Jason's Untimely Thoughts

Below is a photo of the “Mizzou Media Hall of Fame” area in the pressbox at Faurot Field.  Chad Moller and the Media Relations office hung a framed photo of Sarah there (that photos is also below, courtesy of Kyle Coburn) in preparation for tomorrow’s first home game.

It should be noted that the “Mizzou Media Hall of Fame” is seemingly a pretty informal thing.  I’m not expecting any public anything, just a nice way for those that worked with Sarah at these events to remember and honor her.

I’ll try to take a better picture or two sometime when the light is better and there’s less going on.

Faurot Field Pressbox

Sarah Becking, Photographer

Greetings football fans,

There’s a lot of things that make this not seem like a football weekend, including the fact that I simply haven’t been interested in typing this e-mail. In the name of normalcy, however, here it be.

The Tigers take Step #2 on their way to a 14-0 season on Saturday, when they play the Missouri State University – Cape Girardeau Red Hawks at 6:00 p.m. Oh wait, not all directional schools that were formerly teachers colleges got to change their name? The RedHawks are seemingly miserable, barely escaping with a win over an even smaller school last week. (Note I could easily make another joke about SMS here, but I pass.) William Moore, All American Safety from Hayti in the SEMO region isn’t playing this game, hurting our chances a little. I predict 57-3. A cake walk.

Game time is at 6:00 p.m., tailgating again in Lot D. As has become the norm, first game is also the Miller’s tailgate, so will be joined by 180 or so coworkers. Food provided by Buckingham’s, served beginning around 3:45. Blue and Red beverages provided from Belgium.

With the late start, Mangino and the boys will be attending our game as well… can’t pass up a cake walk. Screw ku.

Turns out that writing something and putting it online about not being able to help with your kindergarten daughter’s hair is like shooting off an estrogen-attractor flare.  It’s better than any sitcom story of guys walking around with dogs/babies to attract the ladies.  People offering to come to the house at any time, day or night, do whatever, buy this product, comb backwards with your left hand, etc.

I should have pointed out that I told Adelaide the same thing I wrote, just writing it too so she can read it in a few years.  And that I believe there’s at least a little bit of “I want to fight about something and the hair is a guaranteed winner” going on with the hair trauma.  It’s OK, I’ll mostly just need to be a little more forceful about bath night.

Normally at this time of the year, I’m almost non-stop football.  I love it and always have.  It became so much a part of our fall, however, that I’m feeling very ho hum about this year.  I knew the first few games would be rough, and I was mostly right.  Having friends and family around all weekend helped, for sure, but quiet moments still popped up and were hard.

Specifically, waking up on game day and the national anthem were the hardest parts.  I’ve got a couple of habits during the anthem, one of which it turns out is finding out where Sarah is on the field.   That and 66,000 silent, yet mostly oblivious to my issues, fans were a bad combination.

The other thing I missed was reliving the game.  I couldn’t figure out for a day or two why I didn’t remember as much about the game as I normally do.  Dawned on me today that it’s because I typically spend a few hours afterwards culling through Sarah’s pictures, which had always been a reinforcement of the action.  I didn’t miss doing that at 1 a.m., but missed the experience in general and talking to her about the sideline goings on.

I also feel bad that the kids — players and Golden Girls especially — and their parents have lost a resource for photos of themselves in action.  Sarah always made a point of shooting ‘everyone’, so that they each could document as they could.

The first home game is this weekend, where I’m sure I’ll relive those experiences plus.  All in all, I’m not living and dying with the performance on the field as I’m accustomed.  And does anyone else find themselves just trying to avoid using words like “dying”, “kill”, in every sentence they can.  Batteries suddenly just stop working, instead of being dead.  Stupid silly reminders.

I’m sorry I’m not very good at helping you defrizz your hair in the morning.  I’m sorry that I didn’t think of it before you did, when we would have had time to wash it.  I’m sorry that your last-minute frustrations agitate me so, causing both of us to become more frustrated as we go.

There are others that will read this that can help more, but I’m sorry that you’ll have to depend on them.  Your parents should be able to help you with most everything right now and I can’t.

Thank you for your patience.  Thank you for being so good with Jack.  You’re a great kid and a great big sister.

I receive lots of e-mails every day under normal circumstances.   There’s been nothing resembling normal circumstances for quite a while, so e-mails have been coming in even more heavily. Someone recently told me that they’d heard I “liked to type, not talk”.  I don’t think that’s always true, but it does seem to have some truth at the moment.

It’s not that I like it more, it’s just that I can force myself to force the words to come from my keyboard, where when talking I tend to become distracted by other things, other people, and other thoughts.  Prior to typing I can get up, shut my door, turn on some Pandora (they should be paying me), and hammer it out.

It’s frustrating to not be able to talk, however.  I’ve mentioned it before, but the times with friends and family is too short, yet I’m too often unable to have any meaningful conversation.  Lots of times that is because of the aforementioned distractions, some of which will be of the running around and causing trouble variety, but it’s also because none of us, me nor you, have any clue what to say most of the time.  There’s nothing to be said that can make anything better, there’s fear of saying something that can make things worse (although that seems unlikely too), and some thoughts of whether whatever is even appropriate or not given the circumstances.

Similarly, I know people from all over still very much want to help.  Further, I know I want people to help.  It doesn’t solve the dilemna, however, that I have no idea how you can help either.  The dinners have been great, but I have not many suggestions beyond that.

I think most of you are feeling mostly the same way.  Wanting to help, wanting to talk, but not really knowing how to accomplish any of that either.  I think that is also contributing to the e-mail influx.  You like to type, not talk, too, at least to me.

All that said, I do enjoy receiving the e-mails.  While I may not always respond, and may even put off reading them for a while, and may certainly be losing some work productivity, they’re good for me to read.

More than most times, I wish there was time and circumstances available for general hanging out.  Amongst any and all.  I feel like that’s what most of us are missing, from each other and from Sarah, yet the world keeps spinning and that time is hard to grab.

Speaking of hard to grab, so are the Tigers, now that they’re Unleashed.  14-0.

An e-mail from Texas, paraphrased slightly to protect the young:

one of Adelaide’s friends “is into Webkinz.  She got the bluebird a few days ago and promptly stated that since her cousin has one named “j-hawk” (the poor kid’s father is a shoebird), she was naming hers “j-beck” to cancel out any trouble.”

yay.

Adelaide & Jack each went back to school last week.  By all indications, Adelaide is enjoying kindergarten thus far.  She’s got one new friend out of the class, a girl she talks about every day.  Then another ‘old’ friend in the other kindergarten class.  Am sure more friends are to come as time goes by.

Jack is back at CDC and enjoying that too.  He’s in the “Bee Class” again, which is good, but seems most of his friends have moved to the “Star Class”, or “Adelaide’s Class” in Jackese.  I’m wondering if I should investigate having him switch to that class too, after a whole one day’s experience this year.

I’ve posted photos from the first day here, for your viewing pleasure.

On a personal level, ugh.  Weekends are hard for me, when they should be fun.  Most of the reason they’re hard is exactly because they should be fun.  Almost nothing is fun.  Instead I try to find stuff the kids will enjoy or people for them to hang with that will be fun.  Seems like I’ve typed and griped about this before.

And I find myself having stupid thoughts about how it would simply be easier if Sarah was still around.  Not that I miss her or they miss her, but that it would be easier.  And of course I do miss her and they do miss her.  Not extra on weekends, because the missing is especially unpredictable, but it’s especially noticeable on weekends.  And so is the lack of fun that weekends should be.  And I have little hope that football or much else will change that soon.

The MU athletic department had their annual Xs & Os Clinic on Saturday, an event which Sarah had always shot.  I hear that they said nice things about Sarah and I know they sold some of her prints as part of their silent auction.  I’d love to hear more details from anyone that was in attendance.

Mpix.com is all new.  Mpix 2.0 they call it.  It won’t bother me at all when people stop using 2.0 as “it’s new”.  It looks great, though, I think, so you should all order a bunch of prints.  Looking at photos only on the computer is for losers.

Sarah & I always enjoyed having the cemetery as backyard neighbors.  Realize it’s not for everyone, but even now I enjoy it.  It’s pretty, tranquil, and adds perspective in lots of ways.

I was looking through pictures on the computer at home on Saturday, trying to find some shots of Sarah’s for different people, when I stumbled across these:  Backyard Cemetery, Oct 2007.

Maybe it’s just me and my moment in time, but I was shocked and amazed at how many of these photos (almost all) are either of the general area where she’s buried, of the type of stone that I’m trying to find for her, or both.

Summer sort of ended for us today, as Adelaide and Jack welcomed their new regular sitter to the house.  Her name is Megan, she’s likely blissfully unaware of this little slice of the web, so I’ll leave it at that.  While I was anxious about how the whole thing would be received by the kids, it was clear by 8:05 that they were happy to have someone new to entertain.

Adelaide starts kindergarten on Thursday.  She met her teacher last week and is both excited and nervous about the prospect of school.  Jack will continue at CDC downtown several days a week.  Megan will help with both kids on the other days.

The dinner schedule continues on.  I don’t believe I’ve made a meal more complicated than sandwiches yet, which all appreciate.  I’ve baked two different cakes for various dinner parties, with Adelaide busting me both times that they came from the grocery store.  To be fair, I was blaming being late on waiting on her to finish painting the stickers on the cakes.  If anyone (in Columbia) is aware of someone look for some light housecleaning work, I’d be interested in that information too.

I continue to receive unbelievably kind notes in memory of and tribute to Sarah.  Thank you to all for those.  Also, as I’ve pointed out here before, sometimes I just type junk that’s on my mind just so I can work through it a bit and get it out of my thought cycle… For instance, I don’t really want nor expect people to stop asking “How are you?” nor really think it means I suck that I haven’t remembered having any dreams about Sarah (until now, one of my dreams early this morning was re-living a school thing of some sorts involving Jack).

As hard as it is to believe, and as unsure as I am about the whole thing, football season also quickly approaches.  The Tigers start their undefeated run next weekend against the ILL in St. Louis.  Sarah & I had plans to hit 11 of the 12 regular season games (13 of 14 overall) again this year.  I’m not sure I’ll make one of those, but have firm plans for at least 10, with the kids making most of them as well.  Tailgating will be on again, although I’ll likely be asking for some help with the production.

Love to you all, Go Tigers, and screw ku.

I’m hearing tales of Sarah showing up in people’s dreams.  Good stories, all.  Speaking to them (in some cases) and telling them very true truths.  Or sometimes just being around.  Again, good stories all, and I’m comforted by the fact the truths jive with my opinions.

What’s it say about me that it’s not happening in my case?  Seems like there are two options, either you believe Sarah is choosing to show up in their dreams, which translates negatively to me.  Or you believe those folks are choosing to have Sarah in their dreams and therefore I’m not… again, translating negatively to me.

While it’s true that I only extremely rarely remember my dreams, you’d have to think I would remember Sarah being in them, no?  Perhaps it means I’m simply “not ready”, whatever in the world that means.

There’s some credence to the not ready theory by my inability to sit in silence.  The minute the house is empty I turn on the stereo, when everyone goes to bed I sit and watch TV until I’m ready to fall immediately asleep.  If I have to flip endlessly until 2 am, so be it.  I seem to need the noise.

After the ceremony people were ‘amazed’ by my ability to speak during the event.  While I was fairly certain I’d make it through that OK, mostly because I needed to, I’m still waiting for my breakdown.

My feeling is that my breakdown will only come whenever I’m at a point when I don’t need to keep it together, but I can’t imagine when that will be.  I could leave town for a week, leaving the kids in someone’s care, and try to force the situation.  That has entered my mind.  Force some silence or go drink a bunch of bourbon every night and see what happens.

Even beyond the drinking, though, doesn’t seem like a very healthy option.  And I keep coming back to how could I possible leave the kids again so soon after everything.  And that I continue to over-analyze every little thing of every little thing, maybe so I can avoid my bigger issues.