It came again. My anniversary that is. Today would have been 12 years of wedded bliss/torment. But alas, and in case you are brand new here, my husband is dead. Has been for almost 2 years. And I’m doing well, for the most part. Maybe I was driving home yesterday from the airport (a quick 3.5 hours from my house) and maybe I started feeling really sorry for myself, and maybe I cried on and off for the whole ride home. Maybe. But on the regular, I’m pretty good at burying that sadness shit deep down and only letting it out on special occasions, say when you’re supposed to be celebrating 12 years of marriage. Because that’s what well-adjusted, mentally stable adults do. Just ask my therapist. Just kidding, I don’t have a therapist.

Usually, Ash and I always went to dinner at our favorite local restaurant on or around our anniversary. I’d drink way too much red wine, eat way too much rich food, leave him in the restaurant to go puke and/or seek the safety (and air conditioning) of our car and pass out immediately upon returning home. Very sexy, very celebratory, very predictable. Happened Every. Single. Year. Last year was the first celebration without him and I spent my time with some wonderful girlfriends, eating, drinking, golfing and fishing. This year, I’m just returning from a pseudo-vacation/picking my son up from camp in Florida and couldn’t make the ladies fishing adventure work. So I made an executive decision to go back to that restaurant that I haven’t been to since before Ash died. I made a reservation for the boys and me, and tonight we will celebrate what used to be a halfway decent marriage. Ha! Kidding. It was great. Sometimes. You know how marriage goes. If you don’t, hopefully one day you get to find out. Because it is one of the hardest, most fun, insanely crazy in a good way and a bad way things we get to do as adults.

Anywho, the boys and I are going to dinner tonight. Fancy dinner. Just the 3 of us. And I promise not to drink too much red wine and eat too much rich food and leave my 11 year old and 6 year old in the restaurant and make the 11 year old drive home. I’ve gotten so much more mature since the passing of my husband. Kudos to me. Just really crushing this widow/single mom thing. As usual. But we will get dressed up, we will eat delicious food, we will talk about what life was like with Daddy (or Deady as I like to call him now – I’m nothing if not super appropriate at all times) and we will enjoy ourselves. Hopefully. Or we will argue and fight and misbehave and cry. Who knows? But at least we will be doing it together, right?!

I know I talk about this all the time, but see above where I mentioned I don’t have a therapist and remember that word vomiting all over this platform is my therapist, I took another trip where I was large and in charge and super independent and strong. It started with me locking my keys in my car at 4:30 in the morning right before I was supposed to be heading to the airport. I’m a little picky when I fly. I don’t live in an area with a large airport. The closest one is a little over an hour away. But I don’t like that one. There are no direct flights to anywhere but Baltimore and Atlanta and I loathe a layover. So I always opt to drive 3.5 hours away to do my flying because a. I love a road trip whether I’m riding or driving (here lately it’s just me driving because 1. husband dead and b. kids can’t drive yet) and 2. I really hate everything about Norfolk and c. I’d much rather the long part of my trip be in my car rather than stuck on an airplane with a bunch of strangers in pajamas, stuck in a seat designed for people of an approximate height of 4 feet and rude flight attendants. So I drive to Raleigh the night before with my mama, we have dinner, get a little buzzy, laugh our way around the Barnes & Noble because I clearly need no less than 3 books for this vacation/nonvacation we are embarking on (side note – I read one chapter of one book while I was gone – guess I overestimated myself a little there on that purchase – perhaps drinking and book shopping is not something I should partake in moving forward) and lay our heads to rest in a lackluster hotel. We wake up at 3:30 am, load all our shit in the back of my car, including my purse, which has the key in it and shut the back hatch. Now it’s 2021 and my vehicle is brand new. It has many safety features that are meant to prevent one from locking themselves out of their car. If I close the door with they key still in it, it honks its obnoxious little horn at me alerting me to the fact that I have, in fact, forgotten to grab the key. Why we can’t just have regular keys anymore is beyond me but that’s a different subject for a different day. Back to my point, load the shit, close the hatch, car beeps obnoxiously, go to open driver door – door is locked. Push the button to unlock the door – door won’t unlock. Go back to open the hatch again and grab purse – hatch is locked. The mother fucking car that is supposed to never ever ever lock when the key is inside is fucking locked. I’m supposed to be going to the airport to board a plane that will take me to my child who is away at baseball camp and absolutely needs me to come pick him up, else he’ll be homeless in Florida forever. (Yes, I realize there are many solutions to this problem that don’t lead to my 11 year old being motherless and homeless in Florida but my rational brain was not in control of the situation at this time). I stood in stunned silence for a tick, my mom next to me probably cursing me internally up one side and down the other until I remember it’s 2021, big brother is always watching and luckily I had downloaded the stupid app on my phone that controls my car from space or whatever and remembered it had a remote unlock feature. And so all was fine. 5 minutes of panic, probably a few years taken off my life and off we go.

Our trip was lovely. It was delightful to spend some one on one time with my mom. It rained a fair amount our first few days so we didn’t have a lot of adventure. I did make my poor mom ride with my while I explored as much of the gulf coast as I could trying to find where I may end up next. Kidding. Mostly. I love where I live. But I also kind of hate it. That’s when we hit obstacle number 2. I rented a standard sized SUV for our trip. And I don’t know where rental companies get their definition of “standard sized SUV” but it far differs from mine. Damn thing was tiny, I could barely fit our 2 suitcases in the back. It said it was a Jeep Grand Cherokee but I used to drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee and that thing could have fucking fit inside of the Jeep Grand Cherokee that I owned. Is there some rental car manufacturer that makes tiny versions of other cars and puts the same name on them? I don’t understand.

Anyway, it’s day 2 of vacation/nonvacation and we are seeking breakfast. We head out to our mini Jeep, search for “breakfast near me”, find something that sounds edible and attempt to head out. But ol’ mini Jeep has other ideas. Like not starting. But I keep trying and trying and trying before I notice the little message that says something to the effect of “haha Kellie, go fuck yourself, we ain’t going nowhere because the airbag system is all fucked up”. That may not be verbatim but pretty close. So I mini panic again but then get to the business of jumping another fucking hurdle in this life that seems to be nothing but hurdles and speed bumps trying to slow me down and/or take me out. I call the rental car company, get transferred 74 times and end up with non English speaking what’s her face that has no fucking clue how to do her job. Could not answer any of my questions. Perhaps because she couldn’t understand me any better than I could understand her. Don’t worry, I got louder and angrier because we all know how much that helps. In the end it turned out fine. Mini Jeep got towed. We ubered to the local Enterprise (because apparently Enterprise won’t pick you up – false fucking advertising, wouldn’t ya say?), I made friends with the very friendly branch manager who gave me a black Chevy Malibu with 1/4 tank of gas and a very strong urine stench and went along my merry little way. Another problem solved.

The rest of the trip was less dramatic. The Red Tide was upon the Gulf coast so the beach where we were was a lot stinky with a lot of dead fish. The water made me itchy, sneezy and wheezy. So we didn’t spend a lot of time on it. The pool was lovely when it wasn’t raining. I tried to make friends everywhere we went with corny jokes and obnoxious laughter – which is my personality – I just used to only reserve that side of me for those that already know how ridiculous I am. Apparently now everyone is fair game because the more that time goes by, the less I care what other’s think of me. It’s quite liberating. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend you do.

Picking Jack up was emotional and incredible. I mean, not so much for him, he barely missed me (he did, though), but for me, it was everything. We then spent a day/night in Clearwater, which was absolutely breathtaking and came home to my other boy, who had the best week ever with my brother. Seeing him was also very emotional and incredible, especially after my on again off again crying session on the drive home. But nothing was more emotional or more breathtaking than my 2 boys reuniting after 10 days apart. It was everything.

To sum up, I may be a dumb ass bitch but I’m also a bad ass bitch. I never really thought of myself as the strong, independent type. Ash always took the lead and I was happy to stay in the background. So I’m not sure if it was already in my personality or if I’ve just had to adapt. But either way, I’m doing it, doing it and doing it well. Just like LL Cool J, but like, not in a sexy way.