Bees: First Honey Extraction

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How sweet it is!

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

On Tuesday, I extracted honey from my first beehive for the first time. The yield from this 6-week old hive was amazing — but I’ll get to that in a moment. First, some backstory.

Why I Extracted

The odd part about the whole thing is that I never intended to extract honey from this hive at all. I was told that I’d started late and that the bees would likely need any honey they made to get them through the winter. This was okay with me. I’m not interested in extracting honey and putting it in jars as gifts or to sell. I’m interested in comb honey, which hardly anyone seems interested in producing or selling. I’m also interested in increasing my hive count and producing nucs for sale to other beekeepers. And maybe next year getting serious about raising queens.

Hive #1 in Mid July 2013
My first hive looked like this right before I extracted honey. The honey was in the middle box; the top box contains Ross Rounds.

But this particular hive had grown very quickly — so quickly, in fact, that I put a second deep hive box on it right after my first hive inspection. Being a new beekeeper, I really didn’t have a handle on the way colonies build. I was under the impression that if I put a deep hive box on a hive, bees would use it for brood and honey. The medium “honey” supers were for honey; I’d add one of those later.

Bees, however, don’t read beekeeping books or take advice from beekeepers. They do whatever they want. And this colony had used virtually all of the top hive box to store honey and pollen. Seven full frames plus two half frames of it. The tenth frame was partially drawn out with comb with some honey deposits. (This was all made in about a month. These were busy bees.)

Do you know how much a deep super weighs with 10 frames of honey in it? Estimates run between 50 and 80 pounds.

It’s for this reason that many beekeepers use only medium hive boxes. They want full boxes to be lighter and easier to handle.

But I want my hives to be compatible with accessories such as drone frames and in-hive feeders. And nucs, which nearly always come with deep frames in them. So I’d like all of my hives to have a deep hive box.

But just one of them. This hive had two.

Meanwhile, I’d done a hive split the week before and the bees from the new hive were living in a nuc box until I could get another deep hive box for them. It would cost $62 and I’d have to wait a week for it to arrive. The bees didn’t seem happy and I was eager to get them into more comfortable living quarters. I didn’t want to wait (or pay) if I didn’t have to.

The logical thing to do was to use the second deep hive box on my first hive. But that was full of honey. I needed to get rid of the honey. The only way to do that — without throwing away the frames — was to extract it.

So that’s what I set out to do on Tuesday.

Special Equipment

Honey ExtractorTo extract honey, you need a honey extractor. There are a few types and they range in price due to features and size. Prices start at about $200 and go up to well over $1,000. The expense of buying one of these units is one of the reasons I didn’t want to deal with extracting honey. Who wants to spend $800 on a machine that’s only used a few times a year and needs to be cleaned, maintained, and stored when not in use?

Fortunately, my friend Jim had an extractor and was willing to let me use it. He’d also hang around and walk me through the process. So that’s where I went on Tuesday.

Uncapping ScratcherThe only other special equipment needed was a pail to collect the honey, a stainer to separate out the wax cappings and anything else that wasn’t honey (don’t ask), and an uncapping scratcher, which I already had.

Pulling the Frames

My first hive is at Jim’s house, so it was simply a matter of removing the honey-filled frames from the hive and carrying them to the patio at the back of his house where he usually used the extractor. I suited up, opened the hive, removed the Ross Rounds box and queen excluder on top, and got to work. I’d brought along a clean nuc box to hold the frames five at a time. Bee BrushThe trick was removing the frames, using my bee brush to brush the bees off the frame and back into the hive, and putting the frame sans bees into the nuc box.

I wish I had photos of this process, but with uncertain weather — remember, I’m still on contract for cherry drying — and a general feeling of urgency about getting the job done, I simply forgot to set up my camera.

Jim was extremely helpful. As I prepped each frame, he stood ready with his hands on the nuc box cover. I’d pull out a frame and then run my brush gently over the frame surface. It was amazing how easy it was to simply sweep the bees away. Then I’d turn the frame and do the other side. And then go back to the first side where a few more bees had landed again. Then Jim would pull off the cover, I’d slip the frame in, and he’d cover it back up. We did this until the nuc box was full.

He ran the box back to his house while I pulled the now half-empty deep hive box off the hive and set it aside. I placed the medium hive box with its ten empty medium frames on top of the bottom box. When Jim returned, we continued, but now I brushed the bees into the medium box they’d be using for future honey stores.

We wound up with a total of seven frames that were ready for extraction. All seven were full and mostly capped.

Capping, by the way, is what the bees do to a full cell of honey. They create wax caps to seal them off. Beeswax, by the way, is completely edible, including the caps. (Bees also cap brood, but I wasn’t interested in any of that.)

Honey Comb
This closeup shot of a honey frame shows capped honey cells on top with uncapped honey cells beneath them. This frame would not be ready for extraction.

While Jim brought the nuc with the last two frames back to the house, I reassembled the hive, placing the queen excluder back on top of the new hive box, a spacer with an exit above that, and the Ross Rounds box above that. Then the inner cover and outer cover.

I left the deep hive box with the remaining three frames set aside. I was hoping that while I was busy extracting the bees would realize that they were no longer in the hive and would leave. Then I went back to my truck and stripped out of my bee suit. I wouldn’t need it to extract and it was a warm day.

Extracting the Honey

The extraction process was pretty straightforward. First, I used the uncapping scratcher to scratch away most of the honey caps. All I really had to do was puncture them, but I dragged the scratcher across the surface to do the job quickly. I then slid the frame into one of the extractor’s three slots with the scratched side facing out. I did this for three frames.

Uncapping Honey-filled Frames
Here I am, uncapping one of the frames.

Next, we spun up the extractor. The machine spins the frames, using centrifugal force to get the honey out of the cells. The honey hits the side of the extractor and drips down into the extractor’s well.

Extracting Honey
The extractor spins the honey out of the cells.

Honey Bucket
Once the honey began flowing, it continued for well over an hour.

Jim opened up the gate at the bottom and let the honey drip into the strainer over a bucket. We watched as the first thick drip appeared. “Quick!” Jim said. “Get something to grab that first taste!”

The something was my less than clean finger. I captured the first drip and sucked it off my finger. It was heavenly. (Honestly, if you haven’t tasted fresh, raw honey you’re missing quite an experience. Warning: You probably won’t ever eat mass-produced, supermarket honey again.)

Jim complemented me on the color. It was a light yellow. I suspect there was a lot of clover content; there’s a ton of clover in the area near the hive.

When the first side of the frames were about half done, I stopped the extractor. One at a time, I removed the frames, scratched the other side, and replaced them facing the other way. Then I ran the extractor again, this time up to full speed. Jim had advised me to avoid full speed when I was running the first side to prevent the frame foundation from warping. After about five minutes, I flopped the frames again to get the remaining honey out of the first side.

Meanwhile, the honey just globbed out through the gate into the strainer. As I mentioned earlier, it was a warm day so the flow was pretty quick and smooth. By the time I’d finished the second group of three frames, the strainer was full with the honey dripping through it slower than it poured in. The wax cappings were clogging the strainer. We had to shut the tap and wait for the strainer to catch up. By then, it was clear that I had over a gallon of honey.

I still had one fully capped honey frame to extract. Doing so in the spinning extractor could be tricky since it would be out of balance when it spun, even if I put two empty frames in with it.

Besides, it was clouding up and I didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary away from base. I’d already gotten check-in calls from both of the pilots working with me. Rain was in the forecast for that evening and the next day. With a total of more than 230 acres of cherry trees still under contract, I had important responsibilities elsewhere.

Jim and his wife Kriss offered to keep the extractor set up and let the rest of the honey flow into the strainer when the strainer had caught up. I could pick up the bucket and strainer the next day and put the honey in jars at home. In the meantime, I could take the deep hive box and frames home so I could use them in my newest hive.

I commented proudly on Twitter and Facebook that I’d extracted a gallon of honey. Later that evening, Kriss corrected me: two gallons.

Putting the Honey in Jars

Early the next day, the two other pilots and I hovered over about 120 acres of cherry trees in Quincy, East Wenatchee, and Wenatchee Heights after thunderstorms rolled through. By 10 AM, the weather had cleared out. I was hosting a party that evening that included smoked beef ribs and I lacked one ingredient for the rub I was making. I needed to get the ribs on before 1 PM for them to smoke all afternoon.

And, of course, I still had to fetch the honey.

So I set out to run my errands, finishing up at Jim and Kriss’s house. I don’t know if they were home; I didn’t want to knock on their door and bother them if I didn’t have to. I just went out back. The honey bucket was there, covered up to keep it safe from bugs — mainly Jim’s bees.

I looked at the clear, thick yellow liquid in the bucket. Tick marks along the side indicated that it contained over two gallons of honey.

I left a 12-pack of quart sized jars and some money on the patio table, then took the honey out to my truck. As we’d agreed, I also loaded 10 medium hive boxes from the stacks Jim had bought from a retired beekeeper into my truck. They were in new condition, although unpainted and somewhat dirty. At only $7 each, I couldn’t pass up the deal.

Back home, I finished prepping the ribs and got them on the smoker. Then I set about putting all that honey into the quart- and pint-sized jars I’d bought while running my errands.

For some reason, I thought I needed to run the honey through a finer strainer to filter out the remaining tiny bits of wax cappings. In hindsight, I realize this wasn’t really necessary. All it added was another messy step to what was already a very messy job.

Filtering Honey
I’m not sure why I filtered the honey again. It really didn’t need it.

Trouble is, the spigot at the bottom of the bucket was too small for the honey to pass through. So all the honey had to be scooped up out of the top of the bucket. I used a half-cup measuring cup. I poured it into a strainer that I’d placed over a paper bowl fashioned as a wide funnel.

I’m not exaggerating when I say it took me about 90 minutes to go through it all. My guests arrived just as I was finishing up.

Everyone had a taste of honey. They all loved it.

Honey Jars
The final product. (I’d already stowed my personal pint.)

My friend Cheryl and I arranged the jars on my countertop for a photo. The final tally was 5 quart sized jars and 11 pint sized jars.

I’ve already given away five pints.

The Aftermath

Clean up wasn’t difficult with lots of hot water to melt the honey. I’ll return Jim’s honey bucket and stainer today, along with a bunch of cherries I picked yesterday morning. I sure do appreciate him letting me use his extractor and walking me though the process. I’d offer him some honey to thank him — but I know he has plenty of his own.

As for what I plan to do with all that honey — well, I’ve been thinking of brewing some mead…

Atychiphobia

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The fear of failure.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why some people — including someone who was once very close to me — don’t achieve the things they purportedly want to in life. I’m talking about people who have dreams or goals and don’t work toward reaching them.

As anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows, I’m not like this. I’ve been called an “overachiever” (meant as an insult, if you can believe that) and a “Renaissance woman” (which I assume wasn’t referring to my Renaissance painting full figure). I set a goal and do what’s necessary to achieve it. Sometimes I fail but, more often, I don’t. The point is, I do what it takes — or at least try to — to make things happen.

Being like this puts me at a disadvantage when trying to understand people who aren’t like this. People who claim to have dreams and goals but then do very little or even nothing to make them happen. It’s almost as if they believe that just telling others what they want to achieve is enough. They don’t follow through — and they often don’t seem to have a problem with it. Or, worse yet, they blame others for holding them back — when, in reality, the only person holding them back is themselves.

Learned Helplessness

I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and how it relates specifically to a certain person no longer in my life. This friend was also in a relationship with a man like this — a man who never managed to achieve anything he supposedly wanted to achieve. Instead, her guy relied on her to help him through life, like an emotional and financial crutch. She said the condition he suffered from was learned helplessness and suggested that my guy had the same problem.

I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Learned helplessness is the condition of a human or animal that has learned to behave helplessly, failing to respond even though there are opportunities for it to help itself by avoiding unpleasant circumstances or by gaining positive rewards. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.

This didn’t sound right to me. The person I was trying to understand did fail to help himself when there were opportunities to do so, but the rest of the description just didn’t fit. I thought for a while longer about what was likely holding him back and I realized that it was probably a fear of failure.

Fear of Failure

Wikipedia has an entry for that, too. It’s called Atychiphobia:

Atychiphobia (from the Greek phóbos, meaning “fear” or “morbid fear” and atyches meaning “unfortunate”) is the abnormal, unwarranted, and persistent fear of failure. As with many phobias, atychiphobia often leads to a constricted lifestyle, and is particularly devastating for its effects on a person’s willingness to attempt certain activities.

A person afflicted with atychiphobia considers the possibility of failure so intense that they choose not to take the risk. Often this person will subconsciously undermine their own efforts so that they no longer have to continue to try. Because effort is proportionate to the achievement of personal goals and fulfillment, this unwillingness to try that arises from the perceived inequality between the possibilities of success and failure holds the atychiphobic back from a life of meaning and the realization of potential.

By definition, the anxiety of any particular phobia is understood to be disproportionate to reality, and the victim is typically aware that the fear is irrational, making the problem a largely subconscious one.

This describes the problem perfectly: constricted lifestyle, unwillingness to attempt certain activities, unwillingness to take risks, unwillingness to try to succeed. The sad result is indeed that the sufferer is held “back from a life of meaning and the realization of potential.”

I think a lot of people suffer from this in varying degrees. But it really depends on the person’s imagination. Someone who lacks the imagination to come up with goals worth pursuing and does not pursue goals can’t be said to suffer from atychiphobia because they simply don’t have anything to potentially fail at. But someone who does have the imagination to come up with achievable goals and doesn’t pursue them — well, what can be holding them back if it isn’t a fear of failure?

You Can Only Blame Yourself

Failure is a part of life. While no one likes to fail, there’s no reason why a fear of failure should hold someone back.

If a goal is achievable and a good plan is made to work toward that goal, why not give it a try? By weighing risks and rewards — and the potential for each — a person should be able to make the decisions necessary to move toward any achievable goal. And by measuring levels of success, failure, and risk along the way, a person should be able to determine, on a day-by-day basis, how he’s doing and whether he’s likely to succeed.

The person I’m trying to understand shared many dreams and goals with me throughout his life. I was as supportive as I could be, actually helping him with brainstorming, writing, designing, and doing web work in a few instances when he began attempts to achieve some of these goals. But in the end, he simply stopped trying, abandoning file folders of incomplete notes in favor of “unwinding” in front of a television.

Being blamed for holding him back was particularly painful for me, especially since I was working so hard to build my business so it would support both of us. I wanted badly for him to achieve the kind of self-satisfaction that I achieved throughout my life. I wanted to see him free from financial burdens so he could have the time to chase down one of his dreams and make it a reality.

Unfortunately, I would never get to see that happen.

Move Forward

Meanwhile, I’ll continue formulating goals, evaluating them, and either discarding them or chasing them down. I’m looking forward to rebooting my life in a beautiful place that I love, surrounded by friends with plenty of work to keep me busy. I’m facing the challenge of designing and building a new home that exactly meets my needs. I’m building my apiary with solid plans for producing comb honey and other bee products by next summer. I’m forging new friendships and new relationships to take me forward in my life.

I’m not afraid to fail so I’ll throw everything I have at every goal I want to achieve.

How about you? What’s holding you back?

Bees: The Risky Hive Split

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Let’s see if I regret this.

I started my beekeeping hobby in June 2013 and have been blogging about it periodically. If you’re interested in reading the other posts in this series, follow the Adventures in Beekeeping tag. Keep in mind that the most recent posts always appear first on this blog.

Last week, I blogged about a hive inspection and included a photo of a queen cell. Because of its position in the frame, I thought it was a supersedure cell — the kind of queen cell the bees produce if their queen is ill, dead, or missing. But when I showed it to my beekeeper friends at last week’s bee chat, they universally agreed that it was a swarm cell. That meant my bees were planning to swarm.

I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to increase the number of bees and especially beehives that I had — not decrease the number of bees.

Queen Cell
The elongated cell is definitely a queen cell, but is it a swarm or supersedure cell? People more knowledgeable than me say swarm.

I thought of everything I knew so far about beekeeping — which is pretty much based on what I’d read and observed for the past few months. (In other words, a lot but not much.) I reasoned that if the brood frames that included the swarm cells were removed from the hive without the queen and they were put in another hive, the bees would raise a new queen and I’d have a new hive.

This is a hive split.

I did this on Friday. I took two brood frames plus one honey frame from my first hive and placed them in a nuc box with two empty frames. All three frames were covered with bees that would become the new hive’s starting population. I’d rely on those bees to complete the rearing of the queens in the queen cells on those brood frames.

I then replaced the brood and honey frames I’d removed from the hive with empty frames, giving the bees plenty of space for new brood and honey in the existing colony.

The only problem: I never saw the queen.

Although I’m pretty sure she was left behind in the original hive, I can’t be sure since I didn’t see her. After all, the hive had to have at least 20,000 bees in it — finding one among all that is not easy.

And that’s where the risk lies.

You see, if I took the queen along with the brood frames containing the swarm cells, not only would I leave the original hive queenless, but I run the risk of losing a viable queen to the new queens that hatch. Or having bees swarm from the nuc anyway. (Admittedly, this second scenario is not likely, given the limited number of bees in the nuc box.) Finally, as my beekeeping friend in Vermont, Tom, pointed out, if a hive suddenly becomes queenless, the workers might start laying eggs. Those will all be worthless drones.

Of course, I did leave behind brood frames that included queen cells just in case. That hive runs the same risks.

Do I know what will happen? No. But time will tell. I’ll check the nuc box later today — it’s right here at my RV parking space — and try to figure out what’s going on. I’ll also check the original hive (which is down in Wenatchee) later in the week to see what those bees are up to.

Worst case scenario: I screw up my original hive and don’t have a viable colony in the nuc box. Best case scenario: my risky hive split works.

Will report back when I know something.

A Friend Drops In…Literally. Again.

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Why drive by when you can fly by?

At 6:15 Friday morning, my coffee was brewing into my cup and I was scrambling eggs for Alex the Bird and Penny the Tiny Dog. I heard a helicopter in the area and assumed it was the same spray pilot I’d seen earlier in the week working an orchard across the canyon. But when I went to the door to take a look, the helicopter I saw was not outfitted with spray gear.

Schweizer 300
My friend Woody on approach for landing in his Schweizer 300.

It was a Schweizer 300 and I knew my friend Woody was at the controls.

I tried calling him on the phone. He answered but I couldn’t hear his voice and didn’t know if he could hear me. I talked anyway: “Land on the gravel driveway of the house next door and I’ll make you breakfast.”

Penny Greeted my Guest
Penny greeted my breakfast guest as soon as he was on the ground.

He circled. I didn’t know if he’d heard me. So I came out and started pointing at the intended landing zone. One way or the other, he got the message. Moments later, he was setting down at the top of the driveway, only a few feet from the edge of the canyon. Penny ran over to greet him, even before he’d shut the engine.

I waited until the blades had stopped spinning before greeting him myself. After assuring him that the helicopter was fine parked there — my neighbor was away and not expected back for a long while — I led him back to my RV, the “mobile mansion,” with a promise of coffee and breakfast. I gave him my untouched cup, just brewed, and he found room at the table. I started a second cup brewing, made Alex and Penny their eggs, and tidied up the table. Then I got out the bacon and some eggs and made us breakfast while we chatted.

Woody is working with me — well, sort of for me — on my cherry drying contracts. A client with a 90-acre orchard came online on Wednesday and I still have another 40 or so acres under contract throughout the area. If my big client called for a dry, it would take me more than 2 hours to finish his orchard, thus leaving the others to wait. That would not be acceptable to them so it was certainly unacceptable to me. So I put out my feelers and found Woody’s company, based in Arizona and willing to make the trip to Washington for just the 8 days of work I could offer. They managed to get a short contract before starting with me and, if they’re lucky, they’ll get another contract when I release them.

Woody and I took a quick look at the orchards he might be called to dry from the air on Monday. On Tuesday, when he and his companions joined me at a Pot Luck BBQ I hosted for a Meetup group in Walla Walla Point Park, I gave him GoogleMaps-generated location information for each orchard. But this morning, when he woke to cloudy skies, he thought it would be a good idea to scout them again from the air in case he got called today. He was scouting the orchard across the canyon from me when he decided to fly by.

And that’s how he ended up at my dining table, sharing bacon and eggs with fresh-brewed coffee with me at 7 AM.

We chatted through two cups of coffee, then headed out in my truck. I had to go to the property I’m buying in Malaga to fetch a large wooden pallet I’d left there for my bee hives. I decided that the pallet, covered with a rug, would make an excellent “deck” for my poor man’s hot tub. He wanted to see the property, so he came along for the ride. I think he was impressed. (Everyone who has seen the property has been impressed — with one notable exception that’s yet another indication of his poor judgement.)

Back at the mobile mansion, Woody helped me pull some nasty staples out of the wood and position the pallet beside the tub. He told me that he’d seen another hot tub like it at a skydiving place he used to spend a lot of time at. (I knew the idea wasn’t original.)

Penny in a Schweizer
Penny is comfortable in any helicopter.

We talked about going down to the Rocky Reach Dam later in the day with another friend. Something else to kill time. (We’d spent much of the previous day on my boat in the Columbia River.) I had some errands to take care of in Wenatchee — I wanted to experiment with a hive split — so he headed out. I walked him down to his helicopter and posed Penny in his seat for a photo before he climbed on board.

Penny and I moved back as he started up. I videoed his departure, amused that he did the same drop-off maneuver that I usually did when departing my landing zone 100 feet farther up the hill.


Woody’s departure from the hillside landing zone is remarkably like mine: dipping off the side and speeding away.

It was nice to have a friend drop in by helicopter — especially so unplanned. (I love spontaneity and surprises!) But I’ll be honest: it wasn’t the first time.

And I don’t think it will be the last.

Dear Julia

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Dear Julia,

I was saddened — but not terribly surprised — to learn of your passing early this morning. After all, you’d reached that 90-year milestone and your health had never been very good throughout the 30 years I knew you. Both Mike and I were continuously surprised at your long life. “My mother is a force of nature,” he used to say.

At the Parade
Do you remember this day, Julia? I think it was Memorial Day, perhaps the first year Mike and I lived in New Jersey. You and Charlie were there, along with my family, watching the parade at the end of our street. It was so long ago — Mike almost had hair!

As I think back on all those years — the first twelve or so while your husband was still alive, and the later years when you were left without him — my mind recalls various scenes in which you were a player. In the beginning, you were a minor character, but over time you took on a more starring role.

I often think of the night your husband died so suddenly. Of getting that terrible phone call in the middle of the night — the one no one wants to get — and being at the wheel of Mike’s car with him sitting in stunned disbelief beside me as we sped the 30 miles from our home to yours. Of seeing the New York City police officers milling about your living room. Of seeing your husband Charlie laid out so peacefully on a bed in the spare room with a blanket up to his chest as if he were just sleeping. Of the shock you must have felt looking at your dead husband while the space he’d occupied beside you in bed only a short time before was still warm from his body and love for you. That morning was incredible, fixed upon my mind like an etching in stone. You were so unprepared for his death. One evening, you’re having dinner with him and 14 hours later, you’re shopping for his casket and cemetery plot. I honestly don’t know how you did it. You showed a strength that day that I know I don’t have. But I suspect that in private you were far more tearful than I am right now, just recalling and writing about it. (Yes, the tears are running down my face now as they have so many times in the past year when I think back to things that once were.)

Christmas
Your family’s visit to our home at Christmas in 2005 was a bit trying, but not because of you.

Charlie’s death didn’t just change your life — it changed ours. It changed Mike’s role, forcing him to fill your husband’s shoes in caring for you. Charlie took such good care of you, handling all the little chores of life, that you could not manage so many basic things on your own. I clearly recall Mike and I teaching you how to write checks and balance your bank accounts. And the “honey do” lists you had for Mike! They were a bit of a joke — at least at first — and expected on every visit to your home. I have a clear image of you consulting a scrap of paper as Mike finished a task and asked you what was next. Oh, how he dreaded visiting right after the beginning or end of daylight savings time! All those clocks!

But Mike stepped up to the plate and did so many things for you — often without your knowledge. I did a few, too, but admittedly not as many as I could or should have.

Flying with Mike
I was really proud of you the day you climbed into Mike’s plane with him. I didn’t think you could do it; I should have known better.

Indeed, Mike was “the good son” and you wanted me to be the good daughter-in-law. How I must have frustrated you! The engagement in 1984 should have been followed by a wedding soon after, but I just couldn’t go through with it. I loved your son deeply — I still do — but he was sometimes mentally abusive to me, embarrassing me in front of family and friends. This was so painful to me and didn’t seem right. I remember how his father used to tease you and the bickering that ensued and I suppose Mike thought that was standard operating procedure for a married couple. But I hated it — just as I hated the bickering at your house. Marriage is supposed to be a forever thing — surely you and Charlie knew that — and there was too much doubt in my mind about my relationship with Mike. If I married, I had to be sure I could make it last forever — and I simply wasn’t sure. I kept putting off marriage so long that after a while it seemed like a silly idea.

After all, it wasn’t as if I wanted children. I know that bothered you too — as it bothers my mother to this day. Most women of your generation were raised to want children and grandchildren; I was not. And it likely bothered Mike — although I told him straight out, before I finally got my tubal ligation in 1997, that if he wanted kids he needed to find a different woman. I was not interested in motherhood, so I failed to give you and my mother the grandchildren you wanted.

The marriage did come many years later, but it wasn’t for the right reasons. Both you and my mother were cheated out of the big wedding you likely wanted to see. Because of the reasons for our marriage, our anniversary date became a source of pain for me. I flat-out told my stepmother to stop sending cards. And years later, in my divorce filing, I’d even get the date wrong.

But yes, I was a disappointment to you. No matter how much you bragged to your friends about me and my achievements, I know I disappointed you. We just never connected the way you probably thought we should. Although I’m sorry about the disappointment, please understand that I could not change myself to make someone else happy. My mother knows this, too. So does your son.

Mildred and Julia
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I always wished that you were more like your friend Mildred: fun loving, independent, happy. I knew that her death would leave an empty space in your life and it made me so sad for you.

In the later years of my marriage to your son you became a source of friction between us. As you aged, you seemed to become more and more dependent on Mike to help you with the chores of life. Even after we moved to Arizona, you had him near you a full week (or more!) every month — he maintained a separate home there! Later, when he gave that up, he spent all of his vacation time going back to New York to visit you, using Vitec business as an excuse. You spoke on the phone multiple times each day — hell, he talked to you more than me!

Was I jealous? Perhaps. But also frustrated. I couldn’t understand why you needed him so much and why he was so willing to put our life together aside to accommodate you.

Las Vegas
Do you remember that trip to Vegas? We flew up in my helicopter for an overnight stay at the Bellagio. I sent you a photo book to remember it and show your friends.

This all came to a head during your visit to Wickenburg in 2012. We’d arranged for a wonderful apartment for you in town. When Mike went to get you and Paul at the airport, I went to the store to buy groceries and other supplies. I stocked your fridge and cabinets with the kinds of food I thought you’d like, along with lots of fresh fruit and veggies. I bought flowers for your table. I wanted you to feel happy and welcome and at home in this place. After all, Mike had led me to believe that you were considering a move to Wickenburg and I wanted you to like the place we’d found for you.

I didn’t expect you to be at our home every evening, sitting at the table, playing cards with my husband. I didn’t expect everything we did for the duration of your two-month visit to include you. And I certainly didn’t expect you to laugh when I asked and tell me that you had no intention of moving to Wickenburg. I felt lied to, betrayed, manipulated — by your son. It should have warned me of things to come.

When Mike lost his job during that visit, I saw an opportunity for the two of us to get away for a few days in the RV before he started his next job, the dream job. A trip to Death Valley for the spring wildflowers. Some time away from home and the apartment. Some time to regroup and work out the tension that had formed between us since my return from Washington the previous fall. He said he wanted to go, but he delayed getting the plans together. He said he would tell you that we’d be gone for five days, but even the day before our planned departure you still didn’t know. And then he carelessly lost our friend’s dog in the desert and I snapped.

I was tired of being so far down on his list of priorities. I was frustrated with his inability to get his life together and make things happen. I was sick of listening to his excuses and feeling that he was hiding things from me. I was also tired of seeing how he feared you and your response to something that you might not like.

Yes, your son was afraid of you — as he was afraid of me. I’m sure he’s afraid of the woman who has taken our place, too: his mommy/girlfriend.

If only you knew how many times he lied to you — to “protect” you, he said. I realize now that he was lying to me, too.

I wonder how much stress you put on his relationship with that woman. I hope it was at least as much stress as you put on my relationship with him.

I’ll admit that if your son and I were still together, your passing would come as a relief to me. But now, estranged from your whole family by lies, betrayals, and misunderstandings, I feel only sadness and a sort of emptiness deep in my soul. Yes, we had our differences and you drove me nuts, but I respected you and your love for your children and your granddaughter. I respected your sacrifices for your husband, spending so many years making him a home. You did what you knew how to do and you poured your heart and soul into it. You did what you thought was right — even if it did have consequences you didn’t understand or even know about. I respected you for that.

Julia
Julia Chilingerian, 1922 – 2013

I regret that I was unable to talk to you one last time. To explain what happened between me and your son. To ask you if you knew why he gave up a 29-year relationship with the woman he claimed to love as recently as your last birthday for a manipulative stranger who led him astray. To forgive you for driving that wedge between us, for contributing to the friction that made him grow to hate me.

This letter will have to do. If there is an afterworld — a heaven, perhaps — you’ll know the truth.

I’ll miss you, Julia, as I miss the life I had with your son — good and bad. Rest in peace. You deserve it.

With love,
Your daughter-in-law,
Maria