alex viola | Operation Home

Hey guys! I hope everyone’s weekend has been awesome so far!! Mine’s been a little different than usual. But before I get into that, let’s talk about stuff. For the last nine months, I’ve kept up a schedule of posting 2-3 times per week (usually 3) with various projects and home-related topics, most of which have centered around our home. As mentioned in various places on my site, this blog is my outlet… a DIY diary of sorts to look back on later. For the most part, this schedule has been doable without issue and I’ve continued to be excited/borderline-impatient to publish every post.

But, alas, I’m like many people when it comes to DIY stuff. It kind of ebbs and flows according to life. And lately it’s been ebbing thanks to an uncharacteristic amount of travel. I actually have painted our bedroom chair as alluded to in this Instagram pic (Yep, I’m on Instagram now. Anditrocks.)…

…but, unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to style it and take “after” pics yet. So, stay tuned for that.

Anyways, within the past month we’ve traveled twice, which is highly unlike us. And we have another trip planned before month’s end, which is pretty much crazytown in our neck of the woods. Our first trip was to Mexico as described in this post, and over the last few days we’ve been in North Carolina for a memorial at Fort Bragg to honor my brother, Alex (you can read about him in this or this post if you’re new and/or interested).

Memorials are funny things. You want to be happy to be there because your loved one deserves it, but it’s also really hard emotionally to have everything rehashed and fresh. I’ll be honest and say that I was kind of dreading it for the latter reason. In the end, though, I’m really glad I went. I didn’t take a ton of pictures, but I’ll share a few of my Instagram pics from the weekend to give you an idea.

The event was for the families of eighteen fallen solders, whose names were to be engraved in the Memorial for Fallen Special Operations Soldiers. We had a reception to attend the first night, which is where a truly momentous thing happened. Joey and I got a halfway-decent serious picture together….

I know. I can’t believe it either.

Then, the following day, we had a busy agenda with several events which culminated with the ceremony at the memorial where we finally got to see it…

As I approached the wall, I gazed at his name, then quickly brushed it with my fingers as I walked away. I had no idea at the time that one of Alex’s teammates had captured the moment…

It’s an experience that I knew I’d remember, but never expected to have a momento from. I nearly lost it when he sent it to me and am so grateful for his impeccable timing.

I have to say that everything about the weekend was very organized, respectful and interesting. We got to learn a lot about what Alex did out there with his job, which was awesome. He was the senior engineer on the team (and I learned that his actual role was called 18 Charlie) and we got to see the tools that he used and familiarize ourselves with some of his responsibilities. They had some educational exhibits and we got to visit the Airborne & Special Operations Museum to learn about our Special Ops history.

But my favorite part was getting to spend time with Alex’s team….

This is me, Joey and my parents with the team. Getting to hear stories about Alex and finally putting faces to names was incredible. We had such fun with these guys at dinner after the ceremony and at various points between the more formal events throughout the weekend. It was an experience that I’m truly grateful for.

Seriously… I know you hear things all the time about thanking and appreciating our military. I’ve always felt this way (of course), but even with my brother in the service, it was always kind of an obscure idea in my mind. After speaking with all these guys, and hearing stories about how it is out there and things they do, I have a completely new outlook and a much grander and more specific appreciation for them. These highly-trained and especially brave men and women who serve our country deserve the type of respect reserved for the greats. Memorial Day has a whole new meaning to me now.

So, with that said, we have one more trip coming up, then things should be getting back to normal. I have a few smaller projects up my sleeve in the interim, but content may be a little lighter than usual on the DIY side for the next week or two. I appreciate you guys bearing with me and I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday weekend.

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As some of you may already know, my brother Alex lost his life in Afghanistan in November. And I have to say that I’ve never been so grateful for this little blog as I was during that awful time. This outlet of mine gave me a place to write about him and honor him in the only way I knew how. And I’m convinced that this was the most therapeutic action I could’ve taken. I wrote the majority of Alex’s Post the night we found out and I go back and read it periodically, along with the very sweet comments that people were kind enough to leave. It helps somehow. It makes me feel closer to him every time I read it.

I think I’ve been in some sort of avoidance/denial mode for the majority of the last few months (and probably still am to some extent). But, I’ve finally gotten to a point where I’ve been able to handle going through my stuff and the things given to me in his honor to figure out what to display.

I’m not sure if anybody has noticed, but I’ve never been one to cover our home in family photos. We have our living room photo collage, and a random wedding picture as part of our hallway collage, but that’s pretty much it. I’m one of those people who has a few select favorite personal photos that I cherish and then aside from that, I like to display things with meaning associated with them that may not be blatantly obvious to the general public. Things given to us or purchased at memorable events. Things handed down, or that remind us of someone special, etc.

I remember the first time Alex visited our house. His response was “Where’s me??”. I just laughed and told him to not take offense. I pointed out that we barely have pictures of US displayed (meaning Joey and I). Most are of Lucas, of course. But we did have a Green Beret bear displayed for him in Lucas’s room.

The funny thing is, I would’ve loved to have displayed a shot of him somewhere. I just never got around to getting one printed and framed (which in hindsight, is pretty sad). I mean, it’s not like I had to grind the wood pulp to produce the photo paper or anything to make that happen.

Anyways, as I began to go through stuff over the past weeks to decide what to use, I also had to decide how I wanted to display them. I immediately ruled out hanging everything in one place. I’m not sure I could handle that. Emotional overload, if you ask me. So, I decided to start with three items to display in a few subtle places. So that we can see them often and think of him, but not have them be totally smack-you-in-your-face, tear-up-every-time-I-see-them out there.

The first item I chose, was this picture…

I took it in my parents garage in the summer of 2012. It’s my favorite picture of the two of them. It’s the exact copy that I framed and gave to Alex for Christmas that year. It was returned to us after we lost him. I couldn’t bear to change the frame for this reason. So, I took it as is and hung it on our hallway collage wall…

I also hung his dog tags next to his photo….

I thought about framing them as well, but simply hanging them on a nail seemed more him. More casual. For the man who used Tupperware as furniture. 🙂

So, our frame wall looks like this now…

Lastly, I chose his rubiks cube. It came back with him from Afghanistan. His teammate told us that Alex had found it in his barrack (is that the right term? I always get the language confused) when he first arrived in Kandahar and he played with it constantly after that. It’s the way he left it. I love it because it’s random. Just like Alex.

So, I decided to mount it in a display box of some sort. I found this tray from a Melissa and Doug modeling clay set in Lucas’s room and decided that it was perfect…

I painted the back of the tray the same Jungle Thicket green that I painted behind Lucas’s Expedit shelves. Then, I drilled four holes through the middle of the tray and threaded some floral wire through the rubiks cube and through the tray…

I didn’t want to glue it or do anything that might ruin the rubiks cube in case I ever wanted to change it. I figured that Alex would be proud of the blue side that he’d completed, so I kept that side in front. And I hung it in Lucas’s room…

For some reason, I felt like Lucas’s bedside was the best place for it. Like added protection for the little man or something. Plus, it represents Alex’s playful nature… And he sure loved playing with Lucas.

I think the rubiks cube art affects me more than even his picture does (hence the exorbitant number of pics). I’m not sure why it has this effect. It just reminds me of my brother so much. So anyways, I’m not promising that this will be the last art for Alex, but it’s definitely a good start. And I hope that wherever he is, he can see it and approves.