A Daily Photo Blog for 2020

April 6, 2020

Its always nice to have a helper.
This kid loves dirt. Its actually been kind of a battle to get him to realize that these are gardens and not his play dirt piles. He did the peas one by one...carefully placing each one.

April 5, 2020

One of the nice things about being quarantined is being able to get some stuff done outside. These are a few of the gardens we are starting along with Max's construction project. We have some big plans for the end of April so its nice to get this stuff out of the way.

Side story. My garden at the old house we much smaller but something I chose to spend time on. For me its therapy. I can get in there and dig, pick weeds and finally harvest. Its a rare feeling. Laura would kinda make fun of me for doing all this work. She was more of a perfected landscape look where as I like to keep things wild and lets things grow where they want to grow. I'm just the temporary caretaker of this land not the owner. So anywho...the first time I started bringing in all these fresh vegetables she started to understand why I do it. It just tastes better. From then on she never gave me grief for it. she saw the value. for me the value was much more. Peace. I can relax here. I can be part of nature. These will be the start of a grand project to turn this big yard into an edible and beautiful paradise. The bees are going to love us.

April 4, 2020

Today we dug up the gardens, mixed in mulch, raked leaves and sicks, built a big fire and roasted marshmallows. There were no timelines for anything today. I stayed off the internet. This is the first day in a while I have felt relaxed.

You see, being a single parent means always being busy. Before all this happened we were always running. I work full time so basically the weekends consisted of catching up on laundry, cleaning and then getting ready for the next week. You get caught in this never ending loop (maybe why Westworld is my favorite show) that is just so hard to break from. We had a musical on the schedule. Track meets and travel soccer. Max was signed up for Y soccer. Then poof. All done. Stay home. Wait.....

Its going to be hard to go back to all of that. To just flip the switch and be busy again. The longer this goes on the harder it will be. We are staying safe and that is the most import part of all this. don't get the virus and make sure as hell you are not spreading it.

April 3rd, 2020

We have a slight flooding issue but Max seeing that as an opportunity to do some fishing!

April 2, 2020

A few days ago I made Lasagna. It has been my favorite food and this is the first time I have made it. Wasn't too bad either!

April 1, 2020

Have to keep working and one of the nice things about drone work is that its best when there are not people around. This is Meadville the day before their official lock down in Crawford county. Not alot of people except the Dairy Queen drive through.

March 30, 2020

Is not a trip to the gorge unless you treasure hunt for Wintergreen. Its only in one spot that I know of and I won't say where. A pirate never tells.

March 29, 2020

So we went out for a little hike today at the gorge. they finally oped up the parking lot and we have not been out of the house in like 2 weeks. This is what I get when I tell him to smile. What a rookie mistake that was....you never tell a kid to smile.

March 28, 2020

And we have ducks too!! Meet Dewey and Delilah.

March 27, 2020

Meet Woody, he is a red headed woodpecker. I tired teaching Max the laugh but he didn't get it. He says "I don't hear him saying that"

March 25, 2020

A few day after Laura died Max, Papa and I went for a walk in the gorge to clear our heads a bit. I can't even describe all of the things running through my head at this point. But in a rare moment of clarity I looked back and saw these 2 talking like only these 2 do and I got this feeling that everything would be ok. Max had alot of people around him that loved him. That we would all do our best and filling that huge void we were all feeling. Since then we I have been amazed at everything Max is. We joke though that Max seems to be a good mix of Laura's and Papa's personalities.

March 24, 2020

So we put up a bird feeder. This squirrel decided it should be way lower to the ground. He climbed up and bent it down to the ground. He clearly wins this battle.

March 22, 2020

So "the virus" as we call it at our house has forced us to rearrange some things in our house. I don't really anticipate having anyone over for dinner too soon so might as well make our dining room into an office and music room. I'm one of the lucky ones right now that can work from home.

March 21, 2020

This is a Cedar Waxing eating some berries off of one of our trees in the backyard. So one of the cool things about being locked up in the house and bored is you seek things to do. So this morning I came across one of my favorite lenses, the Sigma 600mm mirror lens. Its not the sharpest lens in the world but i sure has some reach.

March 20, 2020

So Covid-19 has put us in lock down. Working from home has a very unique set of challenges but on of the nice things is the view out my back door. This is chippy. We have seen him here since we moved in and he seems to like hanging around our pond.

March 19, 2020

Am I really that bald?

So in an effort to find my creative side I have taken up drone photography. One of the things I have wanted to do since I was a kid was to be an Astronaut or a Pilot so I guess this is a start. I'm licensed to fly commercially as well so this also being used for work as well.

This is the top down view of the east half of the property. One of the first things that I really noticed since I have starting doing all of this is how bald I really am!

March 18, 2020

A Big Step.

For years we have been trying to get Max to go talk to Santa. Every year he gets so excited and then as soon as we get in line...nope. So this year same thing except right before we go I show him one of my favorite photos of his Mom with Santa. I say " See. Mommy and Santa are friends...he can't be scary. Mommy only had nice friends". It worked. He marched right up there and told Santa "Ok. I want Star Wars toys....um all of them". Santa kinda chuckled and said "Ok, I'll see what I can do." It was a huge win. And thanks to a very kinda friend he did get Star Wars toys...very close to all of them.

This was a big step. I think every single parent feels some sense of "I'm not good enough". More so of a widowed parent. This was a huge bump to the confidence at a much needed time.

March 17, 2020

Serenity and Smiles.

So we settled in and made this our home. We have plenty of room outside to do all kinds of gardening and have a ton of trees so lots of leaves. Plenty of time to think and relax. We even have a hot tub which has been my favorite part so far. I never knew I really needed a hot tub until now. We are back to smiles.

March 16, 2020

A New Chapter.

After I started to pull myself out of the fog I realized we needed a new start. We had been talking about moving for years and before we found out about the cancer that was our plan. So I decided to finish what she started. We found a place that was perfect and we moved. It was hard leaving that behind but I knew it was needed. For everyone. We needed to finish this chapter and start a new one.

March 15, 2020

The Fog of War.

That first year...maybe year and a half....was a blur. I was constantly exhausted. My mind was mush. All I could think about was this void and just to survive each day. I saw very little joy in the world. I tried to keep going, tired to keep up the appearance I was fine and doing better. I Even attempted to revive my creative side but it was gone. I was doing awful at work. I isolated us from everyone attempting to kind of circle the wagons. I was tearing myself apart. Caught in a deep hole and was struggling to dig myself out.

Grief is something common to all of us but we all go through it very different. I was not prepared at all for the kind of grief I was going through. I blamed myself. I kept going over what had happened and what I should have done to save her. Survivors guilt is one of the worst parts of all this.Through out the entire cancer fight I was convinced she was going to make it. When she died it broke me into a 1000 pieces and I was struggling to put myself back together and there were clearly at this point pieces missing. I questioned why it was her that died and not me. She was so much better at parenting than me. She could have handled all of this alone. I sat up every night torturing myself and crying myself to sleep. I was broken. The man I was was gone and I was struggling to find who I was going to become. What pieces were left? Would the ones left still fit together?

One night after Max went to bed I just sat there.....quiet....I began to listen. I had a rare moment of quiet. A moment of clarity. It was like she was right there next to me. I heard a whisper "Your not alone".

From that day forward everything started to change. I began to do yoga. I went to therapy. I stopped blaming myself. The sun started to peek through the clouds. The Fog of War was being lifted and I was starting to put the pieces back together.

March 15, 2020

Highs and Lows.
Its hard to sum up the last 2 years in a couple of words but highs and lows comes pretty close. In the beginning the highs were high and the lows were really low. Emotions were in overdrive and the low days....were really low. The worst I have experienced in my life. The one bright spot....the kids. They kept me from going over the edge. The gave me a reason to keep going. To keep fighting.

March 14, 2020

Letting go.
She still felt here. Her clothes were still here....I could smell her every time I walked in the room. It was crushing. It was almost 5 months before I could even think about what to do with all of her stuff. I was beginning to realize what was happening to me as well. Nothing I could do would make this any easier. It was like each hill I would climb would just get bigger. I was very much struggling to fill the void she left behind. Packing up her stuff just made it harder....the void got bigger.

March 13, 2020

All Alone.
This photo was taken about 4 months after she died. The shock was wearing off and we were beginning to realize that Abby was going to have to go live with her Dad. That was the knock out punch for us. We would go out occasionally and I was desperately trying to recover my eye for photography as the fog of grief was setting in. We were all starting to feel alone. This photo captured it perfectly.

March 12, 2020

This was taken during The Great Blizzard of Winter 2017. During a 36 hour time frame we got over 3 feet of snow. Everything ground to a stop and we were big time snowed in. The funny back story to all of this was bout 4 months before I gave away my snow blower having Laura promised me she would get me a new one once winter started. Obviously that didn't happen so we had to shovel our way out of this one. At this point I was really in tune with looking for signs of her....where she was...if she was ok. When I was out there shoveling with Max I could hear her laughing as he was out there doing his best to help while most of the snow was way over his head.

March 11th, 2020

Its been 854 days since I took this photo. It would be one of the last ones I took of Max and Laura together. Its been 839 days since she left this earth to start her next adventure after fighting cancer for over 2 years. This would be the start of our own adventure of trying to fill the enormous void left by her passing an having to grapple with the realities of being a single parent while dealing with near crippling grief.

Over the next month I'll try to recount the last 839 days with some stories and lessons I have learned along the way.

Hopefully someone will read this and it will help them.

839 days ago I became a member of a club no one ever wants to join. A widow.