Memories of Tess - Lauren’s 14th wedding anniversary

https://youtu.be/G_dWbFaFbFM?si=Gdm3B-zaqxKZhcU4

00:00:05 Gosh, I always feel like I have to double check to see if I'm recording. I don't want to do all this talking and not have it recorded. It's like doing a hike or a bike ride without having GPS running. And why? I don't know. To prove you did it? It's just a joke. It's just kind of the way we are. But here I am in one of my most private moments.

00:00:33 And I'm making it public, theoretically public, in the sense of maybe I'll listen to it again. Maybe somebody will listen to it at some point, but it's very, very private. And I want it private. And that's the irony of this whole thing. What I'm talking about. Well, today is February 26th, 2025. Lauren and Sam were married on February 26th, 2011.

00:01:02 which is now 14 years ago. I can't really even fathom it. It's so easy just to say, oh, 14 years ago. Yeah, it has a little depth to it.

00:01:13 But it's not that big a deal. But I cannot sit here and think about 14 years from now. I really don't wanna be here 14 years from now. That's a rough way to start a talk. But I don't know where I wanna be. In my mind, it'll be heaven or whatever. And I'm not thinking of any reunions with Tess. But like Ricky Gervais said, I'd rather be nowhere with her than somewhere without her. And there is a little truth to that. There's a lot of truth to that. It depends.

00:01:43 But what am I talking about? I just watched the video from the wedding and I put together a bunch of pictures and a bunch of songs and God knows a bunch of feelings and a lot of stuff. We never took it for granted, but a lot of stuff that you kind of feel in the moment that this is how our life is. This is a beautiful moment.

00:02:07 and a high point, but this is how our life is. And this isn't how our life is. Our life doesn't exist anymore, except in our pictures and memories. And, you know, God, you know, what do I wanna say? I am so thankful to have had the love in my life,

00:02:34 to have the love we had together. And I've made this kind of big point about having platonic relationships and all this crap, which I don't mean this in any kind of negative sense, but my point is that when I have the love that I have for Tess,

00:02:54 And for who we were for all those years and all those experiences, I could never duplicate that. I would never want to try to duplicate that. And it would be so unfair to have someone new in my life who had to deal with the past in some sort of way, of an abstract way, not...

00:03:22 In other words, instead of being my sister or even Alice, as someone who understands and loves Tess the way I did or knows her the way I did and knows all the ups and downs and everything else,

00:03:35 There's no other new love that could compete with that. And I don't want to push the old love out of the way. So am I monk? Who knows? I don't know. But in some ways, yeah. Because, you know, once you have, find that one person that you actually love and you connect with each other and just say, okay, this is us.

00:04:03 This is Pete and Tess. You know, can hell or high water and good times or bad. You know, if you have that once in your life, you're pretty damn lucky. And so it's ironic because if I start this recording and I just started finger painting, it's ironic because before I started talking, my...

00:04:26 mind and heart and everything here, emotions, we're all in a different spot and very tearful, but tearful in a joyful way. Maybe that's what grief is. I don't know. You're, yeah. I mean, you're just so sad and yet so happy or, or, or

00:04:49 fulfilled in some ways and when I see her little face smiling and waving at us and knowing who she was and how she was and how you know in those later years she wouldn't allow us to take her picture and if she raised her hand it wouldn't be to wave it would be to wave us off or block her face she didn't want any pictures of her as she got older and

00:05:14 And, you know, I started to go along with her. You know, I started not pushing it. At first, I would kind of push, oh, Tess, come on now. And other people would, and that would just make it worse. And, you know, she would get kind of angry about it and just leave me alone. And God knows now I understand it. And, you know, it's like the Elvis Presley or the Marilyn Monroe. You know, the pictures that you end up seeing are the ones that you remember her by.

00:05:43 And she was, you know, kind of aware of that or whatever. So anyway, when I see her little face waving at me and smiling and, you know, whoever took our pictures, I guess we let somebody, you know, use our camera. And then some of them are just me taking pictures of Tess. But we were there in Whistler in this little room.

00:06:06 little country hideaway up in Maine. I mean, Maine. In Canada. And if it wasn't for Tess, if it wasn't for Larm wanting to have a destination wedding and doing that, then we never would have been. We never would have gone. And, you know, I kind of take this kind of monkey's pride about, well, I've never been anywhere. I don't want to go anywhere. And it's kind of, it's very true. I don't have any wanderlust.

00:06:32 I'm now investing in my home here. I'm putting in this power pack and, you know, I'm questioning every minute of every day. Am I spending too much money? And is it justifiable? And, you know, how and why and how many power outages do you have? And then I say, damn it, I'm just making a home improvement. And, you know, I'm going to live this way whether I can use solar panels or not.

00:06:56 I've made a decision and it's going to be okay. And, you know, here I am changing the subject again, but all of our decisions were our decisions up until now. And, you know,

00:07:09 We would argue about just about, well, almost everything, but there were certain things we just had fun doing, like putting in the countertops. It wasn't a big argument about it. It was just, which one do we like? Which color do we like? And, you know, like I said, with most of these things, it was easier just to let Tess make these choices. This is her home. I wanted her to love it. She did love it.

00:07:34 She wanted those drop-down lights or those spotlights in the track lights.

00:07:40 I never got the ones I really thought we should have. And I still, and now I probably won't even think about it, but you know, anything that could make her happy would make me happy. And I know she was the same with me. And I think that's the irony of the thing is whatever fussing we did, it was always just fussing. It was like two little bluebirds, you know, pecking at each other and

00:08:10 keeping each other in line or whatever but you know you were just the two little bluebirds and there was a few times in our life when i think bluebird test got kind of upset and you know it bothered me and you know it angered me and you know it put us at odds to a degree and i was talking to a

00:08:37 another YouTuber, not really talking, but communicating, she was talking about loneliness and loneliness of divorce. And I can imagine there's probably nothing, nothing worse. Because, you know, once you have that trust and once you feel like you can trust that person, it's got to be a horrible thing to have to let go. And, you know, Tess and I brushed up with that a little bit.

00:09:05 And, you know, I would sit there and try to figure out what it is, what's the problem, you know. And, you know, one of the times was when my mom passed away and I came home and Tess was feeling very, I don't even really know. All I know is she was very upset with me. And, you know, I felt like my response, and I thank God for this,

00:09:28 was to say to her, honey, we're Pete and Tess. We're still Pete and Tess. We're never going to not be Pete and Tess, whatever words I use. But, you know, I guess my point is, instead of taking her anger as, oh, what's your problem?

00:09:46 making it worse I felt like her problem I guess was a feeling of being left out maybe I don't know but anyway today is our daughter's anniversary and it's been 14 years and it started with this wedding in Whistler

00:10:05 And I thank God I can go back and look at this video and listen to these songs and see these pictures and see these memories as they were, these vivid pictures of us, you know, standing on the little bridge in the snow and standing in front of the rendezvous place where she waved at us.

00:10:26 And at the camera. And now Lauren loved the... I sent her the link to this video I'm talking about. And she loved it. And that's so important to me. Now, I'm not going to respond because I'm talking to myself. But...

00:10:43 you know, this is us, I think that's the thing, this is us, Pete and Tess, and, you know, Pete and Tess and Lauren and Eric, but then it turned into, you know, Pete and Tess and Lauren, and because Eric, you know, opted out, and that was another big tragedy that we

00:11:06 we dealt with and we dealt with it individually and we dealt with it together. And, you know, I'm still dealing with it. I'm still trying to figure it out. But, you know, again, I thank you, God, that we had our daughter, that we both loved our daughter. And that's another thing about love.

00:11:26 is that when you love each other, but it is, you know, is it each other that you love, or is it the things that you love? I mean, they raised that question in High Fidelity, and there's a truth to it. I mean, when you find somebody and say, oh, yeah, like with, you know, Tess Bon Jovi, oh, yeah, I love him too, or whatever, you know, Journey. I didn't go into the groups that she likes the other day, but...

00:11:53 Bon Jovi, you know, was a big one and Journey was a big one and Sting, I mentioned, and Annie Lennox. And, you know, instead of me, you know, sticking to the Beatles and sticking to the Rolling Stones, Jackson Browne, I learned to know and love the music that she loved. And then that way we loved this stuff together and we enjoyed it together.

00:12:17 And now that's part of our memories. I don't, you know, well, I'm listening to Tom Petty, Learning to Fly, and that's a great one. But, you know, this whole thing of loving somebody most of your life, all of your adult life really, and then losing them.

00:12:40 And I did that poem about, you know, I gave away your coat today. And that's the thing when I'm watching this video, it's telling me that's why you loved that coat. She's wearing her beige coat and, you know, staying warm in that freezing cold weather and her little beige coat and her little sunglasses and her little scarf, her little white scarf and her little hat, her little whatever you call beanie hat.

00:13:07 And all these things, she was just so adorable. So adorable. And, you know, we had reached our senior years by then. We were, I don't, well, what's, what I, 14 years ago, what was I, 61? I don't know. But the point is, I was not young. We were not young. And Tess was always five years older. And that was always a kind of funny thing with us.

00:13:32 where to me she was always very young and she always looked young for her age and she always took a lot of pride in that and maybe more insecurity than i realized but you know the what i'm saying is i just always thought she was beautiful i was always trying to find the right words because if i said oh you look beautiful i'm not beautiful and turn this into an argument but

00:13:58 She was very beautiful, very sweet, very cute. She hated that word too, cute. So, you know, you spend all your life trying to figure out the right words to say. But in the midst of all that, we understood each other. And I don't know if she ever called me cute or handsome or anything really. It's just funny that way. And we never had real pet names. It was Pete and Tess. That was our pet name. Now,

00:14:30 A lot of people find love. A lot of people have very romantic love in their life. And mine's not unique and not special and not better than anyone else's. It's just mine.

00:14:44 And that's the whole difference. That's the only difference. It's mine and ours. And now I can sit here and talk about it and reminisce about it. And I can cry and boohoo about it. And then, you know, get up for a cup of coffee and feed the birds. You know, I'm not incapacitated by any means. I've said I've never felt so happy. It's a very strange and kind of great exhilarating experience. But by God, we had the memories together.

00:15:13 of things we did together and being together and the love that we created with Lauren and now the boys and you know when you put all the frustrations behind and all the other realities of life that you deal with the ultimate bottom line is you loved each other and you became a unit

00:15:41 The unit called Pete and Tess. And so that's what I'm thinking about this morning. Thinking about memories of Tess.