For those parents out there who have had to bury a child, this post is for you. For those who have not, God love, bless, and keep you from ever having to do such an unnatural thing.
Many people have asked me over the years, “… but Cat, HOW do you still laugh, smile, and experience joy after all the losses you’ve suffered?”
It’s called “The Mathematics Of Faith”, and it’s factored by strength, fortitude, and resilience … the total sum of which is always “LOVE” … be it love for one another or the love we’re commanded to have for ourselves by the God that gifted us to one another in the first place, no matter how short or long our seasons. Perhaps the best part of this ‘lil quotient is that you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out! As a matter of fact, as far as faith and most matters of the heart are concerned, the deafer and dumber you are, the better! Fast-forward to today and everything I’m feeling as I revel in the victory of powering through what would have been her 21st birthday had she not moved on to The Brighter Side Of Grey so quickly. Grieving not just my tiny angel, but my husband and so many others I’ve lost along the way has been difficult, of course, but even more than that, it has been the utmost and highest privilege of my life. Why is that, you ask? Because it means I “got” to love them in the first place. Their deaths remain “nothing at all.” My prayer for all of you beautiful warriors out there is to keep on carrying on and let nothing and no one take that crown from your head or steal your faith. As for me? Although losing a child of my own flesh and blood (no matter her age or how fleeting the hours I had with her) is something I would never wish upon another parent, what I can tell you is this: You have to let go of the need for black and white proof, walk through all the grey and fear blindly, and trust the process. It’s scary, I know, but the fruits of the immense amount of courage it takes to stop trying to make sense of certain things are infinite. I PROMISE!
And so, with that—yes, my friends, I am still here, very much doing the math and calculating my faith. Guess what? The numbers are adding up to INFINITY, and I don’t exactly hate it. Carrying on!
It’s been eight of your birthdays I’ve had to celebrate without you. But yes, your impact was bigger than you thought, and yes, it’s still very much felt.
Yes, I still quietly admire you and the advice you gave that made a difference for us all. The support and love you showed me continue to shape my days, weeks, and months. They continue to shape my life.
Yes, your input and opinions still make me think twice … if not three times, and then four.
No, you weren’t insignificant, and never shall you be forgotten. Your existence here, no matter how brief, and despite the evil insanity that took you in the end made a positive difference, though you didn’t live to see it.
I’m sorry that THING that birthed then threw you away as well as all your “siblings” bore a hole so deep in your soul that you felt as though you deserved to die in it.
… and then there was that time that me and one of my besties tore up Dollywood after the Death Punch road trip of both our lives! For those of you who’ve never had the privilege and honor of visiting Dollywood – one of THE best places on this Earth, because when you’re there, you can literally FEEL her love and energy in every square inch of that park – I cannot recommend it highly enough!
In the meantime, rest in peace, beautiful young lady! No words can properly credit how you infected so many of our lives with the Light that emanated from your tiny little body! She was “love incarnate“! As for me and mine? I will be damn good and sure that my grandbabies will know exactly who and what you were and why this world needed you the way it did! God speed right over that Bridge to The Brighter Side Of Grey! Yes, we will always love you!
I’m sure your messages are blowing up right now with this song—but I just wanted to say thank you. If only you knew how long I’ve been holding back the flood that finally spilled out when I heard this song the night before last. Fifty-fucking-six years’ worth! I’ve been carrying the weight of everyone else’s darkness in the wake of not just my late husband’s suicide 6.5 years ago, but a lifetime’s worth of my own before that. Everyone thought I was the strongest bitch alive. I did too. Today, my therapy went from one hour to three, and my therapist “almost” sent me to a hospital because I CANNOT stop crying everything out. The thing is, IT NEEDED TO COME OUT this way! So, yah. Thank you. See you when you’re out on the road one day. I’ll probably be the oldest person at your shows, but fuck it! Oh, and I’m so truly sorry for whatever it is that happened in YOUR life that led you to alchemize the perfect storm of these words. I’m also glad you lived to tell about it, because I cannot be the only one who’s found a lifetime’s worth of missing puzzle pieces in these lyrics.
This picture was taken during Ozzy’s goodbye show. She sat quietly at the edge of the stage. Alone. Almost invisible. After decades of chaos and glory, of screams and silence. Just to be there. To be his. To stay. Always. This is Sharon Osbourne. And that image of her says more about love than any love song ever could. Because real Rock and Roll isn’t in the solos. It’s in the surrender. She met Ozzy when he was lost – broken, addicted, discarded. But she saw the man, not the mess. She believed. She bet everything. And she won.
She wasn’t just a wife. She was the mind behind the empire. The soul behind the myth. She was the one who stayed – through rehab, scandals, relapses, betrayals. She was the one who loved – fiercely, silently, without applause. She turned pain into power. Madness into music. A broken man into a legend – and then into a husband.
For over 40 years, she held the line. Not for glory. Not for image. But for love. Real love doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it just stays. And she stayed. Sharon was Ozzy’s oxygen. His harbor. And maybe… the greatest love story music has ever known.
As a widow who’s still healing from a “journey with a madman” who I unfortunately lost to his own darkness, your words have captured SO many of the feelings I’ve yet to fully express with my own words. They NEED to be shared with other widows.
No, he may not have been a rock star—but in so many ways, I suppose he was before he lost his actual fucking mind and did unspeakable, unfathomable, and all but inhumane things to us in the wake of his insanity.
But you see, I, too, was Sharon Osbourne in my own way. I happily and sometimes quietly sat at the edge of his stage … often alone … and sometimes even invisible. Why? Just to be there. To be his. To stay. Always. Because real love is in the surrender.
I met Zach when he was lost—broken, discarded. But I saw the man, not the mess, albeit he’d been hiding so much of it. I believed. I bet everything. And I lost.
Twenty years ago on this day, Demon Hunter released this most powerful song of not just Zack’s lifetime, but even more so mine as I’ve continued to break everything down in hopes of making sense of the silent pieces of his existence. So, what better time to finally memorialize it than today by sharing my answer to a question that was posted earlier in one of my writing forums:
My “Triptych” story is bittersweet and unfathomable to most, but true nonetheless. Since I’m the “REAL Cat” and an admitted over-sharer, I’ll share. Demon Hunter was the all-time favorite band of my late husband’s life. He’d been thrown away by his “mother THING” on his birth day. Years of burying his emotions after a dismal start in life eventually led him to me and my kids, who he took as his own.
Meanwhile, on 8.9.19, the night after I’d discovered he’d made his final decision to “put the monster down” and purchased the Springfield he used, he’d written an email to my daughter and me with the song “One Thousand Apologies” attached, but never sent it. I found it in his drafts while sifting through the wreckage months later. He’d always said this band wrote the soundtrack to his life, and they did.
For the record, I have long since forgiven him for the crimes against our humanity that he / “the monster” committed against me and my daughter. I’m thankful beyond words for all the delicate and NOT so delicate ways their music has helped me understand what may have been going on inside his broken mind and soul, and for the closure I’ve found in so MANY of their song lyrics. I hope he’s resting in peace.
Through it all, though, I can honestly say that while there was once a time in my life when I truly didn’t know when the pain was gonna stop, I just kept working on it, all the while never knowing when the floor was gonna drop again. I stepped gently … softly … carefully.
At so many points, and even still sometimes on a day like this, managing all these emotions has just felt like putting up sails in a storm, and the many efforts I’ve made keep toppling me over. And while it’s true that all the ways I once used to cope only made me feel worse, those days are long gone. God? How do I maintain all this control? In the hardest of times, I just stay in my body … see through my own eyes … feel my beating heart … and breathe. Breathe. BREATHE!
Maybe what happened six years ago this night was always meant for me. Maybe tomorrow morning will be, too. Either way, I’ll remain steadfast in my role … my control … the only thing I ever really need to do is just … breathe.
Have you ever heard me talk about Ozzy Osbourne? Nope. Was he one of my favorite rock stars? Yup.
But not for the reasons you may think. Oh, don’t get me wrong, folks! I’ve been a fan of his music all the way back to his Black Sabbath days, and there are quite a few of his songs I listen to on repeat.
So? Since we’re just shy of a month away from the sixth anniversary of his death, let’s do some math. 52 times 6? Yup. I’ve probably listened to it more than 300 times now!
Gene Simmons remembered Ozzy’s warmth, nonjudgmental spirit, and originality:
Can you even imagine having such epic and powerful words spoken about you in life, much less in death and your “ever after” legacy? If only I could be lucky enough one day to have even a single person say such beautiful words about me!
So, here’s to me thinking about working a little harder on my “nonjudgmental” piece of it all, ’cause EFF my often sanctimonious and judgmental, err, “Virgo-ness”!
Meanwhile, perhaps one of my favorite “humanities” about our now immortalized Prince Of Darkness is how he set the standard for all the rest of the freaks out here like me who simply cannot march to any cadence but our own.
Simply said? Ozzy made it seem almost normal to be the Jean-Claude Van DAMN effing mental freak of the worldoddball I’m so “Ozzily” proud to be!
If only there were a way to get Merriam-Webster to just use a picture of him for the word “immortal,” oh, what a beautiful thing it would be! There are literally no descriptive words necessary that way.
Does anyone know who we can call to make this happen? I’m not EVEN joking! Dare I say that all of us oldies but goodies who were given carte blanche by this man to reign PROUDLY and HAPPILY either out loud or in the little private bat cages of our minds had BEST be telling our grandkids all “aBAT” how he set us free!
In the meantime …
Rest in peace, Mate! Here’s hoping you’re flying as free as the inner bat in all of us who came after you—just a flap, flap, FLAPPIN’ our crazy little wings (and wearing black clothes and winter caps in the middle of a 666-degree Texas summer). As for me? I shall heretofore only ever refer to you as the Prince Of Dark AND Lightness!
“It didn’t kill me … but something changed. A piece of me lost … forever estranged. I walked away … yet not the same. A shadowed soul … a quiet flame. That day took part of who I was … left me searching, without a cause. I carry on … but feel the void. A heart once whole … now destroyed. It didn’t end me … but I’m not whole. An echo remains deep in my soul. I’m here … I breathe … but truth denied … A part of me that day quietly died.”
{Author Unknown}
You’ve oft heard it said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree! HOWEVER, what prolly also should be said literally every time someone utters those ever-so-famous “seven words” is:
“… but not before it literally fucking BREAKS you first!”
No, I don’t think God was laughing that day or that He laughs on any of the days we spend facing the wrath of His angels. In fact, I’m certain that He was on that hospital wailing WITH me and holding me tight as every shred of what I’d come to believe as truth turned out to be the devil’s lie. God DID give me wings, but it was MY job to learn to fly. I had to face not just Zack’s, but my own “devil in the mirror” before I could ascend to the sky.
So, yeah, I’m still here and none of those moments killed me, but here’s to that sorry ol’ devil for trying, right? (#IMWINNING, lol!) I guess what I’m saying is that if you haven’t had one of these moments yet, God love you. No, seriously.
Even more seriously, though, while this, err, “fight club” of sorts really, really stinks and the membership fee sucks massive BALLS, know that once you get your card you’ll be welcomed and embraced by the rest of us who’ve gone toe-to-toe with everything that was meant to break us and lived to tell about it! Until then, take NOTHING and NO ONE for granted, please. Life is precious and so is your mental wealth, so here’s hoping that when (and not if) your time finally comes to hit the floor and shatter, you’ll find every bit of power, grace, fortitude, and resilience hiding within yourself to join the ranks of us who’ve SURVIVED (and even THRIVED) “post-mortem”. And, oh yah, one more thing …
The back story on this song is about a miscarriage my ex and I went through before I got sober. The loss of our son Jude after 7 months of pregnancy was so devastating it sent me into an alcoholic & drug spiral that lasted a year ending with an overdose and me finally getting help from 12 step anonymous programs. For many years I carried the guilt and remorse wondering if I had done thing differently would the outcome had changed. Eventually through recovery and therapy I came to accept and make peace with the loss. Many times when late term miscarriages occur we rightfully attend to the mothers & pour over them all the compassion and care we have to offer. My story is one of the devastated father. The men who lose their son’s & daughters before they ever get to know them. My prayers are with anyone who is has or will experience this soul crushing loss. It does gets better. When we share our pain we divide it. When we share our joy it multiplies.
Ten minutes later, and not less than two minutes before I delivered her, my mother found her way to my room. There she stood holding my right hand, while Pete was holding my left, when Gina Marie, our precious baby girl graced us with her brief but powerful presence. She was 9 inches long and weighed just over a pound. The few hours she lived were the longest of my life, and there are no words to describe my anguish. The baby I had prayed desperately for on my literal hands and knees had been cruelly ripped from my womb and now I held her broken little body in my arms. She kept trying to hold on to my finger, but her tiny hand was too small to grasp it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as I helplessly watched her gasping for air and struggling to live, then watched her take her very last breath. I struggled for so long to find a single good thing that came from all that heartache and trauma, as it is something I will truly never understand, but what I can tell you is that there in that otherwise frigid hospital room, racked with grief and agony in my very darkest of hours, I had never felt so truly loved. How blessed was I to be surrounded by all the people I loved and cared for the most and who loved me in all the best ways they knew how? My husband, who after all he went through to bring that little girl into my life, and who despite my best efforts to push him away never once in our lifetime together at that point had ever physically left my side. My father, who despite his shortcomings, seemed to love me in the best way he knew how, and despite our many battles, I know would have traded his life for my daughter’s in that moment. My sister and one true and unconditional rock, there at the foot of my bed on her hands and knees sobbing inconsolably for the indescribable pain that I was in, that if she could have, I know she would have taken from me. And, of course, my beautiful mother who has loved me all the days of my life and I was blessed to have standing beside me when each of my children came into this world, and then again when one of them left it.
It’s called “The Mathematics Of Faith”, and it’s factored by strength, fortitude, and resilience … the total sum of which is always “LOVE” … be it love for one another or the love we’re commanded to have for ourselves by the God that gifted us to one another in the first place, no matter how short or long our seasons. Perhaps the best part of this ‘lil quotient is that you don’t have to be a genius to figure it out! As a matter of fact, as far as faith and most matters of the heart are concerned, the deafer and dumber you are, the better!
Fast-forward to today and everything I’m feeling as I revel in the victory of powering through what would have been her 21st birthday had she not moved on to The Brighter Side Of Grey so quickly. Grieving not just my tiny angel, but my husband and so many others I’ve lost along the way has been difficult, of course, but even more than that, it has been the utmost and highest privilege of my life. Why is that, you ask? Because it means I “got” to love them in the first place. Their deaths remain “nothing at all“.
My prayer for all of you beautiful warriors out there is to keep on carrying on and let nothing and no one take that crown from your head or steal your faith. As for me? Although losing a child of my own flesh and blood (no matter her age or how fleeting the hours I had with her) is something I would never wish upon another parent, what I can tell you is this …
You have to let go of the need for black and white proof, walk through all the grey and fear blindly, and trust the process. It’s scary, I know, but the fruits of the immense amount of courage it takes to stop trying to make sense of certain things are infinite. I PROMISE!
Beautiful new frontier! High above the rain in the atmosphere … what wonders I have discovered! My soul is ever clear. Never felt the way I do with You here. I hope there’s never another. So, sing tonight! I’m ever bright! Burning through space … I see Your face … I could beat kryptonite! I’m so alive, forever high! I love You, Papa! I’ll wait if You take forever long and keep listening for Your song.
God (to Me):
Hold on, my dear, there’ll be no fear! You’re leaving this world behind. Far away above the Earth we’ll soar through the curvature away from all our dark matters and escape the barriers you’ve manufactured going into the hereafter. All good things must come to pass. Now is your time! I love you more, daughter.
Yes, it reduces me to uncontrollable, beautiful tears EVERY single time I hear it.
Yes, I really believe I can hear my Papa’s songs as I’m flying through the curvature of the not-so-dark matters in my soul through space and time, and that He actually rejoices when He hears me singing mine.
Yes, I’ve separated myself and my divinely punctuated soul from the world I used to know and will reintegrate if and when I’m ever ready to. I wouldn’t even want to BE like “everyone else” in the faceless, faithless crowd in the first place, so “crazy” works just FINE for me! At the end of the day, God sees my face and that’s all that really matters.
A line often attributed to the Sufi poet and mystic Rumi says, “The cure for the pain is in the pain.” I couldn’t agree more. Like the most beautiful, albeit bittersweet, dances with love, that wisdom has transcended time and space.
As for me, I believe pain and suffering have also transcended time and space through the root systems of our family trees. The agony lives on until someone finally says, “No more!” and decides to calm the fire of that generationally gifted pain within themselves. That’s how we begin to stop the toxins that poisoned our roots from bleeding through the hearts of the generations that follow.
… the Monday after he shot himself, someone hauled my ass to the doctor. They wanted to make sure I was medicated so that I could function. So, they put me on a prescription of something for 30 days. Umm, I don’t even know what it was. I just remember I was numb. My mom came to move in to the house with me for a while. Of course, I didn’t leave my room unless I had to … to handle, like, the business of it all … go the funeral home, make the arrangements … but I didn’t leave my room that much. Plus, they were shoving drugs down my throat to help me cope with everything. And, umm, I had a 30-day prescription of whatever it was. Honestly? I couldn’t tell you what they had me on. I wanna say it was Klonapin. Whatever it was, it was pretty effective. I was numb … I couldn’t feel anything … but after my prescription was over on the 30th day … 35 days later I guess we’ll just call it … I had no more medication. I had no more … nothing to numb the pain or the reality or to change anything, and it was time for me to wake up and smell the coffee.
And you know what? I remember that I have these blinds in my room. Well, it was our room. We kept the blinds down all the time to black out all the Sun. We would do that at night, so … we liked to sleep in the total darkness. And they had those blinds down. For 30 days in a row, I never opened them throughout the whole medication process after the 22nd. But, on the day that my medicine ran out, there was nobody there, my mom had already gone home. It was just me and the dog and my new reality … my new life … and I got up and I put my feet on the ground and I just … I remember going to the window, and I opened up my blinds, and I looked out into the backyard. I looked at the Sun. I look at the sky. It was a blue sky. It was really pretty outside. It was September. It was the end of September when that day happened, and I just made a decision. I said to myself, “I can either let this define me or I can not. I can either be a victim or not. I can either crumble or not. I can either get up or stay down.” And I made the decision to get up and that was then.
I’m so glad. I’m so thankful. I’m so thankful for everything I’ve been through in the last … not just the last 283 days or whatever … I’m so thankful for everything that I’ve been through in the last 50 years. I’m gonna cry. I wouldn’t change a thing! Everything. Every moment. Every time I’ve fallen. Every time I’ve risen. In the darkest hours of my life, that’s where I found the richest blessings. That’s where I found myself. I found myself in all my broken pieces. All of that pain … the pain that I have experienced has been my greatest gift … my greatest blessing.
I wish so much that I had a way to “ozmose” what I know and how I feel and what I’ve learned on my journey to as many of you as I can, because I know there are people in my atmosphere right now as I’m sitting here waiting for my girls. I call them “my girls”. (My daughter’s friends are my daughters, too. That’s how it’s always been in my house. She’s got a knack for picking amazing girls to surround herself … now, put it this way. She hasn’t always been so good at that, but she’s got a really good tribe now, and these are her tribe for the long haul. I’m thinking that the people that she has in her life right now are gonna be her people 40 years from now. I can tell! But anyway, I’ve digressed.)
I know that there are people in this world at this very minute that are crumbling. They’re questioning … they’re hurting … they’re aching … they’re dying … they’re hiding … they’re fighting for their moment … and I wish that I could just give you what I have and just “poof” it into you, but all I can tell you is just hang on. It’s “Chin Up! Knuckles Out!” You know that’s what I like to say. I’m telling you guys … everything that you need to survive and overcome? It’s inside of you. If I can do this, YOU can do this! I am the happiest fucking bitch I’ve ever met. I really am. I have joy in my heart. I have peace in my heart. I hope I don’t have to leave tomorrow, but if I do, I’m happy. I have lived and I have loved. I’ve had the most amazing pain and the most amazing loves of two men in my life that … three, if you count Christian … my son, Christian … I have been lucky enough to have had the sweetest, most truest love that any woman could have ever had. I’ve had that twice now, and how lucky am I, because there are women in this world that haven’t had that once.
And when I think about all of the things … all of the gifts that those two men left for me, I’m so thankful, because … I wouldn’t change it even if I had known the way the stories were gonna end. As painful as it was to watch the one guy hit the … I watched someone dying on … I’ve watched THREE people die. I watched a daughter die in my arms. I saw a man dying in the street. The man … the first man that I ever loved in my life … I watched him laid out in the middle of the road after he hit a brick wall going 90 miles an hour. I had to see that with my own eyes.
And then I watched my husband “dying out loud“. I watched him. I didn’t … I wasn’t with him when he shot himself, but I watched him dying. I watched it day by day. It was the worst thing. I mean, I can’t even tell you. It was so hard to do. It was unbearable to see a human being dying in front of me. But I did it. But I wouldn’t … and had I … even had I known the way it was gonna end, I wouldn’t trade it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, because I figured out the secret. I figured out … I figured everything out and I’m so thankful for that.
Please, God, let it be me! Let me be the one to have absorbed the very last drops of poison that bled out and suffocated the rotting roots of our sick and dying tree so that the branches of my children and theirs will reach up and touch the Sun instead of digging back down into hell. I am humbled and honored to have been chosen for such a sacred calling and for getting to know “the secret”.
Happy Birthday to this song I’ve been listening to faithfully for going on thirty-one years now. It, too, has transcended the time, space, and beautiful changing seasons of my life.
“Dead flowers for the torn apart, laid at the grave to heal a broken heart. Let it rain until it floods … let The Sun breathe life once more reborn. Wish you the same … to walk beside and carry on this flame. To see you again with a radiance of pure and holy name. When the sorrow, it breaks them … I will replace them for you.”
… and when you walk out your door today, remember to make sure you spend everything in your soul with the utmost of care and leave all the people, places, animals, and things in your path better than you found them. Leave a legacy of SPARKLE AND SHINE wherever you may roam and don’t be the reason people end up in therapy after you kick it! Oh, and ALSO? Have a REALLY good day!
FIVE. That’s the number of Father’s Days we’ve had to celebrate without you, Superman. But then, FIVE! (Oh, yah, in case you missed the memo, he’s “Five” by order of appearance in my halo as a child of either my blood or my heart.) Meanwhile … HONEY? Are you watching this through your telescope from the other side of the stars? Have you seen this young KING who has shown up in our family picture?
Imagine my surprise when this text came in yesterday while I was out showing houses. While at first glance, my heart wanted to fall through my stomach, instead it only swelled. I mean, how many times did you send me flowers for absolutely no reason at all, but even more so when I’d been out working even though you said I didn’t have to?
“Thank you”. Just “thank you”, he said. Lol. He has no idea how to show his appreciation to me? This young man who we literally never saw coming has been such a driving force in both her and my life already, and I’m hoping that you approve. Wait! No! I KNOW YOU WOULD! Actually? Now that I think of it, there’s a song I recently heard that I had intended to blog to Christian, but instead, I’m blogging it to both him and the kid by tweaking the words my way:
It’s funny how a little plus sign can change your life overnight … even when it belongs to another mother … and turn a boy into a man … and how hearts so big fit inside small Superman-caped wrecking balls who eventually grow into an extremely brave men with no fear at all!
To My Number One:
I hope you love with all you’ve got and never try to be something you’re not … always a fighter, dreamer, survivor! Heart full of fire, keep looking them in thеir eyes when you shakе their hand, “Sir” and “Ma’am”. Understand God’s got a plan for you and I hope you know you’ll grow up to be the man I always knew you could be. I tried not to blink too long, but before I knew it, you’ve gone and fallen for another and I’m okay with it, ’cause guess what? SO HAVE I! Before you take somebody’s little girl away and ask for her hand, take a knee and say:
I wanna love you with all I got … never try to be something I’m not … always a fighter, giver, provider. Heart full of fire, look you in your eyes as we both stand, like God planned, slip that band on your left-hand and promise you that I’ll always try to be the man you see in me!
To My Number Five:
I hope you love with all you’ve got and never try to be something you’re not … always a fighter, dreamer, survivor! Heart full of fire, keep looking them in thеir eyes when you shakе their hand, “Sir” and “Ma’am”. Understand God’s got a plan for you. Although I may not have given birth to you, or seen you during your “Superman-caped” wrecking ball days, as a mother, I am so damn proud of the man you are becoming and am certain your own mother must be, too. Someday I truly look forward to meeting the woman whose plus sign you belonged to. Only time will tell what the future has in store for you and my girl, but in the meantime, I’m so thankful you’re in my halo! Both her dads must be, too!
On this day in 2012, Shinedown released the album that gave birth to what I believe is one of their most poignant songs of all, “Amaryllis”, which I’ve diaried here once before:
I’m a divinely punctuated queen who is abundantly aware of her risen reflection in every mirror. The girl who once waged war with herself and her many wounds, now brings flowers to her scars instead! … If you DON’T have someone special in your life, take 20 minutes today to get YOURSELF some flowers! Having a healthy, loving, forgiving, and unconditional relationship with YOU is the first step to becoming living royalty. Meanwhile, this song was particularly special one for Zack and me, because when we met, we were both an “amaryllis”.
Bukowski was right. Creation truly is a solitary act. Just ask the Queen Of The Night, the exquisitely beautiful “mystery girl” who blooms alone but once a year in the dark. In order to make her coveted appearance, she must first be exposed to frigid temperatures, but not before being induced to dormancy. This process, of course, requires not just her, but those who love and care for her to be patient. But, alas … when she’s ready, she’ll unfurl her petals and stand strong and tall amid the solitude of her own weed-free and healthy soil.
Epictetus once said,
The trials you face will introduce you to your strengths.
Yes, my reign here in The Queendom has required an immense amount of time alone as I’ve been lovingly, carefully, diligently, patiently, and often thanklessly tending to the avant garden I started planting with the conception of my firstborn “bulb“. I wouldn’t have had it any other way! This self-imposed “isolation” of sorts has been preparing me. Sharpening me. EMBRACING ME! This true creation of mine has had to be a solitary act, lest I have failed to ever know who I really am and what I was truly capable of “widowed” and apart from the crowd or as someone’s “better half“. All of my most beautiful petals have unfurled in the darkness while no one ever really knew what was going on inside my “disrespectfully private”, if not reclusive world.
AMARYLLIS
In a while now I will feel better, I’ll face the weather before me. In a while now I’ll race the irony and buy back each word of my eulogy. All the uninvited tragedies. Step outside. Ask yourself now where would you be without days like this when you finally collide with the moment you can’t forget. So, do I remind you of someone you never met? A lonely silhouette? And do I remind you of somewhere you wanna be? So far out of reach. Oh, I wish you’d open up for me ’cause I wanna know you. Amaryllis. Bloom. Stay a while now. Undress your colors ’cause they’re like no others I’ve ever seen. I could get used to your company. Step inside. Ask yourself now where would you be without days like this when you finally collide with emotions you can’t resist? {Shinedown}
… and from that day on, not only did she know for certain that Heaven really could hear the many unspoken words and silent screams that were trapped inside both halves of their twin-flame souls infinitely, but also that some cryptic tales really aren’t that cryptic after all:
Dear Moon,
I will run alone tonight without you by my side. I guess you had a place you had to get to. I knew your eyes. I knew inside the walls you hid behind. I saw the truth inside the real you. I know you were lost when you ran away to that last black hole and the black mistake. It’s taking all my will just to run alone. You’re not coming home.
Even though the sky did fall … even though she took it all … there’s no pain you’d have not gone through … even if you had to die for us.Then when all the fires were burned … and everything was overturned … there’s no thing you’d have not gone through … even if you had to die for us.
One day the Earth will open wide and I’ll follow you inside, ’cause the only hell I’ve known’s without you. Someday when galaxies collide, we’ll be lost on different skies, but I’ll send my rocket ship to find you.
Though the Sun grew cold for you along the way and the stars didn’t align to light our way … and though you fell away and crashed back down below … I’ll always search the skies for you and I’ll follow. I’ll be in your afterglow until I go back Home.
I love you and I miss you, and even though I’m not REALLY lost without you, I really AM lost HERE without you.
Although the album it was born from wasn’t released until this day—a few months after Zack’s suicide—and thus I couldn’t actually use it at his funeral, “Godspeed” is perhaps one of the most epic songs of not just MY life, but all of yours as well … except that you might not know it yet. For those of you who don’t know who Alter Bridge is, or the meaning behind the song:
“Godspeed” is the fourth track featured on their latest studio album, Walk the Sky, which was released on Napalm Records. The lyrics are profound and compelling and they hit the listener like a shot in the heart. Anybody who has ever lost anybody special in their lives can relate to its raw and authentic lyrics. It is upbeat and mid-tempo and it allows the band to carry their message across. The tune feels like a celebration of an influential person’s life. Lead guitarist Mark Tremonti wrote “Godspeed” in loving memory of his late dear friend, Seth Luker, and the song was so personal to him that it has struck a chord with their fans and listeners from all over the world. In a post on his social media pages, Tremonti praised Luker for being “the best” and “pure class.” Front-man Myles Kennedy allows his rich, harking voice to capture the essence of the lyrics of “Godspeed.” It is a controlled, soothing and captivating vocal performance, all in one. “Farewell, godspeed, and goodbye, you have lived and you have changed all our lives, cast away our regrets and all our fears, just like, like you did when you were here” Kennedy sings in the chorus. Overall, “Godspeed” is a fitting tribute by Mark Tremonti to his late friend, and Myles Kennedy and the rest of the band simply knock it out of the ballpark; moreover, it is a powerful song about living with loss and healing. Listeners should have a Kleenex box nearby as it deserves to be enjoyed for its beauty and melancholy. Each time this journalist listens to this song, it feels like it was written for him in memory of his best friend as well, and that goes to show the power of Alter Bridge’s songwriting and storytelling, and the message embedded in their music. “Godspeed” garners an A+ rating, and it ought to be released as a single at some point in the near future since it is bound to have a positive impact on people’s lives.
If you’ve never heard it, please listen to it now. It’s a powerful song that people from all walks of life need in their repertoire—a tribute to the profound impact one person’s life can have on another, and a reminder that music can sometimes help us find a little of the peaceful closure we need when someone we love has departed.
Of course, I love anything Alter Bridge—but every time I hear this one … and I play it almost daily … all I can do is look to the sky, smile, and thank GOD that we got to walk the EARTH with that king of ours at our six for the beautiful season we got to have him. Do I miss him? Yes. Do I still cry sometimes? Umm … YUP! Believe it or not, though, every single tear I’ve shed has been as big a gift as all of the pain.
… and just like that, the catharsis began as her tears fell like rain straight from Heaven. The best part of it all was the way all the people beside her and in the row behind her embraced her when they saw that she was clearly being shattered by this song in that moment. None of them knew her story … our story … but they heard, saw, and felt it and went straight to work. It was one of the most beautiful “stranger moments” of both our lives.
For the record, Three Days Grace is to her what 5FDP, Maiden, Shinedown, and 3 Doors Down are to me. They wrote the entire soundtrack to her life, and she’s found so many broken pieces of herself that she might not otherwise have been able to identify had it not been for their presence in her atmosphere.
Meanwhile, there was this ‘lil intersection nugget in the midst of our preparing for the night:
Hey, daughter? Should we run and get you some waterproof mascara?
HELL no, mom! I’m proud of how I’ve walked through all my living nightmares and storms, and I’ll wear the proof of ALL OF THEM like a warrior wears his war paint tonight! I’VE EARNED IT!
It was THE concert of her lifetime, my friends. Oh, and one last thing. When I got the tickets, they were literally the only two good seats left in the house … which (ps) just happened to be front row center. Were they expensive? YUP! No expense was spared for this moment of a lifetime of hers.
Regardless, I had told her over and again that she could take anyone she wanted and that just because I bought them, it didn’t mean that I had to be the obvious choice. I just wanted her to be happy in her element. So I was honored to have been the one she chose to have standing right beside her for it.
Three years ago this hour, the police chief of my small North Texas town walked into the hospital where my broken daughter lay to tell me they’d found my husband dead in his car, courtesy of the hollow point he’d put in his own head.
No, I don’t think God was laughing that day or that He laughs on any of the days we spend facing the wrath of His angels. In fact, I’m certain that He was on that hospital floor wailing with me and holding me tight as every shred of what I’d come to believe was truth turned out to be the devil’s lie. God DID give me wings, but it was MY job to learn to fly. I had to face not just Zack’s, but my own “devil in the mirror” before I could ascend to the sky.
Yes, the end IS coming, and no, I don’t think I mind. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again … as hard as this “living” thing can be, I have no intention of dying unless and until HE says it’s my time. In the meantime, imma stick around here as long as I’m allowed as the UNBREAKABLErisen QUEEN I was born to be.
As for the devil? Come for me, motherfucker! In case you haven’t noticed, my soul is already spoken for, and PS, you’re NOT the one who gets it! That’s not a challenge … IT’S FACT!
Wow! I guess that wasn’t too graceful, now was it? If you’ve been around this Diary long enough, you know damn good and well that sometimes I’m Heaven, sometimes I’m hell, and sometimes I really can’t tell which is which. Through it all, though, I always did know it would come to this, my “roll, roll, roll … I’m movin’ ahead.” THIS living queen who “rolls” as God’s favorite daughter is NOT gonna sleep ’til she’s dead! I’ve got punctuating to do and phoenixes to raise, so I have no other choice but to be alright.
THANKS FOR ASKING
‘Cause I’m alright. Thanks for asking. There’s a million things I’d love to say, but you don’t wanna hear. Yeah, it’s alright. I don’t need your blessings. I’d rather face the wrath of angels than the devil in the mirror. I don’t think God is listening. She told us to follow, but left us behind. I’ve never seen an angel, but I know the Devil, and he told me I’m fine. “What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.” That’s what everyone keeps telling me. I’d rather capsize than chase an old horizon. Throw me back into the deadest of seas. I know that God is laughing. She gave us our wings, but never taught us to fly. They say the end is coming, and if that’s true, well, I don’t think I mind. Heaven or hell? I can’t tell which is which. I always knew it would come to this. Roll, roll, roll … I’m movin’ ahead. Roll, roll, roll … guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead. {Five Finger Death Punch}
Five Finger Death Punch’s new album, AfterLife, dropped at midnight, and it’s mind-blowing, BUT I got stuck on one song: “All I Know.” Meanwhile, while we were chatting with him in the wee hours of the morning, Ivan Moody said the whistling at the intro just came to him one night while he was at his cabin in Wyoming. He said he’d been lying in bed, heard whistling outside his window, then got up and just started writing.
Now, here’s where this “Death Punch” may throw you for a loop, ’cause I’m about to go somewhere that some of you don’t wanna go. I believe the higher power (who I call by the name of “God”) is, indeed, running this greatest show on Earth. As far as I’m concerned, Creation itself is a musical composition straight from His heart to our souls, and the beings He specifically chooses to make music of every kind are His cosmic tuning forks:
“But now bring me a musician.”
Then it happened, when the musician played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.
[2 Kings 3:15 NKJV]
Meanwhile …
Zach used to whistle and hum all the fucking time, so, before Ivan talked about it, I’d already been captivated by the whistling and listening to it over and over. It was one of the most ethereal moments I’ve ever experienced.
“From Zach’s soul … to God’s ears … to Ivan’s mouth” … then POOF! “A seemingly magical process of transformation”through the creation of the hauntingly beautiful whistle at the beginning of a song that echoed to me just like the many other voices from my past that I believe are sending me messages:
Somehow, the haunting intro to this song with its echoes of what seem like my ancestors calling to me, channeled me back to either the wild, wild west or some ancient arena in Spain where kill or be killed was the fucking assignment, much like it is today during “times like these” when we’re all just fighting not only to survive, but fighting for the will to survive.
Like my “Brighter Side” moment back in 2020, I believe Zach needed me to hear the message in this song. God used Ivan’s whistling to do it. That’s right, folks: love him or hate him, and as impossible as it may be to conceptualize, Ivan isn’t just some rock star who jumps around on stages worldwide and entertains the masses. His purpose here is bigger than perhaps even he’ll ever know.
He’s a “universal elixir” and tuning fork that God is using to perpetuate His greatest alchemy of all … MUSIC!
Have I ever told you that I’m the luckiest woman alive? Have I told you that I’m thankful to be sitting in all these impossible realities that truly are “all I know,” many of which I don’t even need to understand? Not a day goes by, nor will it ever, that I don’t literally thank Heaven for all the alchemists out there who sing, cry, yell, scream, and “fist pump” the words to the poems they’ve written to help me find the missing pieces of myself and have managed to keep me alive.
ALL I KNOW
I don’t think that I’m crazy. Yeah, but how would I know, when the voices remind me that it’s all just for show. Well, I thought I had answers, but the questions have changed. It’s so hard to feel anything when I’ve only known pain. Pain. You can cast me out and dig my hole. Spit on my grave. Curse my soul. You can hold me down and not let go, but the devil you fear is all I know. And the road that’s less traveled, well, it’s all that I’ve known. Every time I look backwards, there’s still so far to go. If I’m born to be broken … cold, bloody, and numb … tell me, why am I running? What am I running from? From? As I sit here in silence, all alone in myself … who the hell would believe me? Better yet, who would I tell? I can’t tell. {Five Finger Death Punch}
Ain’t it funny how things happen? I mean, c’mon, people … do any of you still only believe in random coincidence?
As I’m sitting here writing this, I’m yummily wrapped up in one of the king’sgrey sweaters that, on any other given Monday, would have traveled in Gia’s backpack to her dad’s house. But for the fact that I just happened to be doing laundry last night instead of on my regularly scheduled Sunday, it wouldn’t have been here to greet me this morning when I decided to make it a “grey day” and stay home to enjoy the peaceful oblivion of my happily solitary existence.
Meanwhile, I popped onto Instagram earlier today only to find that while I was busy “queening” around the castle in one of the best grey highs I’ve had in months, the universe had delivered yet another powerful Death Punch moment. Today marked the release of the official “Brighter Side Of Grey” video:
It’s hard to believe that our last record “F8” came out over 2 years ago in the beginning of 2020, born into the whirlwind of events that dominated our lives and will echo into the rest of our history. Those of you intimately familiar with that album, now know how some of F8’s dystopian lyrics became rather prophetic. Brighter Side of Grey was an important song on that record, but especially personal to Ivan (who’s the only parent in the band). It is a more than fitting commentary to what’s going on in the world that probably needs a good reminder right about now that we are here only for second, a tiny blip on the flow of time… not just as individuals but as an entire species.It took a trillion conditions to be just right for human life to exist in this Universe, yet it takes just one to go terribly wrong and make it all disappear. This song also serves as the perfect bridge to our new album we just finished this week, which generally revolves around similar existential questions. It’s incredible how much we don’t understand about our own existence, yet everyone’s relationship with the concept of death permeates, even orients their entire lives. Can’t wait to share it… enjoy this video and stay tuned for new music and big tour announcements in the very near future!
In case you still haven’t gotten the memo, this isn’t just another song, and grey isn’t just a color. “The Brighter Side Of Grey” is an entire mindset and way of life for me:
Grey is not just a color to me – IT’S EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN! It’s the grace I’ve received that is so undeserved yet given to me anyway by The One who has never loved me with black and white conditions. He “takes the best parts of me and locks them away without the key” and I know that He is never far away. He’s the Light that shines ahead of my journey and dilutes the blackness of the abyss into the most beautiful shades of grey. For more than four decades, I lived a black and white existence with no room for the forlorn grey I knew I needed but didn’t know how to connect with. As I look back at this picture now, I’m filled with the most unbelievable solace you can imagine. It reminds me of just how far I’ve come, that it was always supposed to be this way, and there is always a “Brighter Side Of Grey”. I’m not gonna lie … it is now my final wish that when it’s time for me to move along, this is the last song I hear as they bid me farewell.
I could keep going on about the grey of it all, but honestly, I’m so done writing about it.
Now, I just want to live in it.
I want to sit back, relax, and inhale all my life nuggets of goodness.
Today is a good day in the music world, people. Not just for the factions of knuckleheads like me who’ve been anxiously waiting for this video, but likewise for anyone who sees it, hears the words, and really bites into its sobering and bittersweet message.
This life we’re living really is just a blip, and yes, the lights will go down. So do everything in your power to make sure that when that door closes behind you for the very last time, you leave a light on for your people—not just a darkened void. That’s how you’ll become “nothing, everything, and ALL of it” and leave this place better than you found it.
The Shawshank Redemption was Zack’s favorite movie of all time. To him, it screamed “hope” in every circumstance. And despite the obviously tragic ending, trust me when I tell you that he tried not to literally lose his mind and fall apart the way he did. Ironically, we watched it together for probably the twentieth time the weekend before he died, and he cried the whole way through it. Looking back, I know in my heart that, as he was watching it for the very last time, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to hang on much longer, and that all the “hope” he had tried so hard to find was fast coming to a screeching halt. We’d talked incessantly about what he was feeling in his heart and mind, and towards the end, he just kept saying it felt like he was trapped inside a prison. Five nights later, he was gone.
In here is where it makes the most sense … you need it so you don’t forget … that there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone … that there’s something inside that they can’t get to … they can’t touch … it’s yours … hope.
Having done a little investigating, I was able to speak with one of the first responders at the scene the morning of August 23rd, who was kind enough to answer some of the questions I needed answers to. He said that when they found him, the car was still running, and the opera music playing inside was so loud they could hear it through the windows. I can’t know for certain what Zack was listening to at the end. But knowing him, I have often imagined it was his favorite musical masterpiece of all, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro—the music from his favorite scene in the movie:
Here’s the thing …
There are so many questions I’ll never have answers to, and even more things I’ll never understand. Only God and Zack know what was going through his mind while he was alone in that car during those last dark hours, minutes, and seconds. Even if it’s true that I will see him again in another place and time, and even if I do get to meet God one day, there is still no assurance that ponderings such as these will be part of the conversations to be had—much less that I’ll even know I once pondered them at all. In “the opera scene,” Red said …
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.
Likewise, I have no idea what Zack was really thinking about—or “listening to”—in the very last seconds of his life. I never will. But I’d like to think …
He was thinking about something so beautiful it just couldn’t be expressed in words. That despite how badly his heart was aching, perhaps he could still see a Light at the end of the very dark tunnel his life on Earth had become—and maybe that Light was the last bit of “hope” he was clinging to.
On a beautiful Wednesday afternoon exactly one year ago today, “the music wheel of destiny” stopped my world—and my heart—and sent me straight into the breakdown lane of one of the busiest highways in Dallas so that I could literally “cry my eyes out.” It was as if Zach were singing this beautifully haunting melody to me, my daughter, and my son in a message from “The Brighter Side of Grey“—where, in our hearts, we know he finally is. If you haven’t ever heard this song by Five Finger Death Punch, I cannot urge you enough to listen to it, especially if you are at odds with yourself over the legacy you are going to be leaving behind for your own children and loved ones.
Today I celebrate!
TODAY I’M THANKFUL!
Today I’ll stay grey, just like the sky in Dallas as I write this, because if I’ve learned anything in my “fifty-ONE-derful” years of life, it’s that life really ISN’T a game—it’s a song. And I fully intend to enjoy every single chord until I reach The Brighter Side of every fucked-up, twisted moment of my absurd and beautiful life.
Since COVID crashed our concert last year, Gia still hasn’t read the letter Zach wrote before he left. She knows this song exists, but she isn’t allowed to listen to it until she can first hear Ivan Moody sing it live on stage. That will be the night I finally let her read the words he wrote to her “in case he was gone tomorrow.” PLEASE listen to this song, my friends. It may just change the trajectory of your own legacy and how you look at “grey” forever.
THE FLOWERS! It was one of my favorite things about him. He’d send me flowers even when I wasn’t home, whether I was sitting in a classroom somewhere, or on the rare occasion that I traveled without him, they’d be waiting in my hotel room!
The fresh flowers that are always on my counter these days (and will be until I take my last breath) may no longer be sent by him directly – but trust me when I tell you – they are, indeed, BECAUSE of him! He made damn good and sure that I knew I was priceless, valuable, and WORTHY of all the best and most beautiful things in this world every single day. The never-ending array of fresh flowers in this house for me (and sometimes even Gia) was just one of the ways he accomplished that. So, when I tell you that he made me a queen and QUEEN I shall be all the days of my life, “all the flowers” are just one of the many reasons why!
Jean Claude Van DAMN I am such a lucky woman. He may be physically gone, but who he was and his legacy of love are still very much alive in the fabric of our lives. True love never dies … it just slips into another room. So, with that, why not go and get YOURSELF some flowers today, because you are worthy, too!
I just walked back into Lifetime and reinstated my membership! Didn’t crumble. Didn’t cry. Didn’t fall apart. It just felt like I was home. It’s totally supposed to be this way. This is such a giant leap. And it was Gia’s final decision—not mine.
“Mom, dad wouldn’t want us working out anywhere else. It would wreck him. Besides, queens don’t work out at 24-hour fitness!”
I DID IT! I walked back into the very place the best season of our lives began, held my head high, straightened my crown, and took back another piece of my life that I was certain I’d have to forsake as I slowly begin the widow’s process of crossing over.
I even stood before “the window” and didn’t cry. I just remembered. I remembered all of it! I remembered “every day” we got to have him for the most beautiful season of our lives.
And by the way, that chair you see to the left of the computer is the very one I was sitting in when our first meaningful conversation began. You know? The one that started our entire love story with the shot heard round the world:
Catherine? Can I ask you a question? Do you even OWN a hairbrush?
Jean-Claude Van DAMN! I’m smiling ear to ear as I’m literally hearing him say it! You see, it was his sometimes brutal honesty with me that not only brought me to where I am today, but changed the formerly broken narrative I’d had running in my mind courtesy of virtually all the other “men” who’d come before him and never even tried to lead me:
Don’t trust men … they will only ever lie … up to and including GOD!
I can see it in your eyes, and I’ve felt it in your touch. I know that you’re scared, but you’ve never been this loved. It’s a long shot, baby, I know it’s true, but if anyone can make it, I’m betting on the two of you.
Just keep on moving towards the Sun. I know you’re gonna see that the best is yet to come. Don’t fear it now. You’re going all the way. That Sun is shining on a brand new day. It’s a long way down, and it’s a leap of faith, but you’re never giving up, ’cause we had a once in a lifetime love.
Everybody’s looking for what we found. Some wait their whole life and it never comes around. So don’t hold back now. Just let go of all you’ve ever known. You can put your hand in His. Don’t fear it now. You’re going all the way. That Sun is shining on a brand new day.
I closed my eyes and I saw you standing right there, saying I do and they’re throwing the rice in our hair. Well, your first was born, then his sister came along, and they’ve got your smile. I’ve been looking back on the life we had. I’m still by your side.
So don’t fear it now. You’re going all the way! I’ll never let you go. I’ll be right by your side. Just know I’ve made it Home and thanked God for our “once, in a Lifetime” love!
Some days I rise with all the words I need to say just pouring out of my soul, and often because of a dream. Like today, which would have been our 10th wedding anniversary. It’s been just over a year on this road I never planned to travel, and though I knew it was fast approaching, I also knew it would be a major turning point in my final ascent out of the darkness and into The Light. Let me tell you how my beautifully shattered life works …
To begin, indeed, I dreamt last night, but not before closing my eyes to the ethereal sound of my daughter and her crew’s Halloween shenanigans up above. Lol. Did I ever tell you that one of the very few flaws with Williamson Manor is that Gia’s theatre and game rooms are directly above my bedroom? YUP! They are! As it turns out, though, it’s not a flaw at all! Believe it or not, especially in these last 438 days, those echoes of stomping, laughing, and chaos into the wee hours of so many nights are but a lullaby to me. It’s why he built this home “from the ground up,” and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Knowing she’s here, happy, safe, and whole is one of the realities that comforts me the most.
Damnit, I’ve digressed. Where was I? Oh, my dream! I was front row center at a Five Finger Death Punch show, but instead of a traditional concert venue, it was an intimate gathering where Ivan was singing to me:
The widow’s life ticks out like clockwork … a thousand tears she’s cried a hundred times before. But now that he is gone, she’s ready to move on …
As he was singing, a single tear fell from his eye, but it wasn’t Ivan’s face I was seeing. It was Zack’s face on Ivan’s body holding that legendary “tuning fork mic stand” of his in one hand, while reaching out to me with the other like a muse calling out to her daughter. He was practicing “the great alchemy,” just like he always does, and delivered a message from The Cosmos straight to my heart and soul. It was the most absurdly beautiful insanity imaginable! In the dream, I was thinking to myself, “This HAS to mean something, but what?”
Then, I woke up and I KNEW!
In order to fully appreciate where I’m going with this, you must understand that I am led solely by intuition and feelings. Call me a spiritualist. Call me a “good witch.” Call me a “practical magician.” Call me whatever in actual Heaven or Hell that you want. It’s my truth, and it’s never gonna change:
In everything there is a meaning, in every moment a message, and something means everything, even if it’s nothing!
Am I bat-shit effing crazy? Perhaps I am. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter, and let me tell you why: What if I’m RIGHT? What if it’s true? What if the Cosmos really is speaking to me? What if it really is Zack communicating with us through the fog and the crows and the lights in the bathroom? That, my friends, is the “crazy” blind faith that costs me nothing but gains me everything! Sooner or later, I, too, will cross on over, and either I’m right or I am wrong about everything I believe. Meanwhile, just after waking from that most ethereal dream, this was right beside my bed. It’s nothing, really. Nothing at all. Just one of Gia’s bracelets that either Good Cat or Bad Cat must have found and deposited at the exact spot my foot hit the ground. “C’mon, Cat, it’s just a bracelet.” Ya think? But why did it show up in the “endless” twist of “F8” that way? Hmm?
So, with that …
Ten years ago today, I kissed a frog who turned into a king. Five years ago today, that king turned me into a princess. Today I woke up from a dream on the edge of literal “eternity.” With that, I was reminded of the endless joy he brought to my life that I get to keep until it’s my time to see the brighter side of grey. There will never be a day that I’m not eternally grateful for the true love and immeasurable gifts he left me with, not the least of which is the fire he lit in my soul that will light my way through every darkness. Loving that man changed my life forever, so it’s no wonder that losing him has done the same.
Today is the day!
I think it’s finally time for me to start moving on, whatever that actually means, and I’ve asked God to just keep leading my way. My heart is completely open to anything and everything, but as for now I’ll just keep inhaling every moment one precious breath at a time and holding each one in for as long as possible, for I know full well that every time I exhale, I’ll be making the space for whatever is out there waiting for me. Knowing God the way I do, the chances are high that whatever it is will be extraordinary. In the meantime, win, lose, or draw, this is the beautiful picture of me that I’m always going to love the most and the “me” I’m going to punctuate the world with!
Happy anniversary, Zachariah, my love. I don’t mind you hanging with us as long as you feel it’s necessary, but hey—don’t wait for me here. I’ll be there soon enough!
CROSSING OVER
All perched alone he sits there broken. An eldered man with storm clouds setting in his eyes. He counts the sands of time – remembering days gone by. It seemed like yesterday before it washed away. Hey, don’t wait for me there – just find your own way. Hey, don’t wait for me there – ’cause I’ll be there soon enough. The widow’s life ticks out like clockwork. A thousand tears she’s cried a hundred times before. But now that he is gone, she’s ready to move on. It all just fell away – it seems like yesterday. {Five Finger Death Punch}
No, just kidding. But seriously. Today is my birthday … “Fifty-ONE-Derful” years old! Indeed, I am “FIFTY-ONE-DERFUL”! With that, I want to share something special that happened in my cosmos in the last 24 hours. As I’m writing this, I’ve got “Butterfly Kisses” playing in the background, and yes, I’m in tears …
It’s probably not much of a surprise to anyone that, depending on which moment you’d have asked, I either was or wasn’t looking forward to celebrating myself this year. Although technically this is my second birthday without him, at this time last year I was just 27 days post “YOU KNOW” and still being severely medicated to actual physical numbness. I am actually considering this to be my first true “birthday without him.”
Happy birthday, me! You’re now a WIDOW!
As I’ve powered down this road no one ever wants to walk and risen so far above all these ashes, there came a point this year when I was determined to CELEBRATE “Fifty-ONE-Derful” in an obnoxiously spectacular way! I’d even gone so far as to ASK for someone to throw me a party, which was so unlike me that there really are no words … except to say that if you know me at all, you know that I don’t like to celebrate my own birthday. In my mind, however, I more than deserved an obnoxious celebration, especially given the fact that my big “FIVE-0” last year was anything but golden! Instead of standing before The Lion Of Lucerne during what was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime he had planned and paid for one full year in advance, I spent the vast majority of that day lying in bed alone just staring at the urn on my nightstand.
But you see, if there was just one thing you should know about my husband, it was that both of our birthdays—mine and Gia’s—were all but national holidays in our home. Not a year went by in the ten years we had him “healthy” that he didn’t pour every ounce of his heart and soul—and whatever resources he had—into making sure that “his girls” were celebrated emphatically for all that we meant to his existence. Keep in mind that until he had “us,” no one really celebrated him on his birthday, and that, my friends, is one of the most painful, tragic truths that still haunts me to this day. That “thing” that gave birth to him didn’t even remember the day he was born.
Keep in mind that I am very much aware that under the circumstances, “birthdays” this year must have stunk for everyone … not just me. COVID-19 crashed all of our parties and celebrations. I was still a little bummed, though, if not downright sorry for myself as I was sulking in my room yesterday just staring at his urn:
Then, I closed my eyes and fell asleep praying to God that I could just zap myself back to two years ago yesterday. THEN IT HAPPENED! It was the birthday gift I never saw coming or knew I was gonna need! In the midst of my nap, in the darkened room with my husband’s ashes beside me, the angel I call daughter had quietly found her way to the side of my bed, adjusted my blanket, and then leaned over to gently kiss my forehead.
As I’ve said so many times before, there are so many parts of this journey we are on that no one will ever truly understand. So many delicate conversations that we have yet to have, and maybe we never will. Things she knows. Things I know. Things we both just have to be okay “knowing” may never be spoken about at all. The complications with Zack’s insanity have forced us to nurture some of each other’s wounds quietly, so her checking on me yesterday the way that she did was the most precious “unspoken” nurturing of all. She didn’t—and still doesn’t—know that I was aware of what she did, but it happened nonetheless.
And just like that, my former worry that I’d never be celebrated again hit the floor in the best way possible … kinda like my heart did when she gifted me with exactly what I needed at exactly the perfect time! Perhaps the greatest irony here is that, even as I’m writing this, she, too, is a little disappointed in herself because she wasn’t able to do anything special for my birthday. Gia, I’m not sure when you’ll finally begin reading this “love letter” I’m writing to you and your brother, but when that day comes, please know THAT I KNOW exactly what you did yesterday when you thought I was asleep! You did do something special for me, if not one of the most special things of my last “Fifty-One-Derful” years. I love you, Mona Lisa, and I see you.
…. when it’s 365 days later and your formerly “shattered heart” has healed in ways you have yet to fathom, such that now, as you’re sifting through the “9 years of joy in his eyes,” you are simply and unspeakably THANKFUL!
I’m thankful for the honor of being one of the ONLY two girls he ever gave his heart to, and that we were his first and last of EVERYTHING:
After realizing how I really felt about Gia as my child and realizing that no one in my life ever felt that for me it hit me that you were the first and only person in my life that ever truly loved me, chose me as THE top priority in their life and fought to help me get over myself but also fought to protect me from anything and everything harmful or defamatory including myself. Even though you didn’t do it for me you brought my daughter in to this world and promoted that relationship that I didn’t even know that I wanted and needed so bad until now. You made me a parent and it turned out that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me next to falling in love with you and your daughter. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for fostering my relationship with Gia and being there for me even when I was impossible to live with. I don’t deserve a lot of the things you have done and been for me and I will always owe you for everything.
This has been all but impossible to digest, and nope, I will never turn a corner or look in any direction and not hear the sounds of their laughter, see the traces of their smiles, or feel the bond that they shared in my atmosphere.
I’m here again, a thousand miles away from You. A broken mess – just scattered pieces of who I am. I tried so hard. Thought I could do this on my own. I’ve lost so much along the way. Then I’ll see Your face – I know I’m finally Yours. I find everything I thought I lost before. You call my name – I come to You in pieces so You can make me whole. I’ve come undone, but You make sense of who I am. Like puzzle pieces in Your eye. Then I’ll see Your face – I know I’m finally Yours. I find everything I thought I lost before. You call my name – I come to You in pieces so You can make me whole! I tried so hard! So hard! {Red}
It was a super early morning as we awoke to a 4:30 a.m. alarm for a 5:00 a.m. departure to her 5:30 a.m. practice. While Gia was getting ready, I popped onto Instagram to find the picture above, which literally hit me like a ton of bricks. You see, just before waking, I’d been enjoying a blissfully enchanted slumber, during which my husband had conveyed a message to me in the most surreal of ways.
It was him. I just know it! I could smell his skin, sense his touch, and feel his breath on my face. While I won’t go into detail—because, believe it or not, there are many things I’ll keep safe inside the most private places of my heart—in this fantasy he had been shadowing me as I moved from one house to another.
He was there … but he wasn’t. I could see him … but I couldn’t. Yet, at every turn I’d made that day, his presence was lingering behind me in a haunting but not frightening way. At the end, what had ’til then only been an eclipse of his presence turned into his physical body. There we both stood tightly embraced with our hands locked together when I asked this most profound question:
I know where you are … I believe it in my heart … but I just NEED to hear you say it. Am I right? Are you There now? WILL I SEE YOU AGAIN SOMEDAY?
I didn’t hear his voice, as he never spoke a word, but, indeed, he communicated in the sacred “1-2-3 hand squeeze” we’d shared during our season. His answer to my question was emphatic: “One squeeze for yes,” not “two squeezes for no,” right on cue to my prompt.
As this first year without him has all but flown by, I’ve made absolute peace with his suicide. The heartbreaking pain of his manytragic truths was so far beyond sobering that it still reduces me to tears to sit with. Unless or until you’ve borne the cross of seeing a person dying out loud in the egregious way that he did, you couldn’t possibly understand the magnitude of relief I felt upon the release of his mortal shackles. He had held on for dear life as long as he possibly could until the day he died, but when the end of his darkness finally settled in, Fate stepped in with the blow.
Still, let’s go back to how this morning with Gia even started. We’d backed out of the garage to find ourselves greeted by a bright orange moon on fire and an ethereal setting in the field that abuts our driveway. We were so connected that it was alarming, but also comforting. The intrinsic conversation that soon unfolded tapped directly into our understandings of “all of this,” yet reached far beyond what our simply dimensioned minds could fathom. She knows what I know, and I know what she knows, which is ALL either of us needs to know. It’s so powerful.
Keep in mind that the first song that cued up when the engine started today was “Remember Everything.” That had to have meant something … I just knew it! Suffice to say, though, that neither of us can listen to it now without being reminded of everything we remember about not just our lives, but Zack’s and Christian’s as well. But here’s where it gets even more interesting. After I’d dropped her off and was headed home, that other song I love to hate found its way to my speakers:
The Tragic Truth.
IT DIDN’T MAKE ME CRY THIS TIME! Instead, I just smiled as I rolled on down the road with my gaze fixed hard into the sky from which I heard his voice serenading me with those tragically truthful words:
It’s the demons I’ve created for myself … the Tragic Truth … it’s hard for me to understand myself, so it has to be hard as hell for you.
All I can tell you is that my intersection with the Cosmos this morning was everything! Even as I write this, I’m smiling again, because while on the surface it may appear that the demons that devoured him won, nothing could be farther from the truth. The rare few of us who really knew him and were honored to both love and be loved by him know a “truth” that is much more beautiful than tragic: HE’S HOME NOW! No more sorrow. No more pain. No more tears. No more aching for the “family” who abandoned the “Zack Of Shit.” No more voices screaming inside his head.
My “circadian life” is so much bigger than I will ever know, and my adventure still isn’t over. All it took was one cryptic message from The Cosmos to remind me, yet again, that I’m an incredibly blessed widow. In case I’ve never said this, let me say it now: I truly believe that I’m God’s favorite daughter, even despite the many circumstances in my life that seem to prove otherwise. For this, I am as eternally grateful as I am for the true and immense love I still feel that continually travels the distance from light years away.
As I’ve said many times before, from the first week he married me, there was never a time that there weren’t fresh flowers somewhere in our home for me. Some he sent, and others he picked up, but their method of delivery didn’t really matter, because …
…I JUST LOVE FRESH FLOWERS!
He only had to hear me say it once, and the rest is merely history. As our lives got busier and his career took off, however, there were times that he just couldn’t go get them, so I started making fresh flower arrangements on my own to fill the voids. My little treks to my favorite flower haunts soon became one of the brightest spots of my week, and still are to this day. It always made him happy to come home and find that I’d treated myself.
Suffice it to say, not a week has passed since the day he left, nor will there EVER be, that there haven’t been fresh flowers in this castle he left behind for me. I’ll continue to treat myself like the queen he saw in his eyes who deserves only the best treatment from everyone, including myself!
Zack brought Gia flowers fairly often, as well, and sometimes to ONLY Gia, which I loved, and so did she. Part of my process with her now is to deeply imprint into her psyche that SHE, TOO, IS A QUEEN! It’s not uncommon for us to be at the market and her to run off and come back with flowers she chooses for herself. I’ve made her promise that when it’s time for her to leave this nest she’ll remember that she can buy herself flowers, too, regardless of whether there’s a man in her life.
KINGS & QUEENS:
I once again challenge every one of you to go and get YOURSELF some flowers this week! They don’t have to be expensive. You can make your own arrangement with flowers from the grocery store and wildflowers or even weeds growing on the side of the road, which is par for the course with me. If you do “go and get yourself some flowers,” PLEASE MESSAGE ME A PICTURE OF THEM! It would absolutely make my day to see that I’ve made a ripple in your pond with this thought process!
While I am more than thankful to claim the highest honor of “mother” to two living children—a son and a daughter—and one angel baby in Heaven, I am ever so mindful, as I end this bittersweet day, that not every child got to celebrate with their mother today. As you’ve already read in the admonishment to his “mother THING” one year ago this day, the abandoned and motherless man I was honored to call my king began his painful descent into the darkness she left behind—a darkness that ultimately devoured him alive and ended the most beautiful chapter of my life.
It wasn’t your fault!
You didn’t deserve that!
So, with that, if you are a mother THAT—not “who”—has abandoned and forsaken a child of her own body, know that the unfathomable wound you left them with may never truly disappear. If, on the other hand, you are a child whose “mother THING” abandoned you, please know that, just like the battalion of mothers in this world who understood the magnitude of the job we were given, you are always in my heart, and I pray for you daily.
YOU are a gift to this world!
From the depths of my soul, I’m so sorry that happened to you. But remember this one thing always: Our Father in Heaven DOES NOT make trash! So, “Chin Up! Knuckles Out!”—and don’t let someone else’s abandonment become the measure of your worth. You are loved, needed, and valued here on this Earth.
THIS PICTURE. I sketched it in my early 20s using the literal ashes from both my father’s and His ashtrays. At the time, I had no idea what an impact this or any of my 32 Sketches would have on me down the road. Yet as I look at them now, I can’t help but notice that although I was in a very dark place when they were born, something trapped deep inside me was hopeful.
My disease imprisoned me in dichotomous thinking and held me for ransom in the little boxes inside my mind where I stored all my pain and trauma. Before I put it into remission, I was unable to accept people, situations, emotions, or behaviors as anything other than “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “one way or the other.” My entire life was black and white with no room for the grey! I had a defensive view of both the positive and negative qualities of myself and everyone else, and there was no way for my broken psyche to allow anything in between to exist in one cohesive space.
They’d “wash their hands of me” when I screwed up or failed to follow the rules, with zero validation or consideration of my feelings. My mind would “split” as I desperately attempted to shield myself from the constant fear of being abandoned, betrayed, or eviscerated by anyone who claimed to love me. While I don’t believe these traumas were inflicted intentionally, they were real nonetheless, as was the effect they had on my psyche.
I’d pre-ordered their new album months ago, had been counting the days until its release, and was stoked to finally get to listen to it cover to cover while running errands today.
Then, when “The Brighter Side of Grey” cued up, I had to pull my car into the breakdown lane as the words began cutting me in all the most bittersweet ways. I couldn’t stop the tears and physical heartache, and literally couldn’t breathe. It was one of the most cathartic, fucked up, and beautiful gifts of my life.
Someday, when it’s time for her to read the letter he wrote but never gave her, I’ll let her hear the song. Knowing God the way I do, I believe that when she’s finally able to receive these most alchemical lyrics of both our lives in conjunction with the most impeccable words a secretly dying father could have possibly written to his daughter, they’ll become as significant a part of her healing as they’ve been of mine.
For more than four decades, I lived a black-and-white existence with no room for the grey I knew I needed but didn’t know how to connect with. The grey is where I found all my truths. As I look back at this picture now, I’m filled with the most unbelievable solace imaginable. It reminds me of just how far I’ve come, that it was always supposed to be this way, and that there’s always a brighter side to all of this bittersweet and beautiful grey. It is now my final wish that when it’s time for me to move along, this is the last song I’ll hear as they bid me farewell.
Gia and I watched “The Shack” again last night, which by the way, if you haven’t seen it, I cannot recommend it enough.
It’s the fictional story of an abominable if not unforgivable tragedy that causes a father to sink into a deep depression and question everything about his faith until he receives a mysterious letter that incites his journey to “a shack” that reignites his bludgeoned soul back to The Truth.
When it first hit the box office in March of 2017, Zack, Gia, Christian, and I went to see it together. I had already read the book when I was at The Meadows, and then again on one of my scoots up to Kansas, but when I heard about the movie release, I immediately bought our tickets, because I needed them all to see it.
It was a powerful night for the four of us as a family, and like many others in the theater that night, we all just sat silently in tears until well after the lights came on and the clean-up crew started their sweep. It seemed to hit Christian the hardest, and at one point, the other three of us were huddled around him in his seat just holding him as he was literally crying his eyes out.
Meanwhile, one of the most powerful parts of the movie for me was a song I love called “Stars”, by Skillet. It’s about the blind faith of a true believer who trusts that God is in control of everything. That’s me … hands down … without question, hesitation, or doubt.
Those who know me well know that I’m a gamut of emotions that often mimic a gauntlet. I can be kind and loving, empathetic and caring, and fiercely protective of those who are in my bubble. I can also be a raging, angry, LUNATIC of a bitch with a vicious tongue that will take you to your knees if you’re the one facing the truth in my words. I will and have forgiven anyone“human” 200% of the time, but never shall I forget those who’ve hurt me or mine.
My point in all this being that although I can appear extremely dark at times, and as God Himself is my witness, I live, breathe, and will die by the message of Hope in this song. So, please don’t let my dark side poke holes in the truth of my testimony. At the end of the day, I’m still just a broken person who wants to live a life of use to othersand is trying her best to be as “Light” as possible under any circumstance.
If you are struggling in the darkness with brokenness, depression, or a shaky faith of your own, please listen to the words of this song. God may have His hands full with all the big stuff … BUT … He does know who you are. He does know your name. He does bear your pain. He does cry when you cry. And please don’t forget to let yourself cry as my son did in that theater as often as necessary so that you can release any internalized pain that’s keeping you from taking flight:
By the way, it’s okay to feel sadness and grief for the things that have died inside of you, and it’s certainly okay to cry. Now that I think of it, it’s such a blessing that one of my favorite verses in the Bible also happens to be the shortest: JOHN 11:35: Jesus wept. CRY AS OFTEN AS YOU NEED TO! Get mad! Scream out loud! Do whatever you must to let yourself feel everything that has hurt you so you can finally let it go!
Look at me, people! Shouldn’t I be curled up in a ball right now in the aftermath of what happened 180 days ago? Been there. Done that. I’ve run off and hid in “my shack” way too many times to count, but He comes looking for me EVERY time! He always has and always will, and that, my friends, is The Truth.
In the meantime, I’ll just keep looking to the stars and praying that the King of my heart who was never able to resolve the pain that had been devouring him for the entirety of his life has been given an even better set of wings and THE best Guide of all to lead him to his shack in Heaven.
STARS
You spoke a word and life began. Told oceans where to start and where to end. You set in motion time and space. But still You come, and You call to me by name. But still You come, and You call to me by name. If You can hold the stars in place, You can hold my heart the same. Whenever I fall away. Whenever I start to break. So here I am, lifting up my heart to The One who holds the stars. The deepest depths, the darkest nights. Can’t separate, can’t keep me from Your sight. I get so lost, forget my way. But still, You love and You don’t forget my name. If You can hold the stars in place, You can hold my heart the same. Whenever I fall away. Whenever I start to break. So here I am, lifting up my heart to The One who holds the stars. If You can calm the raging sea, You can calm the storm in me. You’re never too far away. You never show up too late. So here I am, lifting up my heart to The One who holds the stars. Your love has called my name. What do I have to fear? What do I have to fear? Your love has called my name. What do I have to fear? What do I have to fear? {Skillet}
AUGUST 22, 2019: The night that changed everything for me and mine. It was the night my husband took his own life, and yes, I physically “felt it happen.” Suffice it to say that there are still so many parts of that night—and what led up to it—that are very unclear in my mind, as this trauma has obviously affected both me and our daughter in unimaginable and irreversible ways.
That being said, what I do clearly and vividly remember was sitting in a room alone, trying to get ahold of myself and wrap my head around what was happening to my family. Then, just before midnight, I felt it. I had an adrenaline dump, and it felt like someone had punched me in the gut and knocked the wind out of me. I literally couldn’t breathe. The next morning, August 23rd, the police chief of our town came to find me in the hospital, where our daughter was being treated for her own trauma and suicidal thoughts as a result of what he’d done. As he headed toward me with “that look” on his face, I already knew what he was going to say.
“Mrs. Williamson, we did, unfortunately, locate your husband in his car this morning with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. I am so sorry to inform you that he is, in fact, deceased.”
At which point, I fell to the ground with a guttural wail that I’m told could be heard throughout the hospital. This was, in fact, the worst feeling I had ever felt in my life. Thank you for asking, and I apologize if this was a little “heavy.”
Yesterday, I saw a post that really punched me in the face. Yes, that pun was intended. It was a super cool canvas rendition of the fight between Rocky and Ivan Drago, and after having thought about it literally all day and night, this is what I’ve come up with …
Gia and I are huge Rocky fans, as was Zack. Rocky IV is my favorite, because in my mind I have always felt it’s been “me against the Devil” in both the brightest and darkest moments of my life, and he’s the one always saying to me, “I MUST BREAK YOU”! Yet, I refuse to let him take me down!
Ironically, one of my favorite songs, “No Easy Way Out”, is from the Rocky IV soundtrack. The Sunday night before he killed himself, it was playing in the car on our way home from the gym. He was crying as he squeezed my hand three times (“I – Love – You”). Five nights later, he was gone. The mask came off and his fight was over. Meanwhile, I’ve listened to this song on repeat the last 62 days, just thinking, reflecting, remembering, and “wanting to know why”. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Zack’s fighting days are done. He lost. Went down. Tapped out. Still, my fighting days are not done yet, ’cause guess what, people? I’M STILL HERE! Am I bloodied and bruised with black eyes, a fat lip, and some scars that are here for the rest of my lifetime? Absolutely!
I really AM God’s favorite daughter! This “risen to power and grace” divine apostrophe I’ve become is all HIS doing, I just know it. There IS no explanation as to why I, too, haven’t taken the easy way out after all of the years of pain and suffering that tried to snuff me out. God just handed me this heavyweight belt I wear for what reason I will never understand. Zero did I earn it … zero do I deserve it … but speaking of great fighters, Jean-Claude Van DAMN I’m honored to have it! It’s the most valuable thing I possess! It cost HIM everything and me NOTHING, other than my completely blind faith in “the process”. Some don’t understand this, and, in fact, may think it’s CRAZY for me to believe in something I can’t see or touch. I can’t see or touch the wind either, but its effects are very real! So, with that, I am Rocky, the devil is Ivan Drago, the God I serve is the referee, and I … am … WINNING!
This is no joke, but last night Gia and I had an encounter with a real angel …
“Cassiel”
I have always believed in angels, and so has she, but this was just surreal. The scariest part is that when we looked into who this “Cassiel” being was, what we found was beyond astonishing! In the accounts we found, he’s not just any angel, you see, but rather, the archangel known for watching the events of the cosmos unfold with little to no interference. He’s the angel of solitude and tears said to preside over the deaths of kings and the patron angel of “all manner of overlooked people,” or those in weakened states, including orphaned children and the downtrodden. Those accounts also associate Cassiel with the planet Saturn, as they do Zazel, a spirit of Saturn described in that lore as preying on the psychologically weak and mentally ill.
In those accounts, Cassiel’s planetary number just happens to be 8, which, turned on its side, is infinity. This wasn’t only Zack’s favorite number, but he was supposed to be getting an infinity tattoo with my name on one end and Gia’s on the other on August 23rd had he not left us. Eight was also his Life Path Number, and Gia and I have been seeing 8s everywhere. Lest we also forget that he made his decision to die on August 8th … “8/8.” Perhaps we’re both insane, but Gia and I are both at home today feeling a bit ethereal in the best possible way.
