Thanksgiving

My Dearest,

Today I took your son to play his first round of disc golf. Man was he super excited. I told him about my idea to do this a couple of days ago and I took him out to get his own set of discs. He was pretty funny jumping around all excited in the store and at the same time pretty confused as to what I was even talking about. I was a little surprised that the excitement lasted for the next two days but it did and he was up early this morning ready to go.

I had thought it was supposed to rain and get pretty cold today and as I was laying in bed this morning telling him to go back to sleep, I heard the wind whipping through the trees and shaking the house a bit and was convinced it was freezing outside…wind like that could only mean freezing, rainy, dreary weather. However, I was not going to be deterred and after mentally making a list of layers of clothing to put on, I rolled out of bed. We were going to do this. After all, I thought, the whole flying a kite thing on special dates has really been epic fails on each attempt and I have to find something that we can do without an extra pair of hands needed….

After getting dressed and not overly obsessing about the layers until I knew for certain what kind of weather I was dealing with, I opened the closet that contains most of your coats, table top game stuff, and your disc golf bag. Opening the door brought a soft whisper of air that smelled like you. I grabbed one of your jackets to wear as well as the bag. I went through the coat pockets for the thousandth time because, well, apparently, I think that you have left something of importance in your pockets…then I started going through your bag. In the water bottle pocket I found a diaper (hello parent-hood) that had been left there after our last outing playing disc golf, the day before you died. Inside the bag were discs with your name and phone number written in your handwriting as well as the score sheet from our last outing at Champoeg Park.

The good thing about having a 4-year-old in the house is that you are not allowed to stand around long, so, I grabbed the bag and the jacket and headed downstairs to find one excited 4-year-old discs in hand. As he was putting his shoes on I was putting his name on his new discs, “just like my Dad’s”, he said.

I stepped outside to check what degree of cold, damp weather we would be enduring and I was almost knocked over by the 60+ degree wind that blew in my face. I turned around, looked at Lido and said let’s go – thanking you for keeping the warm weather around for this day.

My friend, Shelly joined us as I was not letting her get away with missing this awesome weather and your friend Jason and his son Ro met us there. I was so glad that he came out with us as I know the two of you played many holes of disc golf. After all, there was still one of his discs in your bag (which, by the way, I gave back to him).

Lido was awesome. The kid was having one of the greatest times of his life. He got into the groove and would run, run, run and then fling the frisbee…no matter where he was. Probably a good thing to because we covered a lot more ground in a shorter amount of time than we would have. We had to keep reminding both of the kids to not run in front of someone when they were throwing as we placed bets on who would be in the ER first and for what injury (a very steep hill and running full tilt down it came into play at the 5th hole).

On the 4th hole, Lido was a good five feet from the hole and made a perfect throw and the disc went right in. He had the biggest smile and did a small fist pump and said ‘yes’ followed by some happy giggles.

Ro did awesome as well. Man, he had some great throws. Just amazing and it was so much fun to see them together, with Lido just following him around no matter where his frisbee landed. He would retrieve his frisbee and then run to where Ro was and throw from there.

It was all so care-free.

Lido used his new discs for the most part then, he asked me “can I use my Dad’s”. He didn’t just use one but decided that two at once was best…pretty funny.

It was a great time and it just felt perfect. Seeing Lido’s face light up and that smile – well, it was just really perfect. Something that we can do just the two of us. Something that I shared with you that I can pass down to Lido. It’s the seemingly small things like this, that start to heal the heart.

Thank you for teaching me how to play.

I miss you so very much and I love you.

In this life and the next.

Me

ps. Your son is a great lefty! He started out using his right but I made him switch to his left and he threw a lot better…made me smile.