Anniversaries and Cryin’ Songs

If Angelic Daughter hadn’t reminded me, I would have missed it entirely. August 18 was the 26th anniversary of us moving into our new little old (built in 1948) house. It also, apparently, was the day we designated as the late Sophie cat’s birthday, since we didn’t know when it actually was.

So much has changed since we moved in here, most obviously and notably, Mike’s death, which will have been nine years ago on August 24th.

The anniversary of the day we moved in isn’t really that significant to me, but the day itself was. Angelic Daughter stayed with Mike’s parents most of the day, out in their suburb about an hour’s drive away from our new/old house, to spare her the chaos of the move. When the movers left, the grandparents arrived with Angelic Daughter. Compared to our city townhome, the house felt like it was truly out in the country. We could hear a rooster crowing and there was a horse (long gone now, along with the rooster) in a small field at the end of the street. Mike thought it would be funny to create a tableau of American Gothic: the two of us stood side-by-side with a pitchfork between us, tine side up, as his parents pulled in. Although they weren’t exactly art connoisseurs, it’s hard not to recognize an obvious reference to that iconic painting. His parents cracked up.

I was very worried about how Angelic Daughter would react to this completely new place, and a completely new bedroom. She was just four and a half and not great with transitions from one place, or activity, to another. But she walked right in, checked the place out, and made herself right at home. No problem sleeping in her room, either, although it lacked the skylight she had been used to. She put on her pink tutu and ran around the backyard, barefoot, while Beethoven played on WFMT through the open windows from inside. I turned it up for my little ballerina.

The first three things Mike and I bought for this house were two Persian (or in the case of “my” rug, Pakistani) rugs, a concrete birdbath, and Mike’s enormous riding mower. That thing must have had a 42 inch deck. I don’t think Mike even considered whether it would fit through the gate in the fence between the front and back yards. Fortunately, it did. The first week or so we were here, Mike put Angelic Daughter on the seat of that tractor and pushed it around in the back yard, letting her steer.

American Gothic, the tutu, the Beethoven, and Angelic Daughter sitting on that mower are my most vivid memories of our earliest days in this house.

After the birdbath, the rugs, and the mower came new floors (bye-bye, 1970’s three-shades-of-brown shag carpeting). Then there were two remodeled bathrooms (had to do the upstairs, the pipes were completely blocked with mineral deposits, or was it plaster someone poured down there?) and eventually, a new kitchen and a finished basement, completed just months before Mike died.

Then there was all the redecorating I did after Mike’s passing, all DYI, many false starts, and a lot of “how not to” experiences.

When Angelic Daughter reminded me that as of the 18th, we’d been in this house for 26 years, the breadth of time that has passed, and the accumulation of things that had changed, really hit me.

And now, we’re trying to think of what to do to commemorate or honor Mike on the 24th, the anniversary of his death. It won’t be possible to simply ignore that date. Anyone who has lost someone can tell you that a simple glance at a calendar or your phone on the annual recurrence of the day your loved one died will generate a pang: most painful in the early years, but still weighty as the years go by.

There are 1295 pieces of music on my list of “liked songs” on Spotify, but for some reason that playlist keeps coming back to three songs that bring a tear (or sob, as the case may be). So if you have a significant anniversary coming up, one or both of these songs may prove cathartic for you if you’re in need of some nostalgia, or just a good cry (aren’t we all, sometimes?)

This one makes me remember Angelic Daughter in her tutu, dreadlocks flying (Mike meticulously picked those dreads apart over a year, because he didn’t want to cut her curly hair short), running around the backyard:

And this one just gets me because of the truth of how coming home to a small town can feel — my parents are both long gone, but this song makes me think of the time I came home from college after my first semester of freshman year in southern California, and my Dad had “sent a car” to pick me up from the airport, and it was snowing, and when I came in the house, he cried (one of only two times I ever saw him cry):

And this one just makes me bawl about Mike when I’m feeling very alone:

Wishing you the comfort and catharsis of memories, I remain,

your sentimental, shaky, often sad and a little lost,

Ridiculouswoman