At the beginning of this year, I decided to plan a road trip to celebrate my 50th birthday. I posted in Girls Love Travel Facebook group asking for suggestions for places to see live music. A lot of the ladies who replied suggested Summerfest in Milwaukee. I looked it up, since it seemed perfect, I booked an Airbnb, and bought a weekend pass for the 3rd and final weekend of Summerfest, July 7-9. Then I decided to see if the Brewers would be playing any home games while I was there. I bought a ticket to a 1pm game on July 10th….hmmmmm… I’ll be going through Chicago on the way out…hello google… I bought a ticket for an afternoon game on the 6th. The cubs were playing an away game, but the White Sox were at home. Everything was falling into place just perfectly. Visiting all of the MLB parks has always been on my bucket list. So I was excited to spend few days just being with myself and being immersed in things that I love.
Sometime in May, I told Lawrence what I was planning, and to my utter shock, he said he wanted to go! What 17 year old boy wants to road trip to a festival with their mom?! I hate to admit that my first thought was that my peaceful, kid-free, trip just turned into “work”. But then I realized, there would probably not be many more chances for us to get to do this together. So instead of a 50th birthday trip by myself, we started to plan a road-trip celebration for my June birthday and his 18th birthday in August. We extended the trip by a few days so that we could drive up to the Northern tip of Wisconsin and go white water rafting, which was both of our favorite parts of our Tennessee trip 9 years ago. We were even planning to get matching tattoos.
Our week-long traveling party was set to depart Cleveland on July 6th.
After he died, on June 21st, I wasn’t sure if I would still be able to or even want to go, but Lawrence’s best friend, Joey, asked me, “what would Lawrence want you to do?” He had a point and I knew I was going.
My sister and friends agreed to “let me go” after I promised to check in every day and to let them track my location. It took a little convincing but, I get it, I was in a pretty fragile place in my life and they were worried about me.
I’ve always enjoyed a good road-trip and Lawrence had taken a few with me. We have been to Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Niagara Falls, and Cincinnati. On July 6th, 2022, I spent my 8 hour drive to Milwaukee the same way as I did the others, talking to my boy. I can’t explain how much I felt like he was with me; in a weird way the drive was peaceful and comforting.
I got to my room at the airbnb and fell asleep almost immediately. The next morning I woke way too early to head to the festival. I scrolled Facebook to kill the time and decided to write my 2nd post in GLT Facebook group. I posted something similar to the first part of this story, ending with me saying I was now in Milwaukee and looking forward to soothing my soul with some healing music.
By that afternoon I had over 500 comments. I spent 45 minutes sitting on a bench near Lake Michigan reading through the comments from these lovely ladies offering condolences, or places to stay if I ever visited their state in my travels, and several who were in Milwaukee and offered to meet up for coffee and a chat. Man, people are good!
I received a DM from one such Milwaukeean, offering me a pass to see the band Milky Chance at a private party at noon that day. I took her up on it and found myself nearly in the front row to hear my first band of the weekend.
By the end of the weekend, my post had 27K likes/reactions and over 2,000 comments from amazing women offering their condolences and rooting for me. #livelongmommy
Later that afternoon, my lack of sleep, the hot weather and the beer (…when in Rome….) got to me, and I needed to take a rest. I found a quiet spot, not near any of the stages, sat on the ground and tried to take a little nap. But about 5 minutes after I sat down, the music came to me… A blues band wheeled past on a trailer pulled by a pickup truck, they were followed by a drumline, some stilt-walkers and then a golf cart carrying what felt like a direct message from my boy to me.
I see you, kid. I see you.
Another highlight of the trip was falling in love with a new band. The High Kings from Ireland. I was walking in to the festival on day 2 and as I was passing a stage, I heard this beautiful sound and there they were. I listened to their whole set and they mentioned that this was their first stop on their American tour and I made a point to look them up when I got home…. more on that in another story.
Here are a few pictures of things that made me smile at the festival. Live your fest life! As a short person who goes to a lot of standing only concerts, this is the best t-shirt I’ve ever seen! Even the stick figures on the restroom signs are rockstars at this festival.
I knew that I’d be able to handle the music by myself because I always go to shows solo. Rafting, that was another thing. All of my recent rafting memories are with Lawrence. We enjoyed our first trip so much that we went again the next day! I knew that this was going to be near impossible to do alone, but the trips were already paid for, so I asked my friend, Chris, to fly out to Wisconsin, raft with me and then help me drive home.
Without hesitation, Chris said “YES”! even though we haven’t really seen each other in the last 12 years. I’m so glad she did, because there was a moment before we got on the bus to ride to the drop site that I didn’t think I could do it. I just missed him so much I couldn’t breathe. But in typical Chris fashion she was able to get me laughing and reminded me that he would want me to go, after all live long mommy was a direct order. And as Jack London said, “the proper function of man is to LIVE, not to exist.” I will not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” My brother-in-law, Bob, read this poem at Lawrence’s graveside service.
Chris and I continued to laugh and cry the whole way down the river, and back to Ohio, but mostly we laughed, and caught up, and remembered how fun we are when we’re together.
I don’t know who said this but it’s never, in my life, been more applicable.
“When it hurts to look behind, and you’re afraid to look ahead; look beside you and there will be your friends.”
After the end 