basilica, the bridal party was taking photos outside and we could go inside. I just wanted to share some photos from that morning. We had a really nice time.

Our last couple of days in Ireland were spent in Dublin. We parked the car in a car park and left it there until we needed to head to the airport. What’s worse than driving in Belfast? Driving in Dublin! We spent Saturday walking around the city and seeing lots of Husker fans. Evidently there were 10,000 husker fans that flew to Ireland for the game. Only about 3000 Northwestern fans attended. There were several pubs who were in the Temple Bar area that were designated Husker or Wildcat areas. It was a lot of fun and it was even more fun to see the puzzled looks on tourists’ faces in the area from other countries. We had a long talk with a lovely couple from Switzerland about Husker pride. Our “Sea of Red” may have looked and sounded impressive, but it didn’t help our team, unfortunately. We walked about 30 minutes or so to the Aviva Stadium for the night game. It is a cashless stadium and all the credit card terminals went down shortly after the game started. Instead of closing down the concession stands, they literally gave out free food and beer to everyone. I felt pretty bad for the stadium. The fans actually made a “snake” out of stacked plastic cups that reached from the field to nearly the top of the stadium. This is what drunk Nebraskans will do when they have free beer and their team is losing.

We again stayed over what I thought was a pub. It was more of a nightclub. We should have guessed there might be an issue when we entered our room and their where disposable ear plugs on the nightstands. As we were walking back after the game at around 9:30 p.m., we notice this long line….nearly a block long….that is to enter the nightclub under our room, which is now thumping to a techno beat that you could feel in your bones a block away. Fantastic. Did I mention there isn’t AC in Ireland in most places? The windows are left open at night to let the cool air in…because there was a heatwave going on at the time. I was able to sleep okay, but Rich wasn’t able to fall asleep right away. This was good because at midnight, a random French woman from a room near ours knocked on the door needing to borrow our hair dryer…as she was getting ready to go out on the town….at MIDNIGHT. The next night must have been karoke night or something because I was able to sing along to the people at the bar that were singing songs. I was particularly surprised to hear “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver being sung at the top of their lungs. I told my son, Tim, who used to live in West Virginia, about it and he dared me to go down and ask anyone there to point out West Virginia on a map. LOL

We spent our last day on a walking tour of the grounds of the castle and Trinity College. Our guide, Brian, was exceptional. Again, there was a lot of history involved. History in the U.S. in NOTHING compared to Irish history. They have working buildings older than our country. We learned a lot about the Book of Kells, which is housed at Trinity College. It is an illustrated manuscript of the Gospels from 900 AD…and it is in remarkable condition with vibrantly colored pages. Trinity College has been its custodian since the 1600’s. We also looked at the Long Room, a library of antiquated manuscripts from all over the world. It also holds the Brian Barue harp…the symbol of Ireland. (and when turned the opposite direction, the symbol of Guiness beer).

We spent the afternoon touring the city on the hop on/hop off bus. I highly recommend this mode of transportation and as a way of getting to know the city you are visiting. We have been on probably a dozen of these buses in cities around the world. You learn a lot of random facts on these buses. Dublin is the 2nd most expensive city in Europe to live in. Guiness is the largest exporter of beer in the world. Three million pints are made a day and two million are exported. Arthur Guiness and his wife, Olivia, had 21 children and was the 23rd richest person in the world at the time of his life. They cared very much for their employees giving them their own housing and hospital. Most employees worked for life for the company as they were treated so well. There is another distillery in Dublin called Pearse Lyons and it is located in St. James Church…the only distillery in a church. To continue on with drinking…Jameson Irish Whiskey did so well with his whiskey because he triple distills it. Queen Elizabeth II visited Ireland in 2011. That was the first time a British monarch had visited Ireland in 100 years. There are approximately 6 million people who live on the Irish Island – 4.5 in the Republic of Ireland and 1.5 in Northern Ireland. Ireland averages about 7 cm a month in rain. No wonder it is so green! Last tidbit of random nit noid information…the explanation of the Irish flag. The top stripe is green to represent the Catholics. The white stripe is to represent peace between the green and orange stripes….because the orange stripe represents the Protestants.

We went by a lot of beautiful places with a lot of history involved. The statue of Molly Malone….and the Church of St. Patrick. I would have really loved to have gone in and looked around, said a prayer…even looked through their gift shop. However, they had a steep fee to enter the church…an actively used church, I might add, and I had a flashback to the Bible and Jesus overturning the money changing tables in the temple and I refused to pay to enter into a house of worship to pray. I did take photos outside though.

We spent most of the day in Northern Ireland. We drove down the east coast along the Glens of Antrim to Belfast, the capitol city. 60% of the population of Northern Ireland lives in Belfast. The traffic and the rows and rows of houses attest to that. Northern Ireland consists of the 6 most northeastern counties in Ireland. These are the counties that chose to stay British and the other 20 remained Irish. To this day, there is a deal in place that will allow Ireland to peacefully absorb Northern Ireland into their fold….if Northern Ireland requests it. When we went to Belfast, we quickly found a black cab and asked for a tour of Belfast. It is a 2.5 hour history lesson that goes back centuries, but really focuses on the last 50 years or so. Our cabbie kept repeating this mantra….”To kill for a cause, you are called a patriot. To kill for no cause, you are a serial killer.” In Belfast, 90% of the west side is Catholic (or Irish, as these seemed to be used interchangeably) The other areas are British (or Protestant). There are these “Peace Walls” that are put up all throughout the working class areas of Belfast. They are locked at 4:30 in the afternoons and only first responders have the keys. To get around the walls is quite a task. The parents request the doors between the walls be locked to keep their teens safe from violence. Over the nearly 30 years of the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, there were over 3000 people killed and over 35,000 people injured in bombings, shootings, and other forms of violence. Most of those people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a majority were working class citizens. These working class families were given no closure or justice on the deaths of their loved ones and therefore, the hatred for each side has been passed down through the generations. When the peace accords were signed, they wanted to have all the Peace Walls down within 25 years – which is up in 2023…next year. However, there are now more than 3 times as many Peace Walls as there were when the accords were signed. Depending on which neighborhood you are in, you can see murals painted on the sides of buildings depicting heroes from one side (who to the other side are considered murdering criminals). The Peace Walls are signed by well-wishing and peace-loving tourists, who, like us, couldn’t comprehend the amount of hatred for your neighbor. We each signed the wall…Rich with his name and the year…me, with Dona Nobis Pacem and my name. Dona Nobis Pacem meaning in Latin, “Grant us peace.” Rich also put Joe’s initials and Recordado Per Sempre (Italian for remembered forever), which Joe had tattooed on his arm…and Rich does as well. In 1921, there were 70% British/30% Irish in Northern Ireland. Today, it is slightly more Catholic than Protestant. Our cabbie seemed to think that changes may be afoot when Queen Elizabeth II died (as obviously this was about a few weeks before that happened). He said they respected her too much but didn’t care much for her son. So stay tuned in to Northern Ireland and see what happens. The Catholics were treated horribly….not able to get choice jobs or housing simply because of their faith.

We left Belfast, deciding that is was one messed up city. The Peace Walls didn’t seem like they were keeping peace…but making a community separate. That was my take on it. We kept driving south and into County Meath, Republic of Ireland. There we stayed in a bed and breakfast in Trim, Ireland. Trim is known for their beautiful castle – the largest Norman castle in Ireland, in fact. It was used in the shooting of the film, “Braveheart” in 1995. We were again able to catch photos of the castle as the sun was setting. It was worth the mosquito bites…you can actually see some swarms of them in the sunlight in some of the photos.