With liberty and justice for all

Having driven all the way to Philadelphia on Friday to see the kickoff show for Temple of the Dog's first ever tour, I thought I should see whether there was anything else interesting that I could spend a couple hours doing before setting out on my return trip the following day. Looking at a map, I noticed Valley Forge National Historical Park was conveniently located, and especially in light of the good weather forecast, decided to put a visit there on my agenda. It turned out that the visit was a really great and powerful experience that far exceeded any expectations I might have had.

I first drove to the visitor center and picked up some maps of the park and its numerous walking trails. I decided that I definitely wanted to go visit George Washington's headquarters from the Continental Army's famous encampment at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War. Looking at a map, I formed out a rough plan in my mind that should fill the two or so hours I had - drive over to the Washington Memorial Chapel (which I knew nothing about but thought sounded interesting), park there, check out the chapel, then head out on one of the trails that would take me to Washington's headquarters, and then continue on some other trails to eventually loop back to my car.

I really had no idea what was in store for me. When I got out of my car by the chapel, my jaw dropped just looking out at the scene I found - absolutely brilliant fall foliage lit up by the sun against a cloudless sky. Both the time of year and the day were simply ideal for my visit. I spent a few minutes just soaking up the sun and admiring the scenery (and taking pictures, of course).

I then entered the chapel, first coming into a side chamber in which I was met with a very interesting and remarkably timely sight.

The Justice Bell (I learned that day, never having heard of it before) was commissioned by Katherine Wentworth Ruschenberger for the women's suffrage movement in 1915. It's a replica of the Liberty Bell (minus the famous crack) with the addition of the words "Establish Justice" near the top of the bell. The bell was taken on road tours in support of women's suffrage between 1915 and 1920. The clapper of the bell was chained up so that it could not ring until women finally gained the right to vote.

How fitting, I thought, that here I was 100 years later viewing the Justice Bell as this country is about to possibly elect its first ever woman president, another huge milestone in the struggle those brave women undertook!

And this led me to a train of thoughts that continued to fill my head for the rest of my visit to Valley Forge.

I wouldn't call myself a very patriotic person. I'm often pretty down on the good old U.S. of A. But this country, for all its many imperfections, does have a lot of good to say about it. It has been an inspiration to people all over the world for a long time now, and there are some good reasons for that.

Those men, camped out in the harsh winter at Valley Forge almost 240 years ago, they were fighting for an idea. The idea that all men are created equal, and endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, at the time "all men" really meant "white males," but that was still a novel thing. We've come a long way since then. Today we'd like to think that "all men" means "all people," and while we still aren't actually there, we're a lot closer than we were in the past. It can be tempting to view historical progress as inevitable, to think that society just naturally improves as the years go by, but that's really not the case. A lot of people, from those Revolutionary War soldiers to those suffragettes and many others before, between, and after, have put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into getting us where we are today.

And where we are today is at a crossroads. More likely than not, we'll take another step in that great march of progress and finally elect a woman to the presidency. But on the other side, there are a lot of people who seem to be willing to risk blowing the whole thing up and electing the most dangerous and least qualified candidate in history.

Visiting the headquarters of General George Washington was another unexpectedly moving experience. I was awed by the knowledge that I was standing in the very same house in which the father of our country lived while leading his army those many years ago.

The previous night at the Temple of the Dog show, I had pondered what it would have been like on November 4, 2006, my first date with Cara, if I could have been given a vision of my life ten years in the future.

While in that house at Valley Forge, similar thoughts rose to mind. How would George Washington react if he could somehow have been told, "In the year 2016, the United States of America will have been the most powerful nation on Earth for many decades. The president will be a black man. There will be an election for the next president. One of the candidates will be a woman. The other candidate will be a fascist reality TV show host who likes to harass people on Twitter."

Of course, it would take a while to explain to someone from the 18th century what each part of the phrase "fascist reality TV show host who likes to harass people on Twitter" means. But I'm sure General Washington would have been quite astonished to learn of this turn of events.

This election season has been distressing to me. I like to think that most people are generally decent people at heart. The fact that so many people are supporting someone who is so outwardly racist and misogynist has definitely made me lose at least a little of my faith in humanity. When I drive through somewhere with a high concentration of Trump signs, it honestly makes me feel physically uncomfortable. And that's me, a straight white male, someone who is in about the least direct danger from Trump and his followers. I shudder to think of what it must be like for people who are more directly affected - for Muslims, racial minorities, members of the LGBT community, women - most especially, women who have been sexually assaulted. And whether you are aware of it or not, I can almost guarantee that for anyone reading this, you do know some women who have been sexually assaulted. Trump was caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault, then a bunch of women came out and corroborated his story by saying yeah, he sexually assaulted me just like how he described, and some of those women had their stories corroborated by still other people! So there's no real doubt that Trump has a history of sexually assaulting women! How can anyone just shrug that off and still support him? What kind of example would such a president set for all the potential future Brock Turners of the world? And for the last week the biggest story in the news has been, Hillary's emails? Seriously? Trump has literally done a hundred different things much worse than whatever Hillary did with her emails. Things that would be shattering to any normal campaign for president. Remember Mitt Romney's comments about 47% of Americans being moochers? Trump has had so many stories about him that are easily worse than that, that it seems like we've gotten so desensitized to Trump's horribleness, so none of the stories get the attention they really deserve. He still hasn't released his tax returns, which alone should disqualify him from the presidency, and that story has seemingly been forgotten!

And if you're one of the people who thinks Hillary Clinton is just as bad as Trump? Wake up to the fact that Hillary has been the victim both of a twenty-five year Republican smear campaign and of a whole host of sexist double standards that still plague our society. She has dedicated her life to public service and to improving the lives of children and families, and while yes, she is a flawed candidate, there are no flawless candidates, and there's nothing so horrible about Hillary that couldn't also be said about most people who have been in politics for that long.

Unlike her opponent.

I needed to get that off my chest. Rant over. Please vote (if you haven't already) for Hillary Clinton tomorrow.

Both the natural beauty and the history of the place, the latter especially in conjunction with the timing of my visit, made Valley Forge a memorable stop on my trip. I'd highly recommend it if you're in the Philadelphia area!

Before returning to Cleveland, I had one more stop on my trip. Tegan and Sara, another band I like, had a show in Pittsburgh on Saturday, and I decided that I might as well go because Pittsburgh is directly on the way from Philadelphia to Cleveland. Driving to Philadelphia, seeing Temple of the Dog, going to Valley Forge, driving to Pittsburgh, seeing Tegan and Sara, and driving back to Cleveland all in two days? As was stated on a pair of Cara's socks, "Carpe the fuck out of this diem." That's how I'm living my life.

I wish I knew where those socks were, by the way, because I'd wear them. I swear, though, Cara had some unnatural capacity for losing socks. When I dressed as her for the Halloween Critical Mass bike ride, wearing her pink tutu and her high school marching band letter jacket, I also looked through her socks, and every single sock I found that I liked was literally that - a single sock, missing its partner. (This was something I also often noticed when she was still alive and I did laundry.) I ended up going with a mismatched pair.

The show in Pittsburgh also brought memories of Cara - my previous visit to this particular venue (Stage AE) was to see Belle and Sebastian with Cara in the summer of 2013. Plus, Torres, who opened for Tegan and Sara, also opened for Okkervil River the last time Cara saw them with me.

The show was a lot of fun. I laughed to myself at the realization that at a concert with a mostly female audience, I felt even taller than I normally do! And while the memories stirred by seeing Temple of the Dog on Friday and by going to Stage AE on Saturday were predictable, seeing Tegan and Sara also brought up a memory of Cara that was completely unexpected - always a nice surprise! For the almost nine months (from September 2008 until the start of June 2009) when she lived in Cleveland but we did not yet live together, I would often go over to her apartment at night. Although it was only about an eight minute walk for me to go from my place in University Circle to hers in Little Italy, I would often listen to music on my iPod during the walk, and pick out songs or little playlists that would last about 8-9 minutes. One such playlist that I used at least once, probably several times, was my three favorite songs from Tegan and Sara's album The Con: "The Con," "Nineteen," and "Call It Off." During the show on Saturday there was a segment featuring several songs in a row from that album, most of them performed acoustically, and it included all three of those songs, and that memory of walking over to Cara's place in the dark just came rushing back to me.

Also from The Con was the song "I Was Married." This too made me think of the upcoming election (a topic that was also directly addressed during Tegan and Sara's stage banter, I might add). The song is about gay marriage. Ten years ago, when they made the album, that was still a hot topic and was nowhere near receiving nationwide acceptance. (See, progress can be made!) Lyrics include:

Now we look up in 
(Tell me who, tell me who)
Into the eyes of bullies 
Breaking backs
They seem so very tough 
(It’s a lie, it’s a lie)
They seem so very scared of us
I look into the mirror 
(Look into)
For evil that just does not exist
I don’t see what they see 
(Tell them that, tell them that)

And this made me think of all the people - immigrants, Muslims, transgender people, women exercising their right to choose, etc. - who are in danger from a potential Trump presidency.  People who far too many of Trump's supporters look at and see something to fear. Something evil.

Evil that just does not exist.

Because whatever Trump would like us to believe, we are stronger together.

So again, I implore you to make the right choice tomorrow.

November 4

I went to Philadelphia on Friday to see a very special concert by Temple of the Dog. The trip was a moving experience - for multiple reasons. The concert, that was something I expected to move me, and boy did it live up to those expectations. My visit the next day to Valley Forge National Historical Park? That took me by surprise.

But first, Temple of the Dog.

You might not recognize the name, but there's a good chance you've at least heard their hit song "Hunger Strike." In any case, some background is in order. Andrew Wood, lead singer of the band Mother Love Bone, died of a heroin overdose on March 19, 1990. Wood had been the roommate of Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden. Inspired by his good friend's death, Cornell started writing songs, then joined up with Wood's Mother Love Bone bandmates Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, as well as guitarist Mike McCready (who had recently started collaborating with Ament and Gossard) and Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron and the project turned into a full-fledged album - Temple of the Dog. A little-known at the time vocalist named Eddie Vedder also came in to share lead vocals with Cornell on "Hunger Strike."

Soon, Vedder, Ament, Gossard, and McCready would become famous as four of the five members of Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden's popularity would also soar as the Seattle grunge scene took the early '90s music world by storm. And thus Temple of the Dog, a band that would otherwise have been mostly forgotten, started to get a lot of airplay.

I've been a big Pearl Jam fan for most of my life, and a fan of Soundgarden as well. When I got the Temple of the Dog album, I fell in love instantly. It's been one of my all-time favorite albums ever since. I never expected to see a live Temple of the Dog show - Temple had been a one-off project; they never even toured to support the album, playing just a few shows. So I was simultaneously shocked and exhilarated when it was announced earlier this year that, to mark the album's 25th anniversary, the first ever Temple of the Dog tour would be taking place.

I was even more shocked when I saw the date of the very first show on the tour: November 4, 2016.

You see, November 4, 2016 would be the 10-year anniversary of my dating Cara.

These things keep happening. Oddly significant timing of significant concerts. Cara and I planned our wedding on June 12, 2011 in Columbus, and then Okkervil River announced a tour with a show in Columbus on June 11, the night before the wedding (we went to the show, of course). Bowerbirds, the band whose song "Northern Lights" was the first dance song at our wedding, played a show in Cleveland on June 12, 2012 - and so we got to dance to a live performance of our first dance song on our first wedding anniversary. The last concert I ever went to while Cara was still alive (and although she had little more than a week to live, I had absolutely no idea of this at the time) was by Sufjan Stevens, and as I had so often done in the past when I was at shows without her, I called her so she could listen to a song she liked - and it was the last song of the concert - and that song was "Chicago," the recessional music at our wedding. The first time Cara's birthday, September 22, came around after her death, Godspeed You! Black Emperor - the band whose 2011 show in Chicago was easily one of the most powerful and memorable shows we ever attended together - had a show in Cleveland.

On November 4, 2006, Cara drove up from Columbus to Cleveland, the first of many such drives she'd make. I remember feeling simultaneously very excited and very nervous. There had been a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach intensifying since at least the day before. Having become amazingly close friends with Cara over the past seven-and-a-half months, and having suspected for a while that she had a crush on me, I'd finally come around to deciding that yes, I did want to try being more than friends with her. Having been an exceptionally shy person my whole life, I'd never told a girl something like this before. Hence the combination of excitement and nervousness. It was a sunny day, a bit chilly but not too cold, nice weather for a walk. Going for walks was something we'd done before, so it was natural that we'd go for a walk that afternoon after she arrived. We headed out from my apartment on East 115th Street near Case's North Residential Village, down Hessler Road and through the campus to the lagoon by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Early in the walk, Cara remarked that her hands were cold. I don't remember how I reacted. We walked around the lagoon, enjoying a nice conversation as we always did together. We made at least three loops of the lagoon. I was kind of stalling for time, to be honest. Trying to muster up the nerve to say something about the feelings I had developed for Cara. I was almost completely certain those feelings were mutual - but what if I was wrong? I'd never done anything like this before!

By the lagoon, Cara took this picture of me. (I borrowed her scarf for the picture.) I don't have any pictures of her from that day. Back then, she didn't like having her picture taken.

Another snippet of conversation that I recall from by the lagoon: Cara said something about how all the guys who liked her were weird or creepy. "All the guys?" I said, trying to hint at but not actually saying "what about me?"

After several times around the lagoon and me still not overcoming my fears, we headed back in the direction of my apartment, but did not go directly there; instead, I suggested we go see the new dorms and stadium. While walking up Bellflower I asked Cara if her hands were still cold. She said yes. We reached the stadium and paused "beneath a great brick arch" (as Cara put it in the storybook she made me for Valentine's Day three months later). This was the view from where we stood (well, almost; the building in the background between the scoreboard and bleachers wasn't there at the time):

Standing there next to each other, I said to Cara (paraphrasing of course; this was ten years ago), "Well, I was going to say if your hands are cold, maybe it would help if we held hands?"

(Aaaah! So corny! So awkward! And yet, so right for that moment and for our friendship/romance! The next day on AIM chat after Cara had returned home, I said, "The way you reacted when I asked if we should hold hands was so adorable" and Cara replied, "Teehee. I don't even remember what I said. Everything went fuzzy then.")

So we did hold hands as we walked around the stadium and back to my apartment. I recall we both had a fresh spring in our steps for that last portion of the walk. It was really a magical feeling. And for the whole rest of her visit that day, we were both finally able to open up about so many things we had both been keeping secret.

Upon returning to my apartment, if my memory serves me correctly, we sat together at my kitchen table and played a game of Scrabble (we had occasionally been playing online Scrabble with each other so it seemed like a natural thing to do).

Actually, my memory is rather hazy on that. I do remember playing Scrabble, but had thought it was before the walk. What I don't have to rely on my memory for, though, is what music we listened to that day and when we listened to it. That's thanks to the listening history in my last.fm profile.

You might be wondering what this all has to do with Temple of the Dog (or maybe you've forgotten that this post started out as being about the grunge supergroup).

The first album we listened to that day? Temple of the Dog.

That's why it was so astonishing to see that the first show of the band's first-ever tour was scheduled for November 4, 2016.

From about 4:40 pm to 6:15 pm on 11/4/06, we listened to the Temple album and then the first nine tracks of Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy. I think we must have played Scrabble during that time because the timing makes more sense that way. Then there was a two-and-a-half hour gap, during which we went out to dinner at Aladdin's. Every year from then on, we again went to Aladdin's to celebrate our anniversary, usually on November 4 itself but with some exceptions (such as in 2008 when November 4 was Election Day and we were Obama volunteers, and in 2011 when my aunts Mary Beth and Lynn had their wedding that weekend). That night, we sat across from each other at a table in the upper level of the restaurant, conversing in a way that was simultaneously very familiar and very new, each of us adjusting to the idea that we were now, finally, on an actual date with each other. I ordered a bowl of chili and a pita wrap. Cara got the Garden Pocket ("Garden Pocket? Garden Pocket!!!" we no doubt joked with each other), which she some time (months or maybe even years) later confessed she didn't actually like very much but she wanted to have something light because she was afraid I would think badly of her if she ate too much. I remember at one point her telling me a story about being in high school and she and a friend would go on dates with guys and order salad and just pick at it, then go home and order pizza together. Because they thought that was how girls were supposed to act on dates. A lot more could be written about that, but it's not the point of this post. Fortunately, on all our subsequent visits to Aladdin's Cara got things that she enjoyed a lot more!

When we returned to my apartment we listened to a single (22 minute long) track, "Storm," by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The band opened with the first section of this track at both the Chicago show we attended together and the Cleveland show on September 22, 2015. Both times I was brought nearly to tears by the beauty of the music. Perhaps I subconsciously recalled listening to it on that long-ago November night and that had a little something to do with my reaction. After this there was another long gap in the music listening, during which we watched Return of the Jedi, which I suggested because Cara had told me that she had seen only the first two movies of the original Star Wars trilogy (whereas I was a huge Star Wars fan). I did not have a sofa in my tiny apartment. We laid next to each other on the floor, on our stomachs with our heads facing the TV - which also sat on the floor; my place was quite sparsely furnished - to watch the movie. I'm not sure how into the movie Cara was, really, but we were both very happy to be with each other.

After that came the last album we listened to, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky. During this time we were sitting together on the floor, spilling our guts out to each other. And then the last song of the album, "Your Hand in Mine," became the soundtrack to our first kiss at about one in the morning.

I didn't have a bed in my apartment either, just a single mattress on the floor. I feel stupid to this day for not offering the mattress to her and instead having her sleep next to it in my sleeping bag, but fortunately she didn't hold that against me! During future visits we would take turns sleeping on the mattress and floor - Cara's apartment, by contrast, had a king-size bed so there was no such issue there. The two of us did, however, both experience a great deal of difficulty falling asleep while we were in each other's presence, bed or no bed. We were afraid that this would be an issue that would never go away! Of course, it eventually did (I really don't remember how long that took).

If you've been keeping track while reading this and my other recent blog posts, you might have noticed that, of the four artists whose music we listened to on our first date, three (Temple of the Dog, Okkervil River, and Explosions in the Sky) are bands I've seen live in just the last two months and the fourth (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) I saw live on Cara's birthday last year!

Going to that Temple of the Dog show in Philadelphia on Friday, it struck me, how would I have reacted if I could somehow have been told, sitting in my apartment with Cara on November 4, 2006 and listening to that great album, that in exactly ten years I'd be going to the first show of the band's first ever tour? I'm sure I'd be thrilled and amazed, and then I'd probably wonder, "Will Cara be there?"

"No," would be the answer.

"Oh, what happens with her?"

"She moves to Cleveland in 2008 and the two of you get married in 2011." And that wouldn't really surprise me. This, on the other hand: "Then she dies of lung cancer in 2015."

Life really does have a way of taking the oddest turns, in ways both wonderful and horrifying.

While waiting for the show at the Tower Theater on Friday night, I'm sure I was far from alone in thinking that it was hard to believe that this was really happening. When the band took the stage, the roar from the crowd in the sold out theater was like nothing I'd ever heard at the beginning of a concert. "Welcome to the first, ever, full length Temple of the Dog show," Chris Cornell said to the audience, sparking another roar just as loud. I mean, wow. How often do you get an opportunity to experience something like that?

The band opened with album opener "Say Hello 2 Heaven," and as I've experienced many times over the last year and a half, a particular few lines of a song reached out and grabbed me right in the heart. Those lyrics on this occasion?

I, I never wanted

To write these words down for you

With the pages of phrases

Of things we'll never do

The show was everything I'd ever hoped a Temple of the Dog show might be. Well, almost everything. Eddie Vedder (who, on the original album, was more a guest vocalist than an actual band member) was not present. But this hardly detracted from the highly emotional evening. On "Hunger Strike," Cornell had the audience sing Vedder's part, and it was beautiful. By the end of their two hour, ten minute performance, the band had played not only all ten songs from their album, but also the fantastic Chris Cornell song "Seasons" from the Singles movie soundtrack, several Mother Love Bone songs, and a number of other covers of artists ranging from Black Sabbath to The Cure. It was a night I will absolutely never forget.

(Whether I would have been able to talk Cara into going with me is something I'll just have to go on wondering about. She liked Temple of the Dog a lot but not nearly to the level I do. She'd certainly have been interested in the show and in taking a trip together but she'd also certainly have been apprehensive about the price. The show sold out instantly and I ended up dropping $250 after fees on StubHub for a very good seat in the 12th row of the theater. I wrote earlier this year that a Florence + the Machine show was the most expensive concert ticket I'd ever purchased but was well worth the price - this show was far more expensive, and again, was worth every penny.)

I remember that before we got married, I told Cara that I thought November 4 would always be very significant to me, perhaps even more significant than our wedding anniversary. After we got married, I decided that November 4 and June 12 were about equal in significance. But as more time has passed since Cara's death? I'm once more leaning toward November 4 being on top. It was so much more than a typical first date. It was two people who had already formed an amazing connection with each other, at long last really opening up to each other and taking that connection to a whole new wonderful level.

And what a way to commemorate the tenth anniversary of that occasion.

I had originally intended for this post to cover my whole trip to Philadelphia, but I guess once I get going with a story about Cara and me, it's hard for me to stop! So my visit to Valley Forge will have to wait for my next post, which will be coming soon.

It'll never be the way it was before

Sunday night capped off a busy little stretch of ten days in which I went to four concerts in four different cities. Each of the four shows carried some special significance to me, so I'll write a bit about each one before reviewing the last and most special of the four: a very memorable Okkervil River concert that was very different from any I'd seen before.

On Friday, October 7 I got to see Madi Diaz down in Newark, Ohio at a new venue called Thirty One West. I've been a big fan of Madi's for almost five years but had never gotten a chance to see her live - in fact on my list of "favorite artists I haven't seen live" she'd have been very close to the top - so I was thrilled to finally attend one of her shows, and she did not disappoint. I was very surprised when I had seen that the L.A.-based singer-songwriter had booked a show in Newark of all places. It turns out she is friends with the guy who runs the venue and he had asked her to play a show for the opening week. Madi can flat out sing and has a real knack for crafting wonderful songs that just have a way of really sticking with you. In addition to a number of her own songs, a fantastic cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" was another highlight of the set. Before playing it she spoke of how she had suggested the song to her band and they had thought she was crazy but she decided to do it anyway. It's indeed a surprising choice but it really worked. After the show I told Madi of how I had been a fan for so long and never gotten to see her before. "Aww! Let me give you a hug," was her genuinely appreciative response.

The following night I was back home in Cleveland and (after dropping off at home the stray kitten I encountered that afternoon in Columbus and decided to adopt!) went to see Kishi Bashi at the Beachland Ballroom.

This was a show that I felt quite emotional about attending, because I had previously tried to get Cara to go see him with me, thinking she'd really enjoy his music, and she had not gone. But then she had later listened to him more and told me that she did want to see him the next time he came to town. And here was that next time. Kishi Bashi put on a great show as always.

Tuesday night brought a relatively short-distance out of town concert excursion as I headed down to Musica in Akron to see the Get Up Kids. Before the show I also enjoyed a great meal at my and Cara's favorite Mexican restaurant, Ranchero's Taqueria (and as a bonus, Tuesday is $3.99 margarita night!). So the significance of this show? The Get Up Kids are a band I'm really just a casual fan of and I don't think Cara listened to them; they've been around for over twenty years now but I had previously seen them just once - and it just so happened that that one previous show took place on March 24, 2015. I'm sure some of you will recognize the significance of that date. When I was at that show at the Grog Shop, having a great time with a really energetic crowd on the band's twentieth anniversary tour, I had absolutely no idea that exactly one month later would be the day my wife died. So it's a fond memory I have, going out to a fun show, and coming home to my beloved Cara, who asked me how the show was when I joined her in bed, and I told her about it. It's something that happened many times (for although Cara did enjoy going to numerous concerts with me, I attended far more than her). That was one of the last such times, and it was on my mind as I enjoyed another fun Get Up Kids show at Musica.

The fourth and most anticipated show in my busy week and a half came at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, Pennsylvania, a small Pittsburgh suburb. It was my second visit to Mr. Smalls, both coming within the last three months, as I had previously attended an amazing Daughter show there in July. This time around I headed out to Pittsburgh to see my very favorite band in the world, Okkervil River. This would be my ninth time seeing them live.

I recall the first time I ever went to the Beachland Ballroom, to see Sufjan Stevens, and how when one of my friends said she had seen him four times I was amazed, and said, "Wow, you must really like him!" Having been to very few concerts myself, I didn't appreciate then how each concert was its own unique experience, and how you can see an artist you really love many, many times over the years without ever getting tired of their performances. I know much better now.

As it so happened, the very first time I (as well as Cara) saw Okkervil River was almost exactly ten years before Sunday night's show (ten years and five days, to be precise). I've blogged extensively about the significance of Okkervil River to my and Cara's relationship (here and here). I won't cover all that ground again now, but it is worth mentioning that it was after that first Okkervil River show that I finally decided (having already strongly suspected she had a crush on me) that yes, I would like to try being "more than friends" with Cara - and the next time we saw each other in person was when we became a couple.

One of the (many) great things about Okkervil River is that each new album is truly its own distinct entity, not at all a rehash of earlier material, and not only that, but Will Sheff and bandmates have managed to continue to put out great album after great album while always changing things up. This year's Away is the eighth Okkervil LP, and there's not a one of the eight that I don't love. Away is also arguably the biggest departure yet from previous Okkervil albums. It's a sprawling (58 minutes long with only nine tracks), lushly orchestrated work with a contemplative feel to it, basically lacking in the up tempo, high energy songs that would usually make up at least a few tracks on an Okkervil River album. Frontman and sole songwriter Will Sheff has said in interviews that when he wrote the album he wasn't sure whether it was going to be a solo album or an Okkervil River album. The title of the opening track "Okkervil River R.I.P." strongly suggests that this is something of a turning point in his musical career.

In light of this, I was very curious about how this show on the Away tour would compare to all my previous Okkervil River concert experiences.

It turned out to be far more different than I ever would have guessed. In more ways than one.

The band started off their set with gorgeous renditions of the first two tracks on Away. The third song was one I didn't recognize from the intro music, but when Will's vocals came in I realized it was a reworked version of "Plus Ones" from 2007's The Stage Names. I've seen bands do live versions of songs that are very different from the album versions in the past. It's always cool to see an artist reinterpret their past work in this way. Sunday night at Mr. Smalls was something entirely new, though. As the band continued through their setlist I came to realize that every single non-Away song in the main set was a very heavily reworked version of the original song. Somewhat curiously (but I'm not complaining because it's a great album) these included four Stage Names tracks - "Plus Ones," "A Girl in Port," "Unless It's Kicks," and "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe" - and just two other tracks, "For Real" from breakout 2005 album Black Sheep Boy and "Down Down the Deep River" from 2013's The Silver Gymnasium. I love all six of those songs. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I'd rate any of the reinterpretations as better than, or even as good as, the original versions. But all of those songs were just sublime in their original versions and it would be very hard to improve on them. Having listened to those original versions over and over, and seen them all performed live in the past, it was a very cool thing to experience these radically different versions in an intimate live setting. The new versions of "Our Life..." and "For Real" in particular were amazing.

As  the concert went on, this continuing stream of strangely familiar yet different music began to take on a sort of symbolism in my mind. All that music is so strongly tied to my memories of the last ten years of my life and my time with Cara. Those memories are very important to keep and hold on to. Yet as time goes by, memories inevitably become distorted, imperfect recreations of the events that happened in our past. We want to keep the happy times in the past with us just the same as they were when they originally happened. But that's impossible. And so the distorted yet still wonderful versions of those familiar songs began to represent for me the distorted yet still wonderful versions in my mind of the familiar past events of my life. (Events that include, of course, the previous times I saw those songs performed live.)

Two of the songs in particular evoked poignant memories. "A Girl in Port" reminded me of how, after Cara had gotten her Mediport surgically installed in June 2014, she wrote a blog post titled A Port in Girl. Obviously that was a reference to the Okkervil River song title, but she didn't mention this fact in her post, so there were undoubtedly very few (if any) people besides her and me who got the reference. But that wasn't important to Cara. God, I love her.

The second of the two songs was "Down Down the Deep River." After making The Silver Gymnasium, Will Sheff created a Kickstarter to make a film inspired by "Down Down the Deep River," the album's lead single and a really wonderful song. I backed the project on Kickstarter.

I just looked at the list of updates on Kickstarter to try to find the exact release date of the film and discovered something I don't remember ever being aware of previously. The very last update, titled "It's here!" and announcing that the project was completed, the Kickstarter rewards were about to be shipped out, and the movie was available for download to backers, was posted... on April 24, 2015. The exact same day that Cara died.

Wow.

Well, that was rather startling. Especially in light of what I'm about to write next. I received my DVD of the "Down Down the Deep River" film some time in May 2015 but didn't get around to watching it until months later. A Saturday night, July 25, 2015. There I was, relaxing on my sofa in a darkened living room and watching the beautifully shot piece of nostalgic filmmaking, when my phone rang. I paused the movie and grabbed my phone. It was my mother-in-law Joyce, Cara's mother. I answered the phone.

She was calling to tell me that Cara's grandmother had just passed away. Cara's grandmother, the woman who helped Joyce raise Cara, who always called Cara her "favorite birthday present" because they were both born on September 22, and who was one of the most wonderful people I've ever known.

I'm still stunned by the newfound knowledge that that movie I first watched on the same day Cara's grandmother died was released on the same day Cara herself died. Another entry in my list of wild coincidences, I suppose!

Returning to the more recent past, when the band finished their main set on Sunday night I found myself looking at the time on my phone in disbelief, like, already? With the addition of the encore the show hit ninety minutes in length which is somewhat shorter than most Okkervil shows I'd previously attended, but not by a huge amount. In terms of number of songs this one came in a lot lower, though, due to the length of many of the new songs as well as some of the reimagined older ones.

The band returned to the stage for their encore to chants of "Westfall! Westfall!" from the crowd. "Westfall," from debut album Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See, is one of the band's most popular songs and a traditional show closer for them.

To my great surprise, Will went up to his microphone and said, "We're never playing that fucking song again."

He didn't sound angry about it. Exasperated, perhaps. I suppose it's understandable how he might have gotten tired of performing "Westfall" after doing it at almost every show for fifteen years. If he holds true to his word of never playing it again, I realized that the last time I saw "Westfall" performed was also the last time Cara saw it. Which would perhaps be fitting in a way.

"You can tell the Internet," Will added, about them not playing "Westfall." "If you're a woman disappointed about it, I apologize. If you're a man, I don't care," he amusingly concluded.

I briefly considered but rejected the idea of yelling, "War Criminal!" referring to "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks," probably my favorite song on probably my favorite ever album (by any band), Down the River of Golden Dreams. It's a song I've only seen performed live a single time, at that wonderful show ten years ago this month. Based on Will's reaction to the "Westfall" chants I gathered he wasn't feeling keen on audience requests.

I went to the Pittsburgh show after considering either it or a Detroit show the previous night. And now looking at the setlist from that Detroit show I see that they actually did play "War Criminal" there. Damn.

The encore concluded, after a stunning performance of Away's beautiful final track "Days Spent Floating (in the Halfbetween)," with Will saying that he would perform another (non-"Westfall") song that someone had requested, "Black" from Black Sheep Boy. So maybe if I had said "War Criminal"? Damn. Damn.

The final song was preceded by Will discovering that the sound on his guitar had totally stopped working, so he did the last song solo and acoustic, his voice and the guitar both picked up by microphones. An amusing moment came when Will began to sing the first verse and a number of audience members loudly (and badly) sang along, nearly drowning out his voice. Will laughed and stopped playing, stepping back from his microphone for a moment before starting the song over. After that the crowd singalong was much more subdued, except at certain appropriate vocal climaxes.

Although heavily stripped down, this rendition of "Black" was not such a drastic departure from the original as the previous old songs in the show. But near the end of the song, at one of those vocal climaxes, the lyrics seemed to reinforce my earlier thoughts about the symbolism of the reworked older songs: "It'll never be the way it was before."

Perhaps Okkervil River shows will never be the way they were before. Very certainly, my life will never be the way it was before. Before Cara got lung cancer and then died of it. But I will always carry that past with me. And the future? It can still be pretty great.

At the end of the show, I knew I had just seen a great show, but I felt a little odd. The experience had been so different from any other Okkervil River show. To be honest, if I were a long-time fan who had never seen the band live before, I would have considered this show disappointing. For me, having already seen them so many times, I could better appreciate getting to hear new versions of some of their classics. Still, I had to process what I had just experienced.

Fortunately, something happened then that ended up making the night just perfect.

I've realized that I really, really enjoy telling people about Cara. On a few occasions when I've been talking to someone about her, they've said, "It's okay if this is too hard to talk about." It's not, I reassure them. It's really good for me to talk about her. I guess that's pretty obvious if you've been following my blog. Something else I've realized is that it's often particularly meaningful for me to talk to musicians about Cara, when those musicians have made music that had special meaning to us or that we enjoyed seeing together.

Almost a month ago I went to another really great concert, by Nada Surf at the Beachland. They were another band that Cara and I really liked, but the most special part of this particular show for me? I'll just copy here what I posted on Facebook last month:

Nada Surf's normal bass player wasn't there, and filling in was none other than Daniel Brummel of Ozma, that is, the band that Cara and I took our first ever trip together to see in Washington D.C., and is probably the number one most important band in the development of our friendship and relationship and therefore in my life. I got to have a really great conversation with Daniel after the show, telling him about Cara and about the times we had seen Ozma and how important his music was to me. I even showed him some pictures of the storybook Cara made for me for Valentine's Day 2007 that contained lots of Ozma references. He seemed very moved to hear about Cara and about how his music had touched our lives. He also showed me a picture of his wife and the baby they had early this year, which he seemed very happy about, and I know Cara would have loved to see. The last time we saw Ozma, in 2007, we briefly talked to Daniel and afterwards a starstruck Cara said, "I can't believe I just talked to Daniel Brummel!" I know she would have been so thrilled to get to see him again, but as Daniel said, I know she was with me in spirit!

Ozma was the number one most important band to my and Cara's relationship, but Okkervil River, they were a close second. I actually think of Ozma as the "band of our friendship" and Okkervil River as the "band of our romance." (The reason Ozma still edges out Okkervil River in importance, then, is that we became the best of friends - Cara, in fact, was already the best friend I'd ever had - before we started dating.) After seeing it announced that Daniel would be performing with Nada Surf, I went to that show determined that I'd get to talk to him. At this Okkervil River show, on the other hand, I went into it thinking it would be cool if I got the chance to talk to Will Sheff, but really having no expectations of doing so. That was because at all the previous times I'd seen them, I can't recall ever having the opportunity to talk to him.

So I was surprised and thrilled when, minutes after the show ended and still hanging around on the venue's floor, I noticed Will emerge from the door next to the stage and walk over to the merch table.

At all eight of the previous Okkervil River shows I'd attended, I can't recall ever seeing Will go to the merch table to talk to fans. Now I can't say for certain that he never did, but I do know that I bought merch at several of those shows (including the first one and the two most recent before Sunday's), and that I had never talked to him.

And so I quickly walked to the merch table myself, stopped in front of the man who has been one of my most admired people for many, many years, and said, "Hey, great show." He thanked me and we shook hands, and I continued, "I've been a big fan for a long time. Actually I was just thinking about the first time I saw you, it was almost exactly ten years ago in Columbus. I was with the girl who would become my wife."

Will smiled at that, so of course I had to add, "She passed away from lung cancer last year."

Cara wrote this on her blog in June of 2014 (in fact, in the post that came just before "A Port in Girl"):

Telling someone that doesn't know you that you have cancer is an interesting experience. The evolution of their facial expressions can be completely awful. The words "I'm so sorry" usually follow. I'm so used to it now, to the apologies and even to having cancer that all I know how to do, is fight.

I could replace "that you have cancer" with "that your wife died" and those words would apply so well to me. And I am so used to it now.

It's worth mentioning that that paragraph on her blog was followed immediately by the two paragraphs that I printed on a collage that I have hanging in my apartment, and also gave as gifts to some close family members:

Today we saw the Neurosurgeon. While we waited, I glanced over at Jeff and noticed he looked worried, so I asked him if he was - and he nodded yes. All I could do is assure him that it's going to be okay, because I am convinced that it will be.

Everything in life is okay, until it isn't. A lot of times, that is all we can ever know. Today, I am not afraid of the future. I cry, but most times it's out of gratitude and awe. I am moved every single day by the kindness of friends, family and total strangers.

Those are my words to live by.

Getting back to my conversation with Will, I told him that his music was very significant to our relationship. I asked if he remembered how three years ago when they played in Cleveland, there was a woman directly in front of him sitting in a wheelchair. He said that he thought he did remember. I'm not sure if he actually did, and I certainly wouldn't hold it against him if he didn't, but I thought it was worth asking since seeing a person in a wheelchair in the front row of the audience undoubtedly doesn't happen often. That show happened about one month after Cara was diagnosed, and only about two weeks after she had major surgery to remove three liters of fluid from around her lungs and put in a pleural tube to drain additional fluid. She was, in fact, capable of walking at that point in time, but only to a limited extent, and would not have had nearly the stamina to stand for an entire concert. So we brought a wheelchair so that I could push her right up in front of the stage where she'd have a perfect view.

"That was her," I explained to Will. "Oh, and another time we saw you was the night before our wedding in Columbus. It was a total coincidence that you were playing there."

Will, like Daniel the previous month, seemed really appreciative and grateful to hear how his music had touched our lives. "Thank you so much for sharing that," he said more than once. We also talked briefly about all the new versions of old songs. "I'm trying to keep it real," he said. "I've been doing this for so long." I can certainly appreciate that perspective, and I have a lot of respect for it. I think it's sometimes easy to forget that the performers who entertain us are real people with the same sorts of feelings and concerns we all have. Having a conversation with someone who has really had an impact on your life, letting them know about it, and seeing their genuine gratitude is a wonderful thing. If you haven't done it, you should give it a try.

Cara just had a way of connecting with people. And she and I connected on a level probably deeper than a lot of people ever connect with anyone. It won't be easy to find that again, but since her death, I've found I really like making those sorts of real connections, even little ones, with the people I meet. And perhaps especially with musicians, because music is so important in my life.

I had thought it funny how Cara had said, "I can't believe I just talked to Daniel Brummel." Because for me, I was able to see Daniel Brummel as basically an ordinary guy who just happened to make music I really loved. Sunday night, though, walking away from Mr. Smalls, I think I felt a little like Cara had felt all those years ago. I can't believe I just talked to Will Sheff. Will Sheff to me had been an almost larger than life figure, and the concept of trying to have a conversation with him had seemed almost scary. Of course, it turned out there was no reason it had to be.

Will Sheff and Daniel Brummel, completely without either of them knowing it, had honestly been two of the most important people in my life, and in Cara's life, and most of all in the life we had together. I didn't know before I got to do it just how impactful talking to them about that would be. Both times there was just a wonderful sense of catharsis. I'm so grateful for those opportunities. Not to mention for the amazing concerts that accompanied them!

Our song

"Honey - they're playing our song!"

It's an instantly recognizable cliche. That one song that, above all others, has special meaning to a relationship. That for whatever reason, instantly makes someone recall why they fell in love with their partner. I'm curious, now that I think of it, about roughly what fraction of all couples actually have an "our song." Many undoubtedly do; some probably don't. If anyone reading this would like to comment about whether they have an "our song," and if so what it is and how it came to be as such, I'd love to hear it!

Music was an integral part of my relationship with Cara, so it's not surprising that there are a number of songs with meaning to our relationship. However, if asked to pick just one that I considered "our song," it would be an easy choice. (I suspect that Cara, if pressed, would have made the same choice as me, but honestly I can't be completely sure.)

If you're reading this somewhere you can listen to music, go ahead and hit play on this video:

I'll engage in a moment of pedantry and point out that this piece is technically not a song, because it does not contain any singing. However, I'm pretty sure that colloquially speaking, most people would refer to the tracks on Explosions in the Sky albums and other similar pieces of music as "songs."

Explosions in the Sky are an Austin-based band and one of the foremost examples of the post-rock genre, with their intricate guitar parts and sweeping crescendos coming together to create rarely matched aural beauty. I'd say that if you want anything you're doing to seem epic, just put on some Explosions in the Sky while doing it. Many people (I myself not being one of them) are familiar with the band's music from their Friday Night Lights soundtrack.

Of all their majestic compositions, "Your Hand in Mine," the final track on their 2003 album The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of sheer beauty. How was it, specifically, that "Your Hand in Mine" became "our song"?

Truthfully, it has a lot to do with the title, which is interesting to think about because a piece of music with no lyrics could theoretically be given any title. Yet somehow, the title "Your Hand in Mine" is a perfect match for this piece of music. It makes me wonder whether the band came up with the title after writing the music, or if they wrote music specifically to go with that title. In any case, Cara and I both already thought that Explosions in the Sky, and "Your Hand in Mine" in particular, were gorgeous music before we started dating. As it happened, the moment that we first held hands with each other was a very special moment for us. So special that we both mentioned that moment in our wedding vows, vows that we wrote separately from each other so that we would not know the content of each other's vows until we read them during the ceremony! So that's a big part of why "Your Hand in Mine" is so special. It's funny - if the track had any other name, I'd still consider it a superlatively beautiful piece of music, but it likely wouldn't have nearly the same meaning to me.

I've been writing a (to be concluded) series of posts about the unique way Cara and I communicated and flirted with each other using sentences in the online word game Psychobabble. In fact, that wasn't the only unusual method of communicating and flirting that the two of us developed. The other major one involved the website last.fm, a website that can be used to track all the music one listens to. A user's profile page includes both charts of their music history as well as a display of recently listened tracks. Cara and I would entertain each other by creating playlists of songs that the other could see being updated in real time on our profile pages. Some of our playlists contained songs following a specific theme, while others would spell out little stories or messages by putting a series of song titles in order. The day after that fateful day when we started dating, I made a short playlist for Cara's viewing pleasure, and "Your Hand in Mine" was included. Just like all my chat logs and Psychobabble screenshots, I also still have access to my entire last.fm listening history, now covering over 11 years, so I can still see this playlist. Read the song titles going from the bottom (the first song played in the list) to the top (the last song played).

For Valentine's Day three months later, Cara made me an amazing storybook and accompanying mixtape with one song going with each page of the storybook. I posted this on Facebook about two months ago. The song for the first page of the storybook was "Your Hand in Mine."

 So you can see why this song was so important to us. But there's also something I haven't mentioned yet. Later that night, on the same day we first held hands, we also kissed for the first time. And the music playing in my apartment when that happened? "Your Hand in Mine."

I guess now it should be pretty obvious why this was our song.

I love a lot of Explosions' music, so I would enjoy one of their shows regardless, but when I saw that they were playing a show in Columbus and I began to consider going, I thought, they had better play "Your Hand in Mine." Looking at setlists from recent shows informed me that I had nothing to worry about, as they basically always play it, not surprising considering it's the band's most popular track.

Having only seen the band live one time in the past, with Cara at the Beachland Ballroom way back in April 2008, I eagerly anticipated the Columbus show. That long-ago Beachland show was quite good, but I only have vague memories of it. I think this week's show at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus will stick with me more strongly.

It was a stunning display of musicianship, and with a stunning light show that went perfectly with the epic instrumentals.

The band played a good mix of both older and more recent selections from their catalog. This suited me well, as I quite like their latest album, but find The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place and its immediate predecessor, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever from 2001 (gotta love those post-rock titles) far superior. Several times during the show I was just in a state of awe and joy at the overwhelming beauty emanating from the stage. Definite highlights included "With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept" and set closer "The Only Moment We Were Alone." As is typical for post-rock shows, there was no encore. Unlike some other post-rock bands I've seen, there was also no extended loud feedback outro on the closer - instead the band hit their last heavy note all together and then suddenly went silent at the same time that the stage was abruptly plunged into darkness. Thunderous applause quickly filled the room, with many cries of "encore," but I knew that no encore would be coming - and none was needed after that experience.

Although every part of the show was great, the most emotional was, of course, "Your Hand in Mine." I knew it was coming. I knew it would bring up some strong feelings. I didn't know exactly how I'd react, though. I was looking forward to finding out.

My eyes did well up with tears as the song began, and I kind of just stood there in a semi-numb state, letting the music wash over me. And then a rather remarkable thing happened, as my mind's eye began to play a sort of slideshow of various scenes from my years with Cara. From the first time we met all the way to Cara on her deathbed (her hand in mine), and many moments in between. Not that they followed any particular order. That first time holding hands certainly featured heavily, and that first kiss, sitting on the floor of my dimly lit little apartment. Numerous other moments as well. Our wedding on a perfect June day. The beach in Costa Rica on our honeymoon. The moment when I proposed to Cara and she fell down in the snow, the white-blanketed landscape around us glittering in the sunlight. Cara determinedly pedaling to the finish line in the Eastern Ohio Time Trial (a cycling race that, two days before the Explosions show, I had gone to for the first time without Cara). The two of us lying next to each other in bed, gazing into each other's eyes.

Although I felt very emotional throughout the eight minutes of "Your Hand in Mine," it was only in the last minute or so that I rather abruptly went from watery eyes to downright sobbing. I'm not sure why this happened. Perhaps it was the sense of finality. It took a while into the next song before I really recovered.

Why, I can imagine some might wonder, would I actively seek out an experience that would make me feel so sad? For me, it's nothing to wonder about. Feeling sadness over loss is an important part of being human. It's good to have an outlet for such feelings. And it's also possible to simultaneously feel sadness over loss, and happiness at having gotten to experience all those wonderful moments in the first place.

(I find that I have, numerous times since last summer, asked people if they've seen the movie Inside Out. Perhaps I should write a post about that some time.)

So that's the story of my and Cara's song. Does anyone else have a story to share about their own "our song"?

And speaking of memories of Cara, there's one I wanted to share that I didn't think merited its own post, so I'll put it here. On April 18 of last year, I was driving Cara to the ER, having at the time not even the tiniest inkling that she had less than a week to live. We were driving down Carnegie and as we got to the ER I was about to make a left turn here:

Although Cara was in a bad state, she noticed and correctly pointed out what I had failed to notice, that the sign says AMBULANCE ONLY so I shouldn't turn there. I continued driving one more block on Carnegie to the correct turn-in spot. So actually, basically the last thing Cara ever did while not in the hospital was correct me on a driving mistake I was about to make. I walk by that spot every day of work, twice in fact, once in the morning going from my parking garage to the lab and then once more on the return trip. And so that memory is something I think of a lot. Kind of funny what causes certain memories to stay with you.

Three years

It was three years ago today that everything changed.

This morning, I (as I so often do) looked at Facebook's "On This Day" feature. There were several items of interest for August 23. For one, in 2011 I posted, "Whoa, I've never felt an earthquake before just now!" (And yes, I was right here in Cleveland when that happened - anyone else remember that quake?)

Much more significantly, at 1:13 pm on August 23, 2013 I updated my Facebook profile picture to a photo of Cara and me on a sun-soaked beach in Guanacaste, Costa Rica on the last day of our honeymoon.

Instantly I remembered what had happened three years ago today. I did not remember, though, the exact timeline of events on that day. Was there any particular significance to the time at which I had updated my profile picture, I wondered? And so I dove into my online chat history with Cara in order to answer that question.

One of the quirks of our relationship is that so much of our communication was done online. This was especially true in the period of time when we were "just friends," from March through the beginning of November in 2006. Our communication then was almost exclusively via online messaging - we chatted for hours on end most days, while we only got together in person a total of six times over those months and very rarely talked on the phone. After we became a couple, on November 4, 2006, we spent most weekends visiting each other, but continued to do a huge amount of chatting online. This decreased, of course, when Cara moved to Cleveland in September 2008, but we still messaged each other fairly often as we did not live together until June of 2009. When that happened, the frequency of our online messages dropped dramatically, but it picked back up two years later after Cara lost her job at Medical Mutual (where she had no ability to chat with me during the day) and later that summer found a new job at Case (where no such restriction existed).

The upshot of all this is that I have a very detailed textual history of almost our entire relationship, which is rather unusual, although undoubtedly becoming at least a little less unusual than it would have been in past eras. It's really wonderful to have that history. I suppose the equivalent, for more traditional forms of communication, would be if all your in-person and telephone conversations were audio recorded as they happened and then converted to text. That would seem like a really weird thing as it happened, but years later, wouldn't it be cool to have such a record? In the absence of such a recording system, most all of the face to face conversations I ever had with my beloved wife and best friend have become nothing more than vague memories. But all the online messaging communications are still there in the exact same words as when they first happened. Especially now that Cara is gone, that's an amazing thing to have.

Moving past that digression. The month of August 2013 was a very eventful month. Among the messages I have from Cara are some very brief ones during her great Pedal to the Point adventure (sample: "I miss my bed"). For years, Cara had been participating in the MS charity bike tour to Sandusky. On more than one occasion, she had planned to stay overnight in Sandusky and do the return ride on day two, but then had changed her mind after the first day's ride and had me pick her up in Sandusky. In 2013 she finally did the whole thing, covering 150 miles on her bicycle in two days. This was a huge deal. Throughout that summer, she had been experiencing increasingly worse respiratory symptoms such as wheezing and shortness of breath, which were incorrectly diagnosed as being due to asthma at an urgent care in May. Yet somehow, on that last Pedal to the Point ride, she said that she felt great.

Our chat history at that time includes messages about several different health issues of Cara's. One, her visits to a reproductive endocrinologist about our continued unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant. Cara had PCOS, resulting in very irregular cycles and making it very difficult to get pregnant. This was very frustrating for her. Another issue that popped up that month was the pain and swelling in Cara's leg. On August 7 she messaged me: "Um. There's some really bad swelling on my ankle. I just noticed, on the outside." She went to an urgent care, where they said she had a sprained ankle. She wasn't sure how this would have happened.

The foremost issue, though, was with Cara's breathing. Cara was becoming increasingly convinced that the source of the problems was mold in our apartment. This belief was strengthened when she felt remarkably good on her Pedal to the Point ride and then went back to feeling worse after returning home. It was a time of extreme frustration for Cara and a stressful time for both of us. One message she sent me about this was, "I hate to be a buzzkill but if we go to the ADKs and I don't have asthma issues I'm going to insist that we move." (The ADKs means the Adirondacks, where my family vacations every year in August.)

As it turned out, Cara's issues got even worse during that trip.

On August 15, the two of us hiked Cobble Hill, a relatively short and easy but very nice hike in the village of Lake Placid near the house where we stayed. Cara had to go very slowly on the uphill portion of the hike, but once we were at the top, she was very happy and we had fun posing for some pictures and making each other laugh.

One of the pictures was even described by Cara as her favorite picture of herself that was ever taken:

The following day, we went on a bike ride that we had done in the past. It was about the flattest route available in the area but still had some hills. There were a couple of long, gradual hills and I remember Cara was just going so slowly up them. I felt frustrated (undoubtedly nowhere near as frustrated as she herself felt) and also felt really bad for her. I thought back to the very first times we had gone for bike rides together, all the way back in 2007, and how slow she had been back then. She had improved her fitness so, so much in the ensuing years, and now it seemed like all that progress was being reversed.

With a few miles left in the ride, there was a steep uphill. Cara started up it, experienced a fit of hacking coughs, and stopped. She couldn't do it, she said. I had to ride the last few miles myself to retrieve our car and come pick her up. After that we enjoyed our traditional lunch at the Noonmark Diner in Keene Valley, an eatery known for its pies and one I had been going to with my family since I was a kid. Incidentally, my Facebook profile picture immediately before I changed it to that picture of us on the beach was taken at the diner that day, a funny picture of me wearing Cara's sunglasses:

Cara would describe what she had felt when she tried to ride up that steep hill as like one of her lungs was only partially filling up.

This was, in fact, exactly what was happening.

I recall lying in bed at night in that house in Lake Placid, next to Cara, listening to her just cough and wheeze and cough. It should have been clear then that something was seriously wrong. It wouldn't be much longer before we found out what.

The following week found us back in Cleveland (while my parents and brother remained in Lake Placid, having rented the house for two weeks). August 22 brings some heartbreaking messages in my chat history. That morning, Cara excitedly messaged me, "I got non-stop flights!" In October, she was going to be traveling to Baltimore for a training program related to her job as an exam proctor. She had never done something like this before and was very much looking forward to it. I told her, "It will be really weird to be home alone for a week!" She replied, "It definitely was weird any time you left," referring to times I had been out of town for conferences. I, on the other hand, had never stayed at home without Cara in all the time we had lived together, not even for a single night. (Edit: looking back at this, that statement is obviously untrue, because I was home alone for a night earlier that month when Cara did the two-day bike tour. But to my recollection, that was the only time this had happened.) Little did I know that I would be "home alone for a week" much, much sooner than October - in fact, beginning the very next day.

(Well, I spent much of that week in the hospital, of course, but I did go home every night.)

Also on August 22, she messaged me to ask if I could take her to the store when I got home. She said she was "awfully woozy/dizzy." I said that I could, and she thanked me and said she felt bad for "being so needy."

That was a Thursday. That night I was going to see local band Cloud Nothings perform at the Beachland Ballroom. Cara ended up not going to the store; I made a quick trip there by myself before going to the show, picking up some ramen soup and other things typical for someone with a bad cold. I had a really great time at that Cloud Nothings show, which some of my friends also attended. Looking back, that was the last time that my life was anything resembling normal.

The next morning, Friday, August 23, Cara had a doctor's appointment in Family Medicine at University Hospitals, right by Case campus where we both worked. She unfortunately had not had a primary care physician, and this appointment was to establish a relationship with one. Cara wanted to discuss, among other things, the breathing problems she was continuing to have.

At 10:24 am, she messaged me, "Fever is gone as of now" (she had had a fever the previous night). "That's good!" I replied.

At 11:02, Cara messaged me again. "She's actually kind of concerned about a blood clot. Possibly in my leg. Which could attribute to respiratory issues." As Cara would tell me later, after talking about her ongoing problems with "asthma," the doctor had asked Cara if anything else had been bothering her. Cara mentioned the pain she had been having in her leg. The doctor felt Cara's leg, noticed a warm spot in her calf, and was instantly concerned.

Cara, 11:59 am: "They found a clot. I'm waiting in vascular to see what they do. I might be admitted." 12:28 pm: "I'm in family medicine again... it's such a cluster fuck. I have no idea what's going on."

At 1:02 I messaged Cara to say that I had been away from the computer for a while and her boss had just called me. Cara filled me in on what was going on - she was going to be taken to the ER, where she would be admitted. And so it was that at 1:13 pm, full of concern for my wife, I changed my Facebook profile picture to that honeymoon photo of us, and then left to meet her at the ER, a short walk from the lab at Case where I worked. I spent the next hour or two with Cara in the ER, and listened to a doctor explain what was known at the time. Eventually I went home with plans to return later that day, because there were some things at home that Cara wanted. (Among those items, from a chat message she sent while I was at home, "Boco" - her name for the oldest and most beloved of her Chococat plushes - and "yb" - standing for "yellow blanket," her baby blanket that she continued to sleep with throughout her entire life.) Before I left the hospital, Cara asked me how I was feeling. I said I was feeling pretty at ease, because finally there was some explanation for what was going on with her. A problem had been identified and it could be treated, and then, I figured, Cara could get better. The thought that she might have cancer did not enter my mind.

After leaving the hospital, I called my parents, who were still on vacation. "My parents are on a hike but I got through to my dad. I'm at home now," I told Cara at 3:25.

Some time later, I received a phone call from Cara, who sounded upset and told me that I needed to return to the hospital as soon as I could. I asked what was going on. She gave the phone to the doctor, who said she couldn't explain to me over the phone what was going on, and I should just go to the hospital to hear it in person.

So, no longer feeling at ease, I returned to the hospital.

There I learned why Cara had sounded so upset. Cara had had a CT scan of her lungs. Her lungs were full of pulmonary embolisms (blood clots). Moreover, there was an unidentified mass obstructing one of her bronchial tubes.

What.

What.

At that point, it was still an unidentified mass. But an unidentified mass, that sure sounded like it might be a malignant tumor. Through all those months of Cara's increasing respiratory symptoms, all that wondering of what was going on with her, I don't think the notion that cancer was the cause ever occurred to me. And now there it was. In my mind for the first time. The idea that my wife, a vivacious, healthy, and active 34-year-old woman, might have cancer.

As I said at the beginning of this post: it was three years ago today that everything changed.

The next week is something of a blur. Certain specific events stand out, but the exact timeline is lost to my memory. Unlike August 23 and the days leading up to it, there's little chat history for me to look back on. I called my parents, of course, to update them. I remember telling them, trying to put it optimistically, that the doctors had to "rule out lymphoma or lung cancer" - which, of course, actually meant "Cara might have lymphoma or lung cancer." Or maybe I told them that in person, when they came to see us. As I said, it's something of a blur. (I recall at one point, some time in between Cara's admission to the hospital and her actual diagnosis, being told that lymphoma seemed more likely. I'm not sure why that was.)

My parents and brother were already going to be heading back from the Adirondacks that weekend, and rather than driving straight through to Columbus as they usually did, they made a stop in Cleveland to see us. Additionally, Cara's mother came up from Columbus to be with Cara in the hospital. It had been a long time since we had seen her.

One day the next week a bronchoscopy was performed on Cara. I remember sitting with my mom in the waiting area. The surgeon came out to see us. He said that everything went okay with the procedure, but that it looked like Cara had lung cancer. This was another gut punch, because as I said, for whatever reason I had been under the impression that lymphoma looked more likely. Not that a diagnosis of lymphoma is a good thing, but...

Naturally my immediate instinct was to look up lung cancer survival statistics. What I saw was not pretty. I remember being in a hospital bathroom soon after, washing my hands and looking in the mirror, and just breaking down in tears. How could this possibly be happening?

Once Cara was back to her room, it fell to me to tell her what the surgeon had told me - that it looked like she had lung cancer. Not long after, the doctor in charge of her care learned of this, and was very upset, because he said the surgeon should not have told us that, and Cara had not yet been definitively diagnosed. We did not know whether she actually had lung cancer. We would have to wait for the biopsy results.

I remember clearly the morning that we received those results. I made the same nine-tenths of a mile walk from home to the lab that I made every morning, but only stopped in briefly before making the much shorter walk across the street to the hospital's old Lakeside building. As I walked up the steps to the hospital's entrance, I was stopped in my tracks by a striking sight: a praying mantis was sitting there on the handrail, at the top of the steps, facing the doors through which I was about to walk. It was eerie. I'm generally not a superstitious person, but I imagined the mantis might be some sort of harbinger of death. Although this was a moment that will always stay with me, I did not, back then, look up the symbolic meaning of seeing a praying mantis. Perhaps I was being a little superstitious. Perhaps I was afraid of what I might find. (Looking it up now, I see that it's more often regarded as being a sign of good luck. Go figure.)

I took the elevator up to Cara's floor and walked down the hall to her room, where everyone else was already waiting.

The doctor confirmed that yes, Cara did, indeed, have lung cancer.

At these words, everyone in the room started crying. Cara later said that this was the absolute worst moment. She also said that it was the only time she had ever seen me cry (as in full-blown tears, not just welling up), and that she hoped to never see it again. Remarkably, she got her wish. Although I've cried many times since then, both before and after her death, this has mostly happened when I was alone and never when I was with Cara.

The doctors did not actually use the term "stage IV lung cancer" at that time, but did say that the cancer had spread to her liver and bone, meaning that it was stage IV.

During the previous few months, Cara had often been frustrated and at times even angry about all the issues she was having in her life, foremost being her respiratory issues followed by her infertility. This all changed when she was diagnosed. That anger was gone. Having a baby no longer seemed important when she had a life-threatening illness. And now that the horrible true cause of her respiratory issues was known, her attitude was, okay, it is what it is and we and the doctors are going to come up with and carry out a plan to treat it, and we're going to go on living and enjoying our lives the best we're able. She carried this amazing positive attitude and resilience with her for the rest of her life, and in this way, she carried me with her, and has continued to do so even after her death.

I'll finish with an anecdote about a wonderful thing Cara did for me not long after her diagnosis. Earlier that summer, the band Ohbijou, a band I loved and had never seen live, announced that they were calling it quits and playing a single farewell show in their hometown of Toronto on September 7. Seeing this, I immediately decided that I wanted to go, and I asked Cara if she would go with me. She said that she would, and I bought a pair of tickets.

As August turned to September, Cara was in no condition to make such a trip. I remember after she was released from the hospital, she and I were eating lunch with my parents at our favorite restaurant L'Albatros. I remarked that I wasn't sure whether I would still go to the show in Toronto. My mom got a horrified look on her face, like how could I even consider still going. I'm sure a lot of people would react the same way.

Cara, though... she knew how much seeing that show would mean to me. Of course, if she had said that she didn't want me to go, I absolutely would not have hesitated to stay with her and give up going. But instead, she told me that I should go without her. Her mom was staying at our apartment, so Cara would not be home alone. Still feeling uncertain about it, I did head out early that Saturday afternoon on the five-hour drive from Cleveland to Toronto. I told Cara that after the show, I would start driving back from Toronto and then stop to find a hotel when I got too tired. As it turned out, my eagerness to get back to Cara outweighed any feelings of tiredness, and I drove all through the night, getting back into Cleveland just as the sun was coming up (a very strange thing for me to experience). All told, I drove five hours to Toronto, spent five hours in Toronto, and immediately drove five more hours back home. And it was well worth all that driving; the show was an incredible and supremely emotional experience. There is something very, very special about farewell shows. I wrote a review of the show a few days later, but while I shared it on Twitter so that the band and other concertgoers would have the opportunity to see it, I did not share it on Facebook. This was because I figured that many people would have a hard time understanding how I could have gone to a show in Toronto by myself less than two weeks after my wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. And putting it that way, it does sound strange. But Cara understood. I'm forever grateful to her for letting me have the opportunity to experience that show. Just as I'm forever grateful to her for so, so many other things.