grief – Messina Musings

Today, February 25th, 2025, is my dad’s 78th birthday. Growing up, my dad was gone a lot. He worked very hard at his job as an officer in the U.S. Army. I remember from a young girl going to watch my dad jump from C-130’s at Fort Bragg, NC. I remember when he would work late, we would take him a big mac, fries, and a shake from McDonald’s. I would hold his meal on my lap….and it smelled so good, but we couldn’t really afford to have us all eat at McDonald’s, so my mom would feed us at home earlier. My dad was stationed in different locations around the country every couple of years, so that really formed my personality. I can easily see it looking back today. I was so blessed to be exposed to so many different parts of the country and meet so many interesting people, some of whom I am still good friends with today.

My dad was a combat engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was an airborne ranger and a master parachutist. He was a part of the jump team at Fort Bragg with the 82nd Airborne Division when I was growing up. He had a degree in finance and a masters in the same. He took several assignments during his later years doing just that….working on the budget for the Army at the Pentagon under big names like Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell. He was very proud of his lineage of a military man, and was very proud of his family members who also served. He commissioned Rich and me into the Air Force. He was very proud of his grandson, my Joe’s, service in the Army and that of his nephew, Emil. After nearly 30 years serving our country, it became such a part of who he was. It was the army bumper sticker on his truck or simply the veteran hat he always wore outside the house.

My dad’s attention to detail was notorious. I remember these stupid table lamps we had growing up with white pleated lampshades. When it was my turn to dust, he expected me to dust in between all those pleats. Many tears were shed over this. He used to laugh when I told him that is why I have no lamps in my home…and definitely no lamp shades. My dad also loved everything about the Civil War. We would go on vacation in the heat of the summer to walk fields with plaques in tall grasses. I did not appreciate those trips as a kid. It was not fun. But he enjoyed walking on that hallowed ground.

My dad has changed a lot over the years. He enjoyed being a grandpa. He had tea parties with his granddaughters and played cars on the floor with his grandsons. He mellowed out a bit. I really do miss him. He is still here in body, but his mind has been robbed by dementia over the last several years. He has been living in a memory care facility over the last 2 years. He no longer goes out and about because he has forgotten how to get into a car. He has days where he forgets how to use his spoon to eat. He can’t carry on a conversation and he doesn’t know his kids or his wife, although he seems to feel more comfortable with my mom, who comes to feed him twice a day. I talked with him over the phone today and told him I loved him. He said, “Thank you.”, which is the reply I have gotten over the last several months. I am heading to Houston next weekend to spend 5 days with my parents and try and bond with my dad as much as he is able. I never in a million years expected my dad to be where he is at this point in his life. I miss him terribly, and yet he is still here in body and even sometimes in spirit. Happy birthday, Dad. I love you (and you are welcome!). The fire truck is from 3 years ago when my brother was on duty and came for cake and ice cream on his engine with his crew to the house!

For about two years after our Joe died, I was doing grief work with an online zoom group. It was a group made of people of various losses and with grievers from around the world. I was in zoom groups up to four days a week for a majority of that time. It really helped me learn to deal with my grief in a healthier way and not to be ashamed of missing my Joe so much. Monday’s zoom meeting was a break out session where everyone was separated out into different grief groups. I was in the “room” that had parents who had lost children ages 26-35 years of age when they died. I saw a lot of the same people in that Monday group. A couple of the women started talking outside of the zoom group and wanted to get to know other moms better. I call the group the Nueve Amigas…the nine friends. We meet via zoom every other Tuesday for an hour or so and catch up with each other. I finally let my subscription to the big grief group expire when I was traveling so much over the summer. We are from all over the U.S. and one in Canada. Four of us were nurses at some point. Seven of the nine lost sons. Three of those sons were named Joseph. I am the only one with 3 kids…everyone else had 2. In September, Beth flew in from Massachusetts and Katy flew in from Arizona. They stayed here for four days and Rich and I showed them around Glacier National Park and the rest of the Flathead Valley. Beth and Katy discovered they really enjoyed huckleberry ice cream! They were two former nurses and helped me go through a lot of our medical supplies on our medical response vehicle at the fire department. The three of us drove to western Washington and took a ferry to Victoria, BC, where we met up with Barb at her house. Veronica flew up from Iowa to meet us. While staying the night in Washington, I went and visited one of my best friends from our time in Norway. It had been 14 years since we had seen each other but the time melted away easily as being with good friends does. In Canada, the five of us laughed, cried, talked into the night, toured around Victoria, and honored our kids by telling stories about them. It was nice because we didn’t ever have to really explain anything. We were all coming into the week with the same awful reality of losing a child. There is a photo towards the end with the five of us on a pier by the water. We released dried flowers into the water. We wanted a photo of the five of us and so we asked a gentleman who was reading. He seemed a little put out at first. I went over to him and explained that we were all strangers who had just met in person. We were all coping with the death of one of our children. He took our photo and then shared that he had just lost his wife last year and was new to the area. We all gave him hugs. It was such a sweet moment. We got to talking later that those hugs were probably something he didn’t get often now that his wife was gone. We are hoping to have all nine of us get together in 2025. The plans are being made. Here are some photos of that time with my gal pals.