Memorial Weekend

October 2010

Wow. Didn't expect Memorial weekend to be as hard as it was. I didn't do any preparing (mentally) for the weekend because I just didn't think it would get to me. Wrong. It got to me. The waves have been smashing me against the wall. Again.

It started getting to me when I bought the flowers I would be taking to the cemetery. I bought the flowers on Tuesday and each day I looked at them they made me more sad. By Friday, I just wanted to get rid of them, so the boys and I took them in the rain and cold. The weather was mimicking my mood. Cold. Miserable. Depressed. Next year I am NOT buying flowers until the day we go. Knowing I would be taking those flowers to my husband's grave was so hard. I still don't even want to believe he is really gone. Memorial weekend will now be a big red flashing reminder that my husband is dead. Wait, what am I saying? EVERYTHING is a big red flashing reminder that my husband is dead. Age 35 and dead. It really sucks.

In one of my previous posts I talked about the "magical hug" I had envisioned and dreamed about for the two years Joe was on his mission. Guess what? Totally dreaming about that hug again. This time it WILL be magical and there WILL be music playing in the background while he swings me around kissing and hugging me. Down side? It's going to be a lot longer than two years that I will be dreaming about this hug. By the time I get there the hug I have envisioned will probably have fireworks going off in the background with Jonas finally agreeing to Waltz or Tango or Swing dance with me! Guess its a good thing he has a long time to practice and make our reunion magical! (He better be getting some dance lessons while he waits for me!)

Now. What to do with the rest of my life? It was once mapped out. Someone burned my map. I now have to draw a new one and figure out how to go about living life on this new map. Today my map is blank. I think I just want to continue being mad about Memorial weekend. Maybe another day I will work on that map. Today, I am angry. Angry that my life went from the pictures above to the pictures below. I am only 33 years old! I am now raising three young boys alone. Really? I agreed to this? Really?

A Love Story.....Just Beginning

Continuing on from my post "The Love Story Continues", after I left the airport I had to go back to work. Jonas went home and I had to go endure five more hours of work. I told Jonas I would come over to his house later that evening. I was so nervous the rest of the day! The five hours felt like ten. I honestly didn't know how I felt. About anything. 


I went over to his house that night and I have been sitting here trying to remember what we did but, I can't remember! I am having memories of sitting on the couch visiting with all the family that kept stopping by. The one thing I do remember (quite vividly) is that when I left he walked me to the car and yes......we kissed.....I wish I could say it was a magical kiss that washed away all my feelings of doubt, but I was still confused. I remember that Jonas said to me, "I still feel the same." I just hugged him. I didn't know how to respond. It was a good thing Jonas didn't give up on me (or catch on that I was unsure of my feelings) because as far as this sweet handsome returned missionary knew it was like he had never left! And you know......that is so Jonas! He was not very observant. There was no beating around the bush with him. If I wanted him to know how I was feeling I had to speak loud and clear. His nonobservance did serve a greater purpose it later years though. I could totally get away with buying new clothes and he rarely noticed. So yes, before kids......I had a GREAT wardrobe! 

My feelings of doubt just started to go away the more time I spent with Jonas. All the old feelings started to return. The butterflies in my stomach came back every time he called me on the phone. The complete and total happiness I felt when I was with him was back. The smiling and laughing and even the kissing, they were back and I loved it! I loved him. I had fallen in love and wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man. Jonas did want to move a little faster than me. He wanted to get married in December. Remember he had returned home on August 21st! Remember I was only 18! I didn't think I would be ready for a wedding in December so we decided on June. I guess getting married six months later would be enough time for me to grow and mature so that I could become his wife (insert sarcasm) and besides, I would be the ripe old age of 19 by then. Holy crap. I was so young!

I have questioned the intelligence of us getting married that young several times over the years. Why didn't we wait until Jonas had some schooling behind him? Why didn't we wait until we had built up a savings account? Why didn't I finish school first? Both Jonas and I would say to each other, "what were we thinking getting married so young!" We struggled so much in those first years (obviously the six months didn't do much to improve my maturity). But now, I am ever so grateful and thankful that we DID get married that young. I got to spend almost 14 years with Jonas. If we had waited our years of being married would have been so much shorter. They were already cut DRASTICALLY short. I am so thankful we were too in love (or too dumb) to not wait. I wouldn't want it any other way.


Now, when my boys get older and read this. Yes, we really were 25 when we got married and your daddy had already graduated college! DO NOT try and get out of the pact we made that you will be 25 and a college graduate before you marry. ;)

Jonas and I were married on June 26, 1997 in the Salt Lake Temple. It was a perfect day. A long day, but a perfect one. Maybe I will write more about that in June when it's closer to our anniversary. It would have been our fourteenth anniversary this year. That will be a hard day. I miss you so much Jonas. How I will ever survive this time without you is not something I can understand or figure out. My heart aches for you every day. I hope you know how much I love you and how grateful I am for you. You did so much for me and the boys. You worked so hard for our family. You were the best dad and the boys love and miss you so much. I am not sure how we will be able to go on. I guess just one day at a time. One day at a time. It sounds pretty miserable if you ask me. Dang it. My heart hurts! I need you back. I will love you always and forever Jonas. Please watch over us.

Untitled

Headstone. Final Resting Place. A Reminder That This Is All Real. Gone Too Soon. A Day At Bountiful Cemetery. Untitled. I could not come up with an appropriate title for this one. 

This day was much harder than I thought it would be. Seeing the headstone put in place is another reminder that this is all real. It's not a nightmare I will wake up from. It is my life. A life I am trying to figure out how to function in. But for now, until I can get a grip on my reality, I will have a place to go be with Jonas. I really am happy with the way the headstone turned out. I am pretty sure Jonas is happy with it too. 

It took me a long time to make a final decision on this headstone. Luckily, McMullin Memorials was so good to work with me and all my changes! There were so many more things I wanted to add to the headstone, but since I couldn't have a raised one (you have to own four single plots to get a raised headstone at Bountiful Cemetery) I wanted to put things on it that would forever remind us of Jonas. A headstone that would give our three sons a small glimpse of what was important to their dad and what he enjoyed in life.

I had wanted to put our wedding date, June 26, 1997 on it and also Sam, Ben, and Jack's handprints. I also wanted to put the words to the song "Gone Too Soon". With a raised headstone I probably could have.....but, oh well. This is what we have.

If you knew Jonas, then you knew he was a HUGE Utes fan. He LOVED his Utes! Our last date together was to a U of U football game. That was Nov. 6, 2010. Oh how I wish I would have been able to go to more games with him. He was always so happy there and usually lost his voice by the end of the game from cheering so loud! 

I chose the lake with the dad and three sons fishing because that is what they loved to do together. They didn't get to do it very often, but Jonas always talked about how much fun they would have fishing together as the kids got older. Jonas had so many fun plans for family camping trips and fishing trips. "As soon as I get feeling better....." or "As soon as I don't have to haul around all these IV antibiotics and TPN....." Yes. We were always looking forward to the day Jonas would be feeling better. We had such fun plans for the future!

I originally had Beloved Husband, Father, Son, & Brother along the bottom. But I had also wanted to put a saying on there that would "be" Jonas. So I had to choose. I was talking to Joe's mom about my dilemma and we were trying to come up with sayings that would be fitting for Joe. She laughingly said "Schrodinger's cat is dead." Jonas had a black shirt that had in white print "Schrodinger's Cat Is Dead" on the front and "Schrodinger's Cat Is Not Dead" on the back. He had found this shirt on a website called Think Geek. He loved browsing through the products they had for sale. He loved being a geek! He came home from work one day and said, "you know, electrical engineers really are geeks and I am a total and complete geek." I just started laughing at him because he was so serious when he said it. Ahhhhh. How I loved and adored my geeky husband!

Now for the explanation of what Schrodinger's cat is dead and Schrodinger's cat is not dead means. I don't know. Please Google.  Seriously. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, usually described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. In the course of developing this experiment, he coined the term Verschränkung (entanglement).

Schrödinger's thought experiment was intended as a discussion of the EPR article, named after its authors—Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen—in 1935.^[1] The EPR article had highlighted the strange nature of quantum entanglement, which is a characteristic of a quantum state that is a combination of the states of two systems (for example, two subatomic particles), that once interacted but were then separated and are not each in a definite state. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the state of the two systems undergoes collapse into a definite state when one of the systems is measured.

Schrödinger and Einstein had exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein had pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.

To further illustrate the putative incompleteness of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger describes how one could, in principle, transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the help of a "diabolical mechanism". He proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat's life or death was dependent on the state of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened.

Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum.^[2] The thought experiment serves to illustrate the bizarreness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states. Intended as a critique of just the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger cat thought experiment remains a topical touchstone for all interpretations of quantum mechanics. How each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat is often used as a way of illustrating and comparing each interpretation's particular features, strengths, and weaknesses.

Ummmmm. Ok. Did y'all understand that!?!?  The crazy thing is Jonas did. He loved this kind of stuff. He read physic books for FUN. Not for school or work but for PURE enjoyment. For FUN! 

Yup. There is my honey reading his favorite book
 "Understanding Physics" by Isaac Asimov

Jonas also loved puzzles. Logic puzzles, math puzzles, game puzzles. We were always trying to find a puzzle that would stump Jonas and take him longer than 20 minutes to figure out. I don't think we were ever successful! He would complete the "extremely hard puzzles" as the packages would claim in less than 30 min. Really Joe?!? He would just smile and do his little laugh.

So his headstone is a mix of things he loved. He loved me. He loved his boys. He loved fishing with his boys. He enjoyed physics and he enjoyed puzzles. That is why it is a puzzle to see if you can see both words "alive" and dead".

I especially wanted Jonas to know that we would love him forever. And we will.

The Love Story Continues....

The cute boy (have you figured out it's Jonas) and the sixteen year old (thats me) continued writing each other during the two years of Joe's mission. Actually, I did most of the writing. Jonas got letters out....occasionally. I think my mom heard plenty of whining and complaining from me that Jonas had forgotten about me or "why wasn't he writing?" Just to see me a few days later ecstatic because I had FINALLY received a letter from him! What a roller coaster those two years were!


I did date while Jonas was on his mission. I had fun going to all the High School dances and going on other dates during the time Jonas was gone. I never dated anyone exclusivly though. After graduation I started working full time at Certified Warehouse. I actually have really fun memories of working in a warehouse. I was the only person who worked in the office but the warehouse workers were fun and I really enjoyed being at work.


In August of 1996 I got a phone call from Joe's mom, Kathy, who told me Jonas had been diagnosed with diabetes and was in the hospital in Argentina. She told me he would be coming home in one week. I remember feeling unsure of myself and not really knowing how to react. I was expecting him home in October and hearing he would be home on August 21st was strange. I was so unprepared for this news! I remember I had gone on some fun dates with someone recently and was thinking, "Wait!!! Jonas can't come home!! I need to keep dating this other guy to see how things will turn out for us. I am supposed to have until October before I see Jonas again!"  If you can't tell, I was really nervous for him to come home and totally didn't know what to expect. It had been TWO years! I was graduated from High School and working a full time job. When he left I was just starting my junior year. I was confused. I was nervous.


So the day arrived. I went to the airport with my mom and two youngest sisters. I think I mentioned this in another post, but I remember hiding behind one of Joe's friends when he came out of the gate. I didn't want to be the center of attention so I let his family and friends hug him before he saw me. Everyone had their turn and then it was mine. I had envisioned this hug for two years. No, Yanni was not playing over the sound system (because that is the music I always listened to when I envisioned this hug) and it wasn't slow motion with joyful laughing and crying and he did not swing me around in a circle saying he missed me and would never leave me again. No. It was none of those things I had envisioned. But it felt really good to hug him again and I was so happy he was home safe and sound. He had lost lots of weight from being so sick and he looked very tired. But he was home! Two years had gone by and here we were. Now. The question on my mind. Would things be the same???

Here is the "magical" first hug I dreamed about for two years

Elder Webster has returned!

1996

 These two pictures of Jonas and his younger brother Tyler make me laugh. Tyler had a HUGE growth spurt while Jonas was gone!

1994

I won't make you wait as long for the next chapter. Maybe I will even write it tomorrow. But I should really get to bed.