I don’t have that luxury, though. This IS my life. I don’t have the option to think about this earth-shattering experience only when I have the emotional energy to handle it. I have to feel these feelings and inhabit this new reality whether I want to or not. And believe me, I don’t want to. I don’t want any of it.

I was reading about someone’s grief experience today, and they talked about how a loss this massive entirely changes one’s self-construction of the world around them. How it feels like you’ve shifted into a parallel universe where everything tastes different and all the colors are just slightly wrong and nothing feels like home anymore. You spend your entire life constructing your own reality and worldview and how things are supposed to be, and when it all changes in an instant, the only thing that hasn’t changed is your own brain. That’s the piece that lags behind everything else. The rest of the world is fine going on in its new wrong orbit, and those colors didn’t care whether they were violet or azure anyhow. But to my eyes, they’re not the way they’re supposed to be. I feel that, deeply.

Fewer people check in with me, these days. I don’t feel less-loved by my support system, but I think as we get further and further out from her death it all just ceases to be something that most people are going to regularly think about. But I think about her all day, every day. I probably need to do more reaching out myself, and maybe I’ll put some energy into that reconnection this weekend. It’s probably not fair of me to assume that I don’t need to check in with other people myself, or to expect that my friends will know what I need if I don’t tell them. When I’m having a hard day, or am feeling like life is just too much for me, saying hi to someone I love often feels like something I can’t possibly force myself to do. It’s about building those new habits, and I haven’t done enough of that yet.

If you think that I’m dwelling on my grief and that it’s unhealthy, I have to disagree with you there. I’m not living in the past—I’m getting up every day, I’m trying new and scary things, and I’m taking care of myself as well as I can. Sometimes I do better at that and sometimes I struggle to muster up enough energy to handle those everyday tasks.

It’s pretty normal to feel like I’m feeling. The more contact I have with other widowed folks, the more I recognize that. I’m doing better than some people, and worse than others. I’ve been in a new chat for newly-widowed people all over the world over the course of the last few days, and that’s been nice. The breadth of our shared experience has been refreshing, in spite of all our differences. Definitely something worth pursuing for me.

I still haven’t heard a response from any of those local widows I sent messages to several weeks ago, so back to the drawing board on that one—like I said back then, I probably wouldn’t be excited to hear from a random guy who wants to be my friend either.

I don’t have any major plans for this weekend, and that’s an exciting prospect right now, as of Friday night. Maybe that’ll change if I get bored or lonely or feel cut off from the rest of the world—but as of now, it feels refreshing to not have to do anything I don’t want to for the next two days. I suspect the dogs will be happy to see me without being left alone for a few days too!

I got a lot of sorting and organizing done in my office today. I was able to pack up some things of Kellie’s that I’m hoping someone is going to be able to sell for me (since I’ve tried, but just don’t have the energy to make it happen). It’s mostly health and beauty items that I don’t have any emotional connection to, but that might bring me a little bit of much-appreciated cash. The plus side of having gotten them out of my office is that I don’t have to look at them on Kellie’s desk every day and feel like a failure for having not dealt with them for almost seven months. It feels more and more like a peaceful space to me, the more I de-clutter. It’s been good.

The other major project I accomplished today is making myself lasagna tonight—it’s my favorite recipe, and one of Kellie’s favorites as well. I haven’t cooked it in about eight months now, and all the pieces just felt like far too much for me until today. I made two small pans, one to eat today and tomorrow and a second to freeze. I cannot overstate what a big deal it is to be able to cook something moderately complex just for me. And I did it, and it tasted good—not great, but definitely good. Better than I’d expected, even. Maybe that’s just the taste of pride spicing it up a bit. Either way, yum.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll be back in your inbox on Monday. And hey, text me or something! Odds are good that I miss you, if I know me (and sometimes I think I do).

XOXO,

Matt

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Things that made me cry today:

• Thinking about how sad I’ll be on New Year’s to leave Kellie behind in 2026

• Making a meal plan for the weekend

• Looking at my budget

• Seeing video and pictures of Margot and her family’s new dog

• Remembering how happy Kellie and I were to dress Coco & Ivy up last Halloween

Things that almost made me cry today:

• Buying groceries for the meal plan

• Buying Halloween costumes for the girls

• Changing the batteries in my wireless mouse

• Thinking about plans for Kellie’s Quaker memorial service

• Having to make and eat lunch

• Having to make and eat

• supper

• Having to do dishes

• Having to sweep the floor

• Having to throw away trash

• Stopping Coco from eating poisonous berries in the yard (several times)

• Catching Coco chewing on a metal spring (for the second time in two days)

• Trying to decide on emergency food and water supplies to buy before the power grid and supply lines shut down and giving up on all that once I realized that I’d also need a plan for dog food.

• Catching Coco on the dining room table eating the remnants of my Cajun rice and andouille sausage.

Things that made me happy today:

• Sleeping until 7:30am

• The fact that Margot and her family got an incredible dog

• The sound of my wind chimes through the window

• Coco and Ivy being themselves

• Turning off the furnace and on the central air

• Planning some future Kent State stuff

• Texts and Marco Polo messages from special people

• Having a slightly less-cluttered office

• How excited Coco gets when I’m done working for the day

• The fall leaves

• Being able to help students

• Being able to help counseling clients

• Finding a 12-pack of my favorite peach tea in the mudroom fridge that I have no recollection of buying

• Someone offering to play board games with me over the holidays so I’ll be less sad

• Getting the incredible food storage containers I Kickstarted back in early June

I keep wanting to tell Kellie a story about a conversation I had, and wanting to remind her to order some pantry staple we usually have on hand, and wanting to give her a kiss. But she’s not here, and sometimes there’s nothing I can do to feel even a little bit okay with that. But we take the good with the bad around here. Today, the good outweighed the bad by a lot, and I still cried multiple times. That part is no fun.

Talk to you later,

Matt

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It’s midway through the week, and the leaves have just barely started piling up on my lawn, which probably means that Halloween is here. Kellie and I were never big on trick and treating, at least since we’ve had a home. The first couple of years, we bought candy and were prepared but then had a variety of emergencies derail our best-laid plans. At this point we just enjoy the kids walking the neighborhood and don’t put the pressure on ourselves to welcome any of them to our house, which is a tradition I plan to carry on.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether I feel up to celebrating the holiday via costumes for Ivy and Coco. I probably won’t, because I have every reason to just take it easy this year and not stress about it.

As I sloooooooowly continue my process of de-cluttering, it’s been really great to have a little bit more free space in my home office. It’s remarkable how much happier I feel being in here with less stuff all over the place. It’ll take a long time for me to get things more toward a semblance of “clean”, but a lot of progress has been made, and I’m proud of that even if nobody but me is reaping those benefits just yet.

I’ve had all kinds of free time today, since Coco decided to wake me up at 5:15 this morning. After we went outside and played a little bit, Coco and Ivy then immediately went to sleep again, which meant that I’m the least-rested person in this house, as usual.

Today, I’ve felt much less like I was under a heavy, heavy cloud than I do on most Wednesdays. That’s great (even if it’s still pretty random and even if I’m positive that’s not due to something I’ve consciously done to make it easier on myself). It’s just felt like a normal day, which is a huge blessing.

I’ve spent time reading, and writing. I’ve played video games and listened to music and podcasts, and have also done more cleaning and de-cluttering of my space. A bit here, and a bit there. Piece by piece is how it’ll all get done eventually (as long as I’m de-cluttering at least slightly faster than I’m cluttering or re-cluttering).

It’s felt like just a normal day. A normal day in the midst of sometimes unbearable grief, sure. But a normal day for me nonetheless.

I’m continuing to breathe, continuing to eat, drinking water when I remember (sorry Lindsay) and putting one foot in front of (or sometimes behind) the other. I’m not egotistical enough to think that that makes me some kind of a hero. I don’t know what exactly it makes me, besides just some guy who had a horrible thing happen to him. It feels like it should really take more than “surviving” to label someone heroic.

It’s too quiet in my house tonight. Time to turn on the TV or something. Take care, folks.

XOXO,

Matt

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I had things to do, so I did them (and got them done) but I still felt like there were big things I was supposed to be working on and was ignoring. That’s not the case at all, so this sense of dread was unpleasant and didn’t really help me be any more productive than I would have in the first place.

Maybe it’s because I know Wednesday is coming tomorrow? Maybe it’s because I’ve intentionally structured my week so that I don’t have a whole lot going on and can get some rest? Maybe it’s because I know Kellie’s birth month is only a few days away? Probably all of these.

I’m trying very hard to go into November with a gentle touch: Not overwhelming myself with a ton of extra things to do, not trying to make a big deal of Thanksgiving or Kellie’s birthday, just taking it easy and taking it slowly.

I’m used to having a pretty massive list of birthday gifts for Kellie already partially done by this point of the year. I’ve always spent far more on her in November than on her Christmas gifts, though we’ve both gone overboard in that way for a long time. I’m also used to having a list of special people we’re going to get together with for her birthday, because reconnecting with folks in November is a tradition for us.

So, yeah. Thinking that through out loud/in a written-out format, that’s probably what it is. I’m starting to think about November. Ugh.

I’m happy about some of the cleaning and organizing I accomplished today, even if it was done under a cloud of something uncomfortable out of the corner of my mind’s eye. You get the good with the bad, though. That’s the deal.

It’s been quiet here. Maybe that’s part of the problem too, although I know I could pick up the phone and get in touch with all kinds of people. I haven’t, yet. But knowing I could and actually doing it are two widely different things.

I saw a post from a guy named Jason today that said:

I am a widower. But please, don’t feel sorry for me.

I wasn’t able to spend the rest of my life with her, but I was blessed with the privilege of spending the rest of her life with her. And what an honor that was. I knew a love that some people spend their entire lives searching for and never find. I knew what it felt like to be loved, to be chosen, to build a life with someone, and to have a person whose presence made the world feel a little less heavy.

Losing her was never part of the plan. Neither was learning to live in a world that kept turning when mine had stopped…

But I would never trade the love we shared to escape the pain of losing her.

I feel that deeply. I would never un-do what we had—what we have. I often see people say that they’re so happy they got to spend all of their dog or cat’s life with them, even if they didn’t get to have them for THEIR entire life. And I feel the same about Kellie. She never had to feel alone. Especially as alone as I feel today. I’m so grateful that I was the one who has to do this instead of her.

Not because I’m doing it better than she would have—I don’t think that’s the case at all. I always told her that I would be the one to die before her, because I couldn’t handle the thought of being without her. And of course I’m not happy that she died.

But I’m so glad and so grateful that she doesn’t have to experience this pain, day after day, without me here to comfort her. She never had to work and pay the bills and vacuum the floor and feed the dogs and herself and take showers and keep breathing and functioning AND also not feel that any of that truly mattered in the grand scheme of things. That’s really good.

If I had died first, and was somehow able to remain aware of how she was doing, it would be pure torture for me to be unable to do anything to lighten the load on her shoulders. Because, man—it’s heavy. It’s so, so heavy.

I’m tired.

I just miss her so much.

That’s it for today.

Matt

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Just kidding.

I did have a great time in DC with my sister this weekend, though! You know how I like to randomly challenge myself? Well, things were going so well for me on Saturday morning that I decided to see whether I could get all the way from Ashtabula to DC without stopping. Turns out that I can, and also that it’s a bad idea (since not taking a pee break for seven-plus hours ends up feeling pretty awful). But I did it!

I got to spend time in two incredible Black-owned independent bookstores that afternoon, which were both awesome.

Saturday evening, my sister arrived from NYC and she and I got to see Josh Ritter (one of my favorite musicians) perform. It’s definitely on my list of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. He was great, the venue (the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA) was fantastic, and we had an awesome time.

Afterward, we figured out the very best way to see the Mall and monuments scattered around it—via e-bike and e-scooter! We traveled around seven miles and got to bask in the history of the place, which I love so much, but without having to WALK seven miles. I cannot recommend it enough to you.

Emily and I stayed up late talking, then got up on Sunday morning and went to see You Can See Everything. I know that I watched it last weekend, but my second viewing was even better, and getting to experience it with my sister was incredibly fun.

Ashley stayed at my house with the girls, and continues to cement herself as one of my favorite people. She is so great with them, and I cannot overstate how much of a gift it is for me to know Coco and Ivy are safe and happy and healthy while I’m gallivanting all over the place. I feel so lucky that I found her on the Rover app, and even luckier to have her as a friend. The girls’ lives are enriched a great deal by having her around—what a blessing. She was absolutely fine with staying late with them so that I could stay in DC longer with Emily, and that extra time was another gift for us both.

Speaking of Emily, we’ve just got so much in common that I forget about when I’m not with her. It feels so great to just share the same space with her. It’s hard to not live close to any of my family, it always has been. I don’t regret the choice I made thirty years ago to pack up everything I owned and drive to Ashtabula, because Kellie was worth the pain of disconnection that decision brought into my life. It was something that had to happen the way it happened, because it taught me that I could trust my heart. Even if nobody but Kellie and I thought it was a good idea, it was the best possible idea in all possible worlds. But I miss my sister when we aren’t together, and seeing each other is often a very joyful experience.

Speaking of possibilities, I keep thinking about all those other possible realities surrounding Kellie’s death and what they might have been like. It’s easy to come up with scenarios in my head where something would have changed and she didn’t die, or at least didn’t die so early in her life. It doesn’t help me to dwell on hypotheticals, especially when I’m powerless to make any of them happen retroactively. The fact that it doesn’t help me doesn’t stop me from doing it from time to time, though.

I know that I couldn’t have saved her after she fell down, because she was already gone. It literally took seconds for her to die. It could not have been faster. I also know that seeing a doctor faster probably wouldn’t have changed anything. She had those appointments scheduled, but nobody realized how serious her health issues truly were (if she did even have health issues that caused her death instead of something acute that couldn’t have been predicted). Since we have no way to know what actually killed her, due to the bizarre choices made by the coroner’s office, it’s all guesswork on my end. It will always be a question mark, and can never be resolved.

I don’t blame myself for Kellie’s death. I can think of things that I could have done in the time between her hospitalization and her death that I didn’t do, but that’s just a normal part of living. None of us can predict the future, and I’m not going to torture myself with a false narrative that Kellie somehow neglected very serious health issues and knew that she was going to/let herself die.

I know how much Kellie didn’t want to be dead. We talked about it fairly often—she wanted to live as long as humanly possible. Me too. So please don’t tell me she was tired and decided it was time for herself to suddenly die—I don’t believe that for a second. Whatever happened to her on an internal body systems level would have happened regardless of what we did or didn’t do. Whether it was a pulmonary embolism, or a brain aneurysm, or a heart attack, or something else. Regardless.

She died at the age of 49, and that’s hugely unfair. She had literally decades of living left to do. We had so many plans, and it would have been unthinkable if you’d asked either of us the day before she died whether death was at our doorstep. It was unpredictable, it was unavoidable, and I cannot stress enough to you that I don’t feel any solace from the argument that “it was part of God’s plan” for her to die. I don’t blame God, or the universe, or Kellie, or myself. It was just a thing that happened and was always going to happen in the way it did.

I sure wish I knew in advance, so I could have done more living with her on a conscious and intentional level. Or even so I could have kissed her one last time before we walked down that hall. The events of that afternoon are never going to leave my brain, I’m sure of that. But it was always going to happen that day, in that way.

So how do I reconcile my belief in God with my belief that Kellie’s death was not part of some cosmic plan? I’m figuring that out as I go. I am perfectly capable of joy in this new timeline. I like my life, lots of the time. I’m happy more often than I’m unhappy. But I will never feel that any of this joy is worth Kellie’s death. As I’ve written here before, she’s not in a “better place”, because here with me is the best place she could possibly be. And that trade-off is never going to be worth it to me.

I think of it as a new life and a new timeline in a new dimension where I’m without her. There might be other universes where she’s still alive, and I hope there are. But in this one, here’s the life I have been given. This is the situation, no matter how I feel about it. And I’m going to continue doing my best to make the most of the situation. Not because it’s somehow better than my former life, because it’s not. It’s just unrecognizably different in almost every single way. Both things can be true. That’s how I make it through.

Today, I had to go and get a test done at UH Geneva. When I checked in, they asked if Lindsay is my emergency contact (she is) and whether I want her to be informed if I’m hospitalized (I do). After that, she asked if she lives in my household, and I said no, she’s a friend. And then she asked if I also want my spouse, Kellie Butler, to be informed if I get hospitalized. That really threw me for a loop and I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond—I eventually said no, that she’s been deceased for more than six months. I’ve taken her out of the system, but for some reason I still got asked. And since I was flustered, the desk lady got flustered, and then she kept apologizing, which made me feel even worse. It really sucks that these little reminders are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

Anyway.

I love being able to spend time almost every single day trying to further process my grief about this unmistakably tragic loss in this medium, and I love sharing it with anyone who takes the time to read these words.

Thank you for being here, whether it’s a good day or not.

Now don’t forget to smash that subscribe button, true mattfans.

XOXO,

Matt

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I used to want to stay awake until 1, 2, 3—even 4am or later on a weekend, sometimes. And Kellie LOVED sleep. But we never really understood the phenomenon of couples with different bedtimes. She could never get enough hours of sleep, whereas I’m pretty happy with six hours. So how did that play out in our relationship? Well, Kellie stayed awake for me. It wasn’t fair, but that was her preference. When she couldn’t manage any longer, she’d fall asleep next to me and then when I finally got around to it, I’d wake her up and we’d go to bed together.

That worked for us for many, many years. I would keep us up way too late, and she would humor me. I’d feel guilty about it, for sure. I didn’t feel like it was fair for me to dictate our bedtimes to the extent that I always did, but ultimately that was our rhythm.

My relationship with sleep has now changed dramatically for the first time in my adult life, and that feels really strange to me.

I no longer feel the need to stay awake in order to wring every drop of enjoyment out of my day, for one thing. That’s probably partially because of getting up so early (Coco got me up at 5:15 yesterday and 6:15 today). So I have an extra 3+ hours of living in the early morning that I’ve never had before. That means I’m fine with going to bed two or three hours earlier, since I’m still getting the same amount of time in my day.

Another thing is that I don’t have any kind of pressure from Kellie or anyone else to nudge me in the direction of caring about someone else’s sleep needs. The dogs sleep whenever they feel like it, after all. So when I’m tired, I get up and go to bed. That’s a good thing and also a really sad thing.

I saw a post from a widower today talking about how he never used to want to go to bed because it felt like his life was so busy and like there were so many demands on his time, but that now he’s alone he realizes that those demands on his time were fullness and companionship, and now he regrets that prior perspective. I feel like I’m in the same boat as he is. No, I didn’t get upset at Kellie for having had different needs than me (usually), but now that I’m on my own I wish there was someone else’s needs that I needed to take into consideration. Does that make sense?

When it’s late at night, I still have that deep ache of isolation that I had to handle when I was fresh to this new life. That was always the worst block of time for me to get through in the first few months after Kellie’s death, if you recall. I would sit and stare at the wall and think (or cry) for a few hours every night. It sucked. Back then, I had a few friends who would check in late at night, and that helped so much. That’s mostly dropped off, but then, I have been able to mostly keep myself busy until I get tired and then go to bed. So it’s not as much of an issue for me as it was.

That said, it’s still tough to stay up very late, which is maybe one reason why I go to bed earlier than I used to (we tend to avoid things that don’t feel good to us, after all). Maybe I’d be just as sad late at night if I wasn’t in bed asleep during that time? Who knows!

This morning was a really productive time for me. I got all packed up for the DC trip, washed and dried all my dirty laundry, folded the old load of laundry I had been avoiding, took my meds and showered, and picked up the house a bit. And all of that only took me until 8am or so! How strange and novel that still feels.

That left me plenty of time to get work done, eat breakfast in the park, read a book and listen to some great music before a very busy work day.

I’m excited for my trip this weekend and feeling pretty good in general, which is in and of itself pretty momentous, especially given the fact that I was in the middle of my bad three days at this time last week. Progress is progress, right?

I headed to Conneaut for great pizza and then spent most of the evening working on a paper (so I only have to get one more written when I get back from DC).

I hope you have an incredible weekend. I hope I do, too. In fact, I hope the entire world has a good weekend. Let’s all do our best to make that happen.

XOXO,

Matt

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I spent some time working with my sister to actually choose a hotel room for us to stay in two nights(!) from now. Since we’ve been putting off this decision for months, I’m very proud we got it done.

I also attended a meeting about my university campus’s budget in order to learn about the process and to acknowledge how big a deal this level of transparency is to me. Before that, I helped another faculty member troubleshoot a really challenging situation.

And then later on, I finished up a group project with my two group members (who were awesome). We had to read and analyze three different dissertations in order to learn about their construction, to give us ideas as we keep picking around the edges of starting to write our own in the coming few semesters. Our recorded group discussion was supposed to be 20 minutes long, and ours was 39 minutes(!!) but that’s going to have to be okay. As much as it would irritate me to have a group turn in something that long for me to watch and grade, I think our discussion was well worth viewing, so that’s what we’re turning in. We had to read and become familiar with all three dissertations in order to have the conversation, which was around 400 pages total, so I honestly don’t see how we could have fit it all into twenty minutes.

Since I’m talking about doing things that are hard, I figured we should talk about just how difficult it can be to accept a compliment, for me and for everyone else. When did it get so challenging to say “I appreciate it” when someone is kind to us? I’ve been discussing this with several clients lately, and I think we do each other such a grave disservice by making each other feel weird about being noticed for something we’ve done well.

I try to thank people a lot more than I used to, mostly because I know how important those human connections are for me now. And when I thank Lindsay for hanging out with me (to name a random example), she tells me to quit it, because she LIKES spending time with her friends and I don’t have to be grateful. Is she right? Probably. But should I get to thank her for caring for me? I think so—I think it’s just hard to hear that we mean something to someone else.

I had a meeting this week with a couple of folks from a counseling agency who wanted to talk to me about putting together a series of trainings for their staff on a few topics that I’m really passionate (and I think knowledgeable) about. In the midst of that conversation, one of them said that they really want to work with me because I have such a good name in this community, and because I’m spoken very highly of behind my back. All I could say was “Thank you, that’s very kind” but I’ve been reflecting on how uncomfortable it made me to hear something that’s objectively very kind. Why wouldn’t that make me feel great? I think an awful lot of conditioning goes into trying to make kids (and employees) convinced that they’re not actually that good at things.

I want to do the opposite! I want to be the voice in my students’ heads that says “No, I AM worthwhile”. In my clients’ heads, too (though I don’t think I’m profound all that often). If we have to have a repeating message in our brain, may we all put in the work to have it be a kind one. I feel so blessed to have Kellie’s voice in my head sometimes, even if that’s a hard thing.

I care about people, and I care about my responsibilities. I care about my legacy. I know that my performance isn’t the same right now on all kinds of metrics as it was six and a half months ago. That just has to be something I get comfortable with. Admitting my shortcomings is hard.

Speaking of discomfort, I had the strangest moment last night. As I was driving home from Geneva after a library board meeting, with my pizza in an insulated bag, I realized for the first time that I no longer have to wait until I get home to eat supper. I pulled out a piece of pizza and ate it in the car, even though it felt really strange. Sometimes what feels hardest is realizing something has changed, even something little.

Late last night, I got a Facebook message from someone who used to be really good friends with Kellie and I, many years ago. She was expressing horror and shock at having just found out that Kellie had died. She asked me to call her as soon as I can because she wanted to talk. I let that message sit for almost twenty-four hours, but I called her a little bit ago and left a voicemail. Sometimes what’s hard is sitting with someone else while they process the fact that she’s gone.

Even though I’ve been avoiding making that call, I have to say that it feels like an honor to listen to someone else saying that they miss her, that this isn’t fair, that they’re sad about Kellie’s death. It’s been six and a half months, and there are still some people who talk to me about her. But I think for the most part, the reality of Kellie having died in April is not a daily realization for almost anybody other than a few of us. Getting the reminder that someone misses her, whether a little bit or a whole lot, makes me feel like she still matters.

I suspect that people don’t want to tell me when they’re sad about Kellie’s death because they don’t want to make me feel sad too. But when someone does? I treasure it, even if it makes me cry. Crying is hard.

This morning, Coco and Ivy and I went to Dunkin for breakfast (for me) and a doughnut hole apiece (for the girls). While we ate, I remembered how happy the videos of baby Coco eating a doughnut hole used to make Kellie. And that was hard, too, but it made me feel closer to her just the same.

XOXO,

Matt

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That’s it, that’s the surprise. Despite all odds, this was actually a pretty good day for me. That doesn’t usually happen on a Wednesday, though it has a few times. My therapy session last week helped me a great deal (thanks, lady). I actually did what I have sworn to several people I was going to do, which is putting alerts into my phone specifically for every Wednesday that remind me to take my medication and eat lunch. And guess what? I did both of those things today! There’s usually a domino effect on Wednesdays that goes something like: Wake up, acknowledge that it’s a Wednesday, try my best to be okay regardless, forget to take my medication, eat breakfast, start in on my day, remember my medication but forget lunch, remember lunch and realize that combination is likely why I feel so awful. But I listened to both reminders today! Unbelievable!

On some level, I am always going to be surprised when I have a truly terrible day. I’m also going to be surprised when I have a truly excellent one. That’s the case regardless of what day it is. This weekend’s string of three uninterrupted bad days couldn’t help but make me concerned that it was going to be a trend that continued into this week, but nope. Today was pretty good, like I said.

I ate breakfast at the park, which I’ve been getting into doing again after a brief hiatus. We got up early, so it was relatively deserted and also very chilly. Both of those are my preferences. This is such a nice view, and it helps me think about stuff from a different perspective rather than starting my day at home. Who knows why.

This morning, I was also surprised to find out that I had two cuts on my right hand which I didn’t remember giving myself yesterday. Here’s a fun photo of the worse one. My best guess is that it happened when I was breaking down boxes for trash day late last night, but I completely missed the fact that I’d done it.

I’m fortunate that I’m not doing anything truly hazardous like welding or woodworking or using saws or whatever, since I might do myself serious harm and not realize that had happened. Kellie would always notice that I had a grievous wound and make me give myself medical attention, but now it’s just me with no backup set of eyes.

Today I thought about how much I miss Kellie, which is something I think about every day. That’s no surprise, to be sure. But it was less visceral and desperate a feeling of missing her than I felt all weekend, so I was very glad for that gift, even on a Wednesday.

Something that has been on my mind lately is the fact that it’s just me here. With the dogs, I sometimes get easily overwhelmed. Ivy is easy, though needs to be pampered and loved on. But Coco is a lot of work for me. She’s just a baby still, not even fifteen months old. She wants constant attention and is full of energy (even very early in the morning and very late at night). She is always chewing on something which could do her serious harm (like my laptop cord or poison or whatever). When she gets irritated, she starts chewing on me rather than the furniture. And after a long day of grieving and working and being a human being with a messed-up brain, it can be really challenging for me to manage Coco in particular.

I feel guilty that sometimes I’m not as present for her as I should be. That’s the case with every (responsible) parent or pet parent, probably. I’m just not used to having to care for all the dogs’ needs without someone else here to help me remember all the details. We’ve established that it’s sometimes hard for me to remember to pay my bills now with the real phenomenon of widows’ brain in effect. It’s way harder to remember to set up vet appointments or other kinds of things the dogs need.

I also get frustrated with Coco being a baby and wish she was as quiet and settled as Ivy or Sage, sometimes. I know that I’m lucky to have her throughout her entire life, that was what Kellie and I wanted when we chose her. I just didn’t know I’d be doing it alone.

I know I’ve said this in the past, but Ashley has been a HUGE source of support for me. If I didn’t have Ashley, I would feel too guilty to leave home for more than a few hours at a time. I wouldn’t have been able to go to most of the concerts and conferences and fun places I’ve been this year. When Kellie died, I was terrified that I wouldn’t ever be able to teach in-person again, even—we’d just never had a time when someone wasn’t with the dogs almost 24/7 since 2020. In fact, the first time Coco had to be alone in our house with neither Kellie nor I was this January when Kellie was hospitalized and I spent big chunks of those days at the hospital with her. This is new for all of us! And if I couldn’t go anywhere, I would be terribly isolated and lonely.

I know I have some friends who offer to come to my house and hang out, but it doesn’t happen often. Aside from Jessie and Ashley, I don’t think many of my friends have been here with me and the dogs for months now. Stacy and Mike and Carmen have, but they were all here to dog-sit. That’s honestly one of my big concerns about the winter months—if I don’t feel like going out of the house much because of the weather, I worry that I won’t get to see any of my support system much until spring.

I feel weird about inviting folks over, because my strange brain keeps trying to convince me that it’s an imposition to make people come here to a boring house instead of luring them to a coffee shop or restaurant that has fun stuff to eat and drink as an added attraction. In the past, I would have felt awkward about inviting someone over because the house was such a mess. Now that it’s cleaner than ever, I feel awkward for different reasons (which is probably a good example of the fact that my brain just wants to convince me people don’t want to be my friend and that it’s never had anything to do with the level of cleanliness of my house).

But anytime I need to go somewhere, I reach out to Ashley and she comes and spends time with Coco and Ivy. She’s just so nice, and they always act so much more relaxed when I come home and she’s been there than when I neglect them for a few hours instead. It gives me so much peace of mind to have the confidence to know someone is thinking about them other than me. I’m so grateful!

But beyond that, Ashley’s been doing a bunch of gardening for me, and collaborating with my dad to make sure Kellie’s garden is beautiful and restful instead of being overgrown and stressful. It looks so awesome these days!!

I can’t get a cappuccino or any hot drink without remembering this picture (and the face Kellie would make in real life every time she had one). Kellie was a complex person who loved so many things, and hot sweet drinks were definitely on that list.

I’m celebrating the fact that I’m feeling okay. Maybe that feels like a low bar to you, but considering the circumstances, I think that’s a real win.

And we have to take the wins as they come.

Hugs,

Matt

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But in my case, “the last time” comes up a lot more often than in the sappy internet memes. And about a lot more than the huge family vacations. I didn’t know when I was getting a hug from Kellie for the last time (only about two or three minutes before she died). I didn’t know when I was buying her breakfast for the last time (the morning of her death, from Bob Evans). I didn’t know when I was cooking for her for the last time (the day before it happened). I’m surrounded by memories of lasts with Kellie—not just in our house but in the world. In my head, too.

And it’s true that that pertains to the big stuff as well. This Christmas is going to be unbearably difficult, because of how inescapable it will be. I will have no choice but to compare my last Christmas with her to this year’s Christmas. And next year’s. And the year after that. And the year after that. Forever.

So extrapolate the concept of “Christmas” out into everything you care about and love in your life and everything you’ve shared with your soulmate across thirty years. How can we expect anyone to walk through this minefield of lasts without being sad every minute of every day?

I saw a meme a year or two ago talking about how you should value and make the most of every summer you spend with your dog, since they only get ten or fifteen summers in their entire life. It pretty much destroyed me emotionally at the time, because we had just lost Sage. And I knew that we HADN’T made the most of every single summer we had with her. How could we, in fairness? I don’t think our minds work that way, after all. Many of us might try to be mindful and live in the moment as much as we can, but nobody’s THAT mindful. Everyone has big chunks of their lives that they sleepwalk through, whether they want to or not.

This reminds me of the old Quaker belief (since they didn’t typically celebrate religious holidays) that there aren’t any specific days that are especially holy, because we should be celebrating every day as being holy. That appeals to me, in the sense that it reminds us we should be making the most of all our days instead of just saving up our spiritual energy for Passover, or (again) Christmas, or even every Sunday.

So, yes. Every Christmas, every family vacation, every summer should be special. And that’s all well and good. But for those of us who have experienced a major loss, special occasions are the least of our worries. Every. Single. Thing. In our lives is a continuous reminder of what we’ve lost.

I headed out toward Cleveland today to get my flu and COVID boosters at Costco. (Pro tip from someone who knows about this stuff: I’d highly recommend you get the Novavax injection if you can. It’s called Nuvaxovid, and it’s more effective and also more-easily tolerated by more people. It’s a win-win.) And a side note here: If you aren’t getting an updated COVID vaccine every year, you’re making a huge mistake. The virus continues to kill folks and worse than that, continues to leave millions of Americans dealing with long-term or even permanent side-effects. Absolutely stupid of you to not do everything you can to try and prevent that for yourself, for me, and for everyone else around both of us.

After that mission had been accomplished, I went to the Van Aken District for some yummy lunch. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get the memory out of my head of the last time we had gone there for lunch together. It got worse and worse for me as I approached the restaurant I’d intended to grab a sandwich from, and I couldn’t help but ruminate a bit about the unfairness of that. I’m the one left here alone, but I can’t experience any of the things that we did together without fighting my way through a vast mountain of sorrow to do them—that feels pretty damn unfair.

And all of this feels unfair, a lot of the time. It’s not Kellie’s fault, it’s not my fault, it’s not God’s fault. It’s not the doctors’ fault. It’s not the coroner’s fault. It’s not the paramedics’ fault. It’s not society’s fault. Many of those people made my experience much harder than it had to be (and Kellie’s, too), but it’s not their fault that Kellie’s not here anymore. It’s nobody’s fault—she died, and there isn’t anyone that I can fairly blame for it. When I think too deeply about that lack of a direction to point, it makes me angry. It would be so much easier, maybe, if I could say that a specific surgeon had made a mistake, or that there was a drunk driver who shouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel that day. I know that’s not true either. I know that the anger is not a problem, because feelings are neither good nor bad—they’re just feelings.

If I had a person to point at, that could get deeply unhealthy, I think. It would be so easy to obsess over each little detail of WHY they were responsible and HOW they should be punished for it. But neither of those things would bring her back, and they sure wouldn’t make my experience of widowhood any more bearable than they are now.

So when my anger comes, it just comes. I might yell at the top of my lungs about some of the things that aren’t fair. I might try a thought experiment of blaming someone for Kellie’s death, even though I know it’s not logical. I might cry, or just sit down and not focus on really anything. And then it goes away and leaves me stranded, like a seashell on the beach after high tide. I have to find my own way back to myself after the anger is gone, and then continue on with my day. That’s just the way it goes.

Today, when I arrived at the restaurant, I couldn’t bear the thought of one more comparison to the last time we’d gotten food there together. So I turned left, walked down a random hallway, and picked an entirely different restaurant. I decided to make it “the first time” I’d eaten somewhere rather new. Today, that was the solution I can live with.

I don’t think that’s the perfect answer for me for many or most things. I’m not going to stop doing things which we did together, or loving food which we loved together, or caring about music we listened to together. I’m not going to populate my entire life with firsts, because the lasts matter to me, a great deal. I want them to matter to me, because I want her ripples to still exist in the world, even if they only exist within me.

It’s a quiet night here. The pups and I took a long nap after I got home, and I’m just trying to find some joy and not dwell on the sorrow more than I have to.

Life is precious—enjoy the things you’re doing right now, and tomorrow, and the day after. It’s just—I wonder how you might do them differently if they continually reminded you of the last time you’d done them with someone you didn’t have anymore? Or how you might enjoy something if you knew it was going to be your last time? I’m on this side of the equation now, and don’t have the luxury of the latter. But you probably do. Try to make the most of it. Of everything. Trust me on this one.

XOXO,

Matt

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Yes, I’m fully aware that I didn’t cause Kellie’s death (though part of my experience will always be unbearable guilt that I couldn’t save her life in that worst of all possible moments). But it’s hard to avoid the feeling that the stimuli causing my pain is not HERE, so it must be imposed upon me by my own brain. I know that’s not true too. But knowing and feeling are, as we must always remind ourselves, two distinct things.

So if I feel like I’m making myself feel sad or bad on a given day, then that logic tells me that I should be able to turn off those sad or bad feelings. And when, despite all my efforts to the contrary, those sad or bad feelings persist for days—it’s hard for that to not turn into a sense of helplessness and even hopelessness.

All of this is to say that I missed Kellie a lot for three days in a row. More than normal—much, much more than normal. The first of those days, I was missing her a ton but not especially sad, as I discussed here on Friday. By Saturday, that constant “missing Kellie” feeling had deepened into sorrow, and by Sunday it felt like the cloud was never going to lift. I tried, honestly I did. I tried keeping busy and also tried just resting. I took naps. I got in touch with friends and family and also tried being solitary for a bit. I spent time with multiple people across those three days. I kept up with my medication and food and water intake, but nothing seemed to make a tangible difference for me.

I feel really fortunate that by Sunday evening that deep dark well of feelings had eased a great deal. I don’t think the change was due to anything I did. If it were, one of the myriad of attempts I made would have done something, but none of them did in the moment.

I would like nothing better than to have Kellie back. Besides that, I would like nothing better than to be able to impose logic on this situation and have a concrete set of steps to be able to utilize to fix it and move past these uncontrollable feelings. Unfortunately, they’re uncontrollable, and that’s the crux of the issue. I cannot predict how I’m going to feel and I cannot do anything but ride those waves of grief until the tide recedes and my feet touch the bottom. At that point I can pick myself up out of the fetal position and start walking forward once again.

I do not like feeling powerless over my brain and heart. I doubt anyone does, but it’s especially difficult for someone who is pretty confident in his ability to reason through almost anything in his path. I know that I’m objectively making progress, that’s clear to me. I’m tired of it, though. The pain and the grief and the irrevocable fact of her being gone is unbearable sometimes, and I often just wish I could set down this weight for a few minutes. The fact is that I’m never going to be able to stop Kellie’s absence from hurting me, and also that I don’t want it to stop hurting me. It sure would be nice if it would hurt less though.

On Saturday, I got to catch up with my friend Donna, which was pretty great. She’s been there for me in very concrete ways since Kellie died, and I love her for that. I’ve hired her, which meant that she has signed the requisite documentation and then been able to work with Kellie’s clients to try and find them the best possible new therapist without violating confidentiality rules. It has also meant that I have a buffer in her that I can rely on to maintain some level of separation between Kellie’s clients and their grief and myself and my own grief. I know that I’ve mentioned this here before, but when I had started doing notifications to Kellie’s clients of her passing by myself, it was very quickly overwhelming to me. It was also very quickly apparent to me that their love for Kellie made them feel the need to care for me in that moment, which shows how kind and compassionate they are (and also shows how inappropriate it would be for me to see them for counseling myself). You should never have the obligation to care for your therapist. It needs to go the opposite direction. That’s, like, Therapist 101.

Donna has been a friend to me in good times and bad, and spending time with her is always a joy. We’ve only been friends for 23 years or so (which is pretty close to half my life), and it’s great to have someone who’s known you so long.

After that, I went to the local No Kings protest. It was heartening to see so many folks there (about a hundred of us). Yes, that’s far less than at past No Kings events here—but it was also a very chilly day, and I don’t hold it against anyone who couldn’t be out in the cold. There were several speakers who did a great job of firing up the crowd. I also have to point out that the number of cars driving by who honked their horns or gave a thumbs up or other sign of solidarity was VERY high. Take heart, everyone. And also, vote for people who care about you and your well-being rather than their own power.

I’m not going to tell you to vote for every Democratic candidate simply because of their party affiliation, though in this election I can’t identify any Republican candidates who I plan to vote for myself. I think you need to make that decision for yourself.

But I WILL tell you that our two local State Representatives have been among the worst within the Ohio Legislature. Sarah Fowler Arthur has ignored the will of her constituents for her entire time in office. She doesn’t appear to care what anyone says to her—if one of us disagrees with her on an issue, she flatly refuses to engage and will not have a conversation. Many of us tried to reach out to her office on multiple issues shortly after she was initially elected, but after several years of being completely ignored, most folks have quit trying (unfortunately). She has a long list of issues on which she has ignored the will of the voters, and she’s pretty extreme in her views. Sarah’s opponent is Louis Murphy, who has spent a huge amount of time communicating with voters and showing that he cares about a wide variety of issues that pertain to our community, unlike Sarah. He’s a teacher and coach and has demonstrated leadership in a lot of different arenas. He’s a good guy. She’s firmly anti-teacher, has demonstrated a clear lack of leadership, and does not represent the vast majority of her constituents’ best interests in Columbus. So that race is pretty clear to me—if you vote for Sarah Fowler Arthur despite how awfully she’s wasted her position, then you aren’t paying enough attention.

In terms of our second State Representative, I’ve spoken plenty here about David Thomas. He’s been at the forefront of caring about a whole host of issues that do not positively impact his constituents’ lives (there’s a theme developing here, I think). David openly trolls and belittles the voters of this district. He flouts his complete disrespect for those who disagree with him, and makes fun of them every opportunity he gets. He spends his time jockeying for more power and aiming for ever higher positions and ever-richer donors to court. David cares about people, but the odds are very low that he cares about you. He cares about wealthy people for sure. His opponent, John Barbo, is a long-time teacher and City Council member who is a smart, accomplished and genuinely delightful person. If you vote for David Thomas despite his despicable public treatment of those he is supposed to be working for, then I’m honestly not sure what kind of moral standards you are interested in holding your public servants to.

There are lots of other great Democratic candidates on a local level: Jayson Noscal would make an excellent county commissioner, and Judge Camplese has the experience and temperament to remain a Common Pleas Judge, just to name a few.

On the state and federal level, Dave Joyce has ignored Ashtabula County for many years, and Maria Jukic would do a great job. Sherrod Brown has shown what an incredible advocate for Ohioans he would be if he were returned to the US Senate. And I’ve spoken at length about what an excellent governor Dr. Amy Acton will be.

All of that is to say that you absolutely need to vote, and you need to care what sort of person is representing your best interests, no matter what their office or their party. We all have a responsibility to participate in the process, period. So go and participate.

Saturday afternoon was a really special time—my dear friend Margot got married to the ever-delightful Todd, and that was just wonderful. I had the honor of being asked to host the Zoom for those friends and family who couldn’t be there in-person, and they put a lot of thought into being inclusive, which was meaningful to all of us in that boat. It was a beautiful wedding, and I’m so happy for them to have found each other.

It was also a really hard time for me, since Kellie was so excited about attending this wedding. Nothing was going to make it less difficult for me, so it was just something I needed to go through feelings-wise. It took all my energy for the day, though. Immediately afterward I needed to lay down for a long nap with the dogs, and I was pretty useless emotionally for the rest of the day.

Yesterday was great. I met up with my friend Nate and we had a great conversation and took the time to catch up. We also saw the Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos (You Can See Everything), which was probably the best movie I’ve seen this year and definitely the best documentary I’ve ever seen. Wow.

At some point late in the day, I realized that I wasn’t missing Kellie to an unbearable degree anymore. It was still there, just in the background like usual. It just receded on its own, which is a wonderful trick when it chooses to cooperate like that.

I don’t know how to function as a professional in society who has a lot of responsibilities and important roles and also as a person who has no ability to predict how I’ll be feeling on any given day. It’s the worst. But I keep not getting fired, and my clients keep scheduling with me, and my students seem to enjoy having me around. So I’m just here, trying to stay afloat, even on days when it feels like I’ve got a Buick weighing me down.

I’m here. Taking on the week and stuff.

XOXO,

Matt

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As I get more and more used to whatever state I’m currently in, all kinds of strange combinations of emotions have come up for me. I’m not trying to feel any specific kind of way, but some days I feel a bit blown this way and that by environmental things that have nothing to do with choices I’ve made.

Today I had a few appointments, but it was pretty empty for a Friday. You’d think that was a good thing, since everyone appreciates working less. But what that did was give me more space in my head to miss her. It’s such a delicate balance sometimes! I am honestly trying my best NOT to over-schedule myself, because of how quickly I get exhausted these days. When I do too much, it absolutely wipes me out for a day or two. And when I don’t schedule stuff to keep me busy, the silence and stillness sometimes gives way to sadness or grief or whatever.

I’d say “It’s almost like I can’t win” except for the fact that there’s no winning the game I’m currently in—and yet I just have to keep playing for the rest of my life, by default, whether I like it or not. And that’s a pretty rough reality for me to accept.

One positive development is that even as I’ve spent most of today seriously, seriously missing Kellie, I haven’t been particularly sad. I don’t think I’ve experienced the “loneliness/missing her” emotion as being distinct and separated from the “sadness/depression” emotion, but that’s what today has been like. Whatever I’ve done today, it’s been with a constant undercurrent of wishing she were with me. I’ve eaten several good meals, watched stuff, played video games, done counseling sessions, had work meetings, graded a lot of student assignments, read a book. And the entire time, I’ve been missing her more than usual.

The reason I think it would be a positive development for my feelings to move in this direction is because if this happened more often, I’d feel like I could have all kinds of joy and hope and love in my life while missing her at the same time. Since I know I’m going to miss her the rest of my life. I know it to be a fact that humans can experience two emotions at the same time. That’s something I’ve told other people at least a thousand times. But I’ve never gone through a whole day dwelling in the missing while still having regular ups and downs before, so it’s this combination of feelings that seems to be different in my head.

I know that the rainy weather has been part of the missing Kellie piece. I’m not used to having a lot of contact with friends, even though these last six months has had so much more of that than in the past. What winter used to mean was hunkering down in our house, being happy and cozy and not thinking as much about the world around us. I don’t get to do a big chunk of that anymore, since being cozy with the pups is not the same as being cozy with Kellie.

It’s hard to feel this strongly about something you can’t do anything about. It’s that whole missing limb vibe I’ve spoken about in the past. Nothing I do is going to make me miss her less, except giving it a few minutes or a few hours or a few days—then it’ll pass again, the same as it usually does.

I hope everyone has a restful and joy-filled weekend. I’ll catch up with you on Monday.

Peace,

Matt

A fair amount of my time as a social work educator is trying to convince my students that they are human beings and that there isn’t some magical process in their training and experience wherein they get transmuted into immortal omniscient superheroes. They need to know that they’ll still be human beings with all the baggage and failings (and failures) which go along with living a normal human life, even after they get an immense amount of trust put in them by their clients to be above the fray and capable of helping them move through and past the things which are causing them difficulty.

For some reason, the narrative which persists in most of our brains goes something like “I can’t help other people until after I’ve fixed all these terrible things in myself”. Since none of us is ever truly “fixed”, that leads us all to either come to the conclusion that flawed human beings can still make a positive impact OR come to the conclusion that they’d better pick another career. I prefer the former, but that’s your path to choose.

So often, I’ve been worrying about some problem I’m trying to work through in my head and a client comes up with a brilliant insight in a counseling session, or I see a theme developing across a whole week or month of sessions with multiple clients, that directly applies to my own situation. It’s great when that happens, because it’s a wonderful reminder of the universality of some human experiences, which tends to make me feel a little bit less alone sometimes. It also reminds me of how odd our pattern recognition abilities can be.

Human beings unconsciously seek patterns in things all around us, all the time. It makes us feel safer when we can analyze our environment and make a judgment that we’re not in immediate danger. That extends into all kinds of other unconscious decisions we make, too, which can lead to gross things like racism and sexism, etc. When we start categorizing people and things as “good” or “bad”, stuff gets out of whack quickly.

I’ve had this awful smell in my mud room since Monday night. It’s only gotten worse as the week has progressed, and has been causing me a great deal of concern. I tried cleaning out the fridge down there, but it had no impact on the smell. I tried emptying the trashcan, but no impact. I brought a bathroom air freshener down there, but the net effect only changed to being the bad smell with sweet stuff on top. I was so embarrassed to have Ashley come over to watch the girls on Tuesday and walk through the smell, and had to apologize to her preemptively and assure her that I was taking steps to try and fix it. I walked around the basement to make sure no dead animals were smelling up the place, but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. It’s been a real journey.

Have you ever had something that has been on your mind so long, so intensely, that you start to wonder if you’re making it up in your head? Sometimes I spend so much energy trying to figure something out that it loses its meaning when I take a step back to look at it from a different angle, like when you say a specific word in your head so many times that you start to doubt how you’re pronouncing it in the first place.

That whole pattern recognition thing kicks in, and makes you decide that maybe that smell is just in your imagination in the first place. Or that you shouldn’t be depressed, or mad, or anxious, because you’re just creating those triggers in your own mind out of nothingness.

The fall is my favorite. We’ve previously established that. Partly because of the weather—the brisk air is certainly a piece of it, and so are the beautiful leaves on the trees. I like when things change! Sameness makes me bored, and the boredom leads to sadness. I love novelty, which is one reason I like post-apocalyptic fiction. There’s a huge reset! Everything is different! We get to pick different jobs and loot grocery stores and wear cool armor! But I also love the fall leaves.

I’ve spent more time outside over the last six months than the last six years, I bet. I sit in Kellie’s garden and look at the trees across the street, or sit in my rocking chair on the back deck and look at the trees on that side of my house. I also drive all over the place now (often to Buffalo, apparently) and love to see the changing leaves on all of my adventures.

And how can I see those leaves without thinking about Kellie and all the previous fall seasons I’ve spent enjoying all of these things with her? I don’t have any objection to enjoying things without her—that’s something I did while she was alive as well, but far less of it. The problem is that we can never talk about those things afterward, and I can never show her pictures of those leaves or watch her eyes light up to see the dogs running through a pile of them. That’s what I think about when I see leaves, now. Not in a sad way, but a wistful one—with some sadness thrown in for good measure sometimes.

One insight that keeps popping up in a bunch of counseling sessions over the past month really clicked for me this week. That’s the idea that we definitely swap back and forth between minute-by-minute survival mode and longer-term survival mode, but that it sure helps us feel better if we’re able to take some agency over deciding when we do that.

If I’m just thinking about getting through a Wednesday and choose to eat a yucky (but comforting) supper, that’s a choice that serves me well in the moment. I’d much rather choose that than not eat or drink and feel a whole lot worse because I wasn’t able to get it together enough to cook for myself. But the reverse is true as well—if I’m so focused on my long-term goals and making a huge impact on the world but that means I’m not taking care of my day-to-day needs, I’m making a huge mistake. We all need to consider which serves us best in a given point of our lives, and it’s not failure if the best thing for us today looks like emergency cozy nesting mode.

A local prevention conference is happening tomorrow, and I have a lot of feelings about the fact that I’m not going to be there. I’ve been involved in some capacity with planning and carrying out this annual conference for at least fifteen years, but not this year. I have had to make decisions in 2026 about where best to allocate my energy, and that’s been hard for me. I still care deeply about prevention, awareness, recovery and treatment of substance use disorders, but I haven’t had it in me to be a part of this year’s event. The same goes for the One Life suicide prevention 5k earlier this fall—I wasn’t there for the first time in many many years. I feel badly about both of those things, but I know I need to save the strength I have, since I have so much less of it. I hope that changes someday. I only have so much of myself to give, for the first time, and I’m having to re-evaluate all of my commitments in that light.

A Mountain Goats lyric that has resonated with me for years, from “Choked Out” goes, “Everybody’s got their limits, nobody’s found mine”. That’s how it felt to be Matt for a long time. Until six months ago, when I very suddenly discovered my limits. Losing Kellie has taught me a great deal about humility, because I am not the same guy I was before her death, and I am not remotely capable of the same things.

Sometimes the smell wafts around the place and you get so used to it that you tell yourself you’re just imagining things, that there IS no smell after all. Sometimes that happens when your focus is on the wrong stuff, like the goals that will take literally years to accomplish, when you’ve completely forgotten to drink any water in the last six hours and cannot grasp why you feel so THIRSTY. Then you go for a walk and when you come back into the house you’ve gotten the reset you need, and you realize that there is DEFINITELY a smell. And you’d better address it.

I hope you’re able to make the healthiest possible choices for yourself this week, instead of feeling locked into a mode that doesn’t benefit you in the moment. I hope you’re able to tell the difference between the anxiety, or the sadness, or the smell, and what you should actually be focusing on right now. And I hope you’re feeling okay tonight.

Me? I’m feeling pretty great. Because last night (at approximately midnight), I figured out where that damn smell was coming from. On Sunday morning, I forgot to turn on the dryer after washing a bunch of towels. Oops. Problem solved.

XOXO,

Matt

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Nonetheless, I felt rushed and like I was slightly behind to everything else today.

I was able to do some problem-solving with a few students today, which is always a great thing when it works out. You can’t solve them all with a win-win, but when you can? It’s definitely worth trying, at any rate.

My general disorientation today was also at least partially related to the fact that yes, it’s Wednesday again. I had forgotten to take my medication until later on, I didn’t eat lunch until it was far too late in the day, and I just generally felt out of it until I realized what was going on and corrected these errors.

In discussing the general lay of the landscape with my therapist this afternoon, we made the joint decision to move my scheduled appointments with her to a day besides Wednesday moving forward. She was the one who suggested it, and upon reflection it makes a whole lot of sense. When I was very very fresh in my grief, it made perfect sense to see her on Wednesdays. I was in crisis mode and operating on a day-to-day basis. Now that I’m beyond that (still in survival mode, but longer-term survival), I think it makes more sense to see her on days when I’m more able to access how I’m feeling and thinking. Even having a clearer brain is going to help me get more out of therapy than if I’m just trying to get through another Wednesday, so I’m very pleased with this call.

Feeling emboldened by a good therapy session, I reached out via Facebook Messenger to all the local widowed folks who are also members of an Ohio widows/widowers group. This group maintains a record of who lives where in the state in order to facilitate local connections between us. I tried my best to let each person know who I am and convey the general sense that I’m looking to build friendships with other people who have also been widowed (while also making clear that I’m not interested in finding a new partner). It was just really helpful to me to be able to talk with other widows and widowers at Camp Widow last weekend, and as incredible as my support system is, I think it would be great to be able to have occasional chats with others who have been there.

I haven’t heard back from anyone yet, which is a bummer. But who knows, maybe they just have a hard time answering messages, which is true of lots of us. And maybe they think I’m a creepy guy, which is fair. I’d probably think I’m a creepy guy too, if I didn’t know me. If you know cool people who have been widowed and are looking to build supports with other widowed folks, let them know to reach out to me, perhaps?

That pretty much sums up my day. I’m doing okay, just weary with the pain and exhaustion of yet another week without Kellie. 25 weeks, for those of us who are counting. It’s an unbelievably long period of time. 175 days. I continue to miss her to a shocking degree when I stop to think about it, which is something I do more often on Wednesdays.

Life goes on, whether that makes any real logical sense or not.

XOXO,

Matt

The day (after I got through some work) truly started with a wonderful massage. I’ve decided to increase the frequency of those to every other week rather than every three weeks, since they help me so much. Beyond that, Kellie’s birthday month is only a few weeks away, and I’m very cognizant of the need to take extra-special care of myself through November and December. They won’t be regular months for me, and I’m not going to pretend they are and just white-knuckle my way to 2027.

If I end up acting like a weirdo in the last couple months of this year, please just bear with me and know that I fully expect them to be really challenging. November was always dedicated to Kellie, and everything (from the food we ate to the movies we watched and everything in-between) was dedicated to Kellie’s happiness. This will be the first November since 1995 that will not be the case for me, which is beyond strange.

November is also Thanksgiving, and it’s been our tradition for a very long time for me to make a huge Thanksgiving feast. That’s not in the cards for me this year. And then, of course, comes December. Kellie was a huge fan of Christmas, and so our list of annually-watched Christmas movies was up to almost 40 films.

I’m not saying I’m planning to consciously avoid Christmas-related stuff, but none of these things are the same without her, and I don’t expect them to hold the same resonance.

After my massage this morning (which was truly great), I headed for Youngstown to spend some time with someone special. I probably haven’t spoken much about Aaron here, but he’s a really important person from my past. At the first college I went to (until Thanksgiving of my freshman year, at least), Aaron was someone I clicked with immediately. He was so kind and compassionate and made me feel a little less weird to be back in the US and doing the whole college thing (briefly). We stayed in touch and he ended up serving as the Best Man in our wedding. We even went to his wedding after that. And then—you know, life stuff happened. I’ve been reflecting a lot about what the heck actually happens to us as human beings that leads us to not maintain connections with people who matter to us a whole lot.

Our conversation today was really special to me. We got to spend two hours catching up, and it felt so good to have him back in my life (and to be back in his, too). It’s embarrassing to say this, but we haven’t sat down and talked since 1999—TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS. That’s absolutely ridiculous. Even more ridiculous that we never had an argument or anything, we just stopped talking for no actual reason.

Funnily enough, I completely forgot to take a picture with Aaron today. So in lieu of a new one, here’s us at our wedding.

If you’ve read this newsletter for a bit, you know that one of my top current priorities is to establish a new life for myself that is sustainable in the long-term. It’s entirely possible that spending much time considering elements that I need to have in my life is a defense mechanism meant to help me over-intellectualize and distance myself from feeling my feelings.

It’s also entirely possible that I’m being wise in not just letting the chips fall randomly and then seeing what happens—that even if I run the risk of thinking I can “solve” this whole widower thing by being intentional about my life, it’ll help me out more than it hurts me.

Either way, I know that I need positive and supportive friends in my life. As many as I can reasonably get. I mean, I’m not out at bars buying people drinks and begging them to be my buddy. I’m also not posting an application to be my friend online and hoping it goes viral (though that kind of sounds like it would be fun). But I’m seriously and genuinely trying to cultivate more relationships that feel healthy and meaningful. A part of that is me trying to have those relationships be reciprocal ones. I know I’m at a time in my life when it’s easy to want to offer me support, but I worry a great deal that that dynamic could lead to pretty lopsided friendships down the road. And I honestly don’t want to give people a chance to ignore my calls or texts or whatever just because they don’t have it in them to offer support at the moment. So that means a give-and-take, where people see something of value in a friendship with me rather than just feeling sorry for me in the moment. I just don’t see that as a good long-term solution.

Friendships are hard for me!

There’s a pretty good chance that they’re hard for you too. One of the most common things I hear from my therapy clients and students is that they feel lonely and isolated and like they don’t have enough connections with other people. It’s another of those pretty universal aspects of the human experience at the moment, I think. None of us knows how to make friends, or how to retain the ones we’ve already got, and so if we’re lucky we hold on to a few for dear life. But the idea of increasing the number of one’s friends feels universal and also somehow mythical.

Regardless, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve talked the talk for a really long time. When I’ve given speeches about the deficits of hope that I see so often in rural communities like this one, I cannot tell you how often I have suggested that we need more people in our lives. I cannot tell you how often I have told people in self-care workshops and social work classes that we need to make more friends. I literally wrote a book chapter called “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat” for a project that hopefully comes out someday, which is all about the importance of figuring out how to build community and connections rather than trying to make it through this current capitalist hellscape on our own. And yet I haven’t really done much of it myself until after Kellie died.

Ultimately, if there’s a theme to this season of my life, it’s “survive”. Maybe that means survive today by eating food and taking my medication and drinking water and sleeping. Maybe that means survive the emotional turmoil I have to deal with most of the time by beefing up my coping skills or just waiting out the worst times. Maybe that means survive the clutter, the lack of touch and isolation, and the sense of being trapped in my house without someone to care for the dogs by adding incredible people like Jessie and Amber and Ashley to my life, all of whom help me keep going. And maybe that means survive the loneliness by building and sustaining meaningful friendships.

Today, that list of meaningful friendships went up by one, and that gives me a lot of joy.

Take care of yourself. I’m finding myself smiling a lot this evening, and there are many worse emotions I could be feeling tonight than joy. That’s cause for celebration on my end.

Oh, and hey—if you want to be my friend, just let me know.

XOXO,

Matt

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I think most “normal” folks have given up on answering this question with any degree of honesty or vulnerability whatsoever. I think people may feel that it’s part of the social contract we all dwell within—I commit to telling you I’m doing great, you commit to asking anyway, and we’ll both just agree to pretend. That feels so disingenuous to me on a good day, and downright dishonest on a bad one. I think the standard answer “I can’t complain” is even worse than saying “great!” because it’s just another way of saying “things are bad but nobody would listen or there’s no point in telling you how I feel anyway because I know nobody cares or can help it get any better”.

I’m not “normal” these days, though, and I’ve given up on the idea of ever falling within the average emotional range of most people anyway. “Normal” is a scam for the most part to begin with. But my baseline day does not look like your baseline day, probably. Which is the whole point of taking a baseline measurement—acknowledging that we all have our own “normal” levels of all kinds of things.

So how am I today? More okay than not (at least 51% okay). That’s going to have to be good enough for you at this point.

On Friday, I had a unique experience. I spent the day at Camp Widow in Buffalo. Camp Widow events are sometimes three-day events and sometimes a single day. They take place in several different cities each year, and are put on by an organization called Soaring Spirits International. Soaring Spirits was founded by two women who were both widowed in 2005, with the goal of trying to connect people in my position and provide resources and hope and support to folks who belong to this club. It bears saying (as I heard on Friday) that widowhood is something we don’t talk about or even think about a whole lot in our society, even though the majority of us will experience it at some point in our lives (if we’re lucky enough to have a long-term partner). The odds are pretty good that you’ll be the one left behind, if you’re not the one leaving your partner. And yet we don’t have these kinds of conversations before such a loss, and then those of us who are put in this position do so without a great deal of well-informed support.

To be clear, I’ve had huge amounts of support! But none of those in my support network are actually widowed themselves, and that makes a difference.

That thought about lived experience being valuable and indispensable is something I’ve wrestled with for at least ten or fifteen years. I thought I was pretty set in my professional perspectives on lived experience, and have received my comeuppance on that (as on so many things). I have also been very sure that suicide loss is the worst possible traumatic loss experience, but I’ve changed my mind about that as well.

As the founder of Soaring Spirits discussed with us on Friday, being widowed from your long-term partner is the most difficult loss experience we can probably have. There are no other forms of loss that cut across every single part of our lives: social, physical, financial. There are no other forms of loss that sever our future goals and plans so completely, and no other forms of loss that also involve so little meaningful support. Losing your long-term partner carries with it massive increased mortality risks (as I noted the other day). It cuts your income in half, or maybe more (depending upon who was the primary income earner in the family). It causes long-term or permanent cognitive and memory deficits. It changes every single thing for those of us who are unfortunate enough to experience it. And yet we don’t have these kinds of conversations, in part because of how scary it is to consider our own mortality and the strong possibility of going through it ourselves (if we haven’t already experienced it).

In terms of lived experience, I think it’s important that we have folks in our lives who have some shared elements with us. I know that there are a million elements of identity which all but ensure, however, that there’s nobody out there in the world who can completely share your perspective or history. It’s commonly said that “You can’t understand something until you live through it”. I struggle with that belief, largely because I have such little common ground with so many of my clients (and always have). I have served as a clinical supervisor over addiction treatment for a decade of my career, and yet have never struggled with a substance use disorder myself. I’ll bet 75% of my clients have been female, and I’m a cisgender male. I grew up in multiple states and then spent most of my formative years in the Philippines, and almost never encounter anyone in my rural Ohio community who has visited that incredible place. At the same time, my high school years were spent in Manila, which is a massive city. So I had very little direct experience with rurality until I moved to Ashtabula County in the mid-90s. I’ve been surrounded by religious folks for my whole life, but most of them were some flavor of Christian or Muslim. I’ve been a Quaker for four or five years, and have never met someone who identified as Quaker in my local area (at least as far as I know). These are just a very few examples of elements of identity that exist for us all, and I haven’t even spoken about the ways that power and privilege interact with all those elements of identity. Intersectionality is a real thing, look it up!

All of that said, if we could never understand or identify with or learn about things we haven’t directly experienced, then I might as well stop my clinical work entirely. I’m never going to find someone I can understand if I’m limited to 49-year old cis white guys who live in rural Ohio and grew up overseas (and who have recently been widowed). In the case of addiction, I’ve long-argued that lived experience with addiction paves the way to engagement and a positive therapeutic alliance in the professional relationship, which is the most important facet of treatment. So those who have experienced addiction themselves have a head start on building that relationship, but they’re not the only ones who can grasp significant aspects of that person’s lived experience, given the opportunity to be given a tour of their life by that person. Because they are always going to be the biggest expert in their own story, but they can teach us about that story if they’re willing to do so.

But now, having been widowed by Kellie’s death, I feel like I have had to dramatically revise my opinions about my knowledge specific to sudden and traumatic loss. That’s been kind of a huge blow to my professional ego, honestly. If you’d asked me six and a half months ago whether I was an expert in sudden loss, I would have very confidently told you “Absolutely!” Now, though? I’m a lot less sure. And that’s kind of a difficult pill to swallow. At that point back in April, I felt like I had to re-learn everything from scratch. Probably part of that is because of the notorious “widow’s brain” wherein the cognitive load of having so many disruptions all at once often leads one to struggle to remember and retain info that used to be second nature. Some folks say that your normal level of cognitive functioning never comes back, but I’m still hopeful it’s not a permanent state of being.

I was having a conversation with a friend about this the other day, and about how I’ve always felt like I couldn’t be an expert in someone else’s lived experience but that I could come inside their experience and be shown around by them, learning as I went, and thus gain a lot of insight into what it felt like to be them going through whatever experience. And how now it feels like that knowledge about traumatic loss has left me, beyond what I’ve learned about it as I’ve lived these last six months. In the midst of that conversation, I had a realization that something which could explain the dynamic I’m struggling with is that I don’t have someone else to show me around this experience—since it’s happening to me, I don’t have the luxury of being able to observe, catalog, reason, help them develop a healthier perspective—because it’s me alone inside my head. Nobody’s here to help me understand this experience, since it’s MY experience. That’s a pretty terrifying thought on a lot of levels, and I’m still trying to figure out what it ultimately means to me.

Camp Widow was such an incredible experience primarily because the vast majority of what was said during that day by other widowed folks resonated with me on some level. I heard them talk about their experiences and they felt an awful lot like mine, in many different ways. I’d never had that before, since as I’ve said this isn’t a collection of things that we tend to talk about a ton with other people. The down-side of that, of course, was that as others shared their very emotionally-charged experiences (which felt like my own), it tended to make me very emotional as well, even though we weren’t talking about Kellie or me at that point at all. All of the lessons I learned from Camp Widow are going to help me moving forward, and I suspect they’re going to help a great deal.

We were encouraged to take care of ourselves after leaving, since it’s pretty common for people to have a post-camp slump. Having a lot of these things normalized for nine or ten hours and being surrounded by folks who truly get it (and then coming back to the real world) can feel like a bit of culture shock. They told us to take care of our hearts and our minds and our bodies as we process what things we want to take away from Camp Widow. I appreciated the reminder very much.

In fact, I took it so much to heart that I came home and slept nine hours that night (which is about three hours longer than my usual). Yesterday was a day of rest as well, in addition to a fair amount of melancholy because I felt Kellie’s absence really keenly. Today has been pretty restful too, though I got a lot of work done due to it being Indigenous People’s Day and not having a ton scheduled.

Lindsay and I got to have a lovely lunch and then go shopping for art supplies, because Margot has been encouraging me through my first halting steps toward trying to learn how to paint with watercolors.

I’m still thinking about what Friday will mean to me long-term, but I suspect it’s going to turn out to have been a really useful step in my attempts to create a sustainable and healthy and joy-filled life. That’s the goal, at any rate.

XOXO,

Matt

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I know I talked about how wonderful the asters in Kellie’s garden are, in part because of how much I love watching those bumblebees frolicking in their midst. Well, there are also asters in my backyard, and it appears that there are a variety of honeybees and hornets inhabiting those. So my current perspective is that front yard asters are amazing and backyard asters are bad news. Coco has spent a couple of days trying to eat bees, and she needs to quit it before she learns a scary lesson. Here’s a pic of the gorgeous front yard asters. I continue to spend a bunch of very meaningful time in Kellie’s garden several times a day, now that Ashley has tamed it into shape again.

Speaking of Coco, she woke me up at 4:50am today. She wanted belly rubs and head scratches and a snuggle. After she got those, she was fine with letting me go back to sleep until 6:50, which is a win in my book.

I bought groceries this morning for the second time in two weeks—it feels very strange. I’ll let you know whether cooking feels like too much for me this week or not. Such a weird place to be with cooking, since I used to love it so much. Even though I love food, I don’t have the strength to do it the way I did before Kellie died.

I’ll be getting up early tomorrow morning in order to drive to Buffalo (yes, again). No, I’m not moving to Buffalo. It’s just that so many cool things have been happening there lately! I’m attending Camp Widow tomorrow (here’s info about the program). It’s a conference dedicated to widowhood—providing resources, making connections, and honoring our lost loved ones. I’m really looking forward to it, and also pretty nervous about the whole thing. I’ve never been in a space full of so many widow/ers, and I’m looking forward to having had so many common shared experiences with a bunch of people. I don’t know how it’s going to go, but I’ll let you know when I get back!

Next week’s schedule is much, much less intense, and I’m looking forward to that as well.

I hope you have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend—take care of yourself!

XOXO,

Matt

I bought a ticket to the Hillside Festival last night, which is exciting! I think I’ve mentioned Hillside in the past, but we haven’t been able to go since Kellie’s grandma died. It’s a music festival that takes place on an island in a nature preserve in Guelph, Ontario. Our time spent there has been peaceful, joyful, and full of love and connection. It’s a truly special place. As they describe themselves:

The Hillside Summer Festival and Hillside Inside are three-day, multi-stage events with a broad artistic vision that emphasizes diversity: of culture, of musical heritage and style, of age, geography and influence.

As an artistic presenter working in a time of reconciliation and reckoning, Hillside remains committed to offering space and work for artists and arts workers from all races, cultures, and communities, particularly Indigenous, people of colour, LGBTQ2S+, and women whose inclusion will help stitch a richer and more varied cultural fabric.

Set in a beautiful, accessible conservation area with campgrounds on Guelph Lake, our summer festival is world-renowned as one of Canada’s most progressive, environmentally conscious, non-commercial community celebrations. We create a village on Guelph Lake Island that we fill with music, dance, drumming, food, crafts, and more.

Anyway, I love it. And the people who have gone with us have loved it too. Here’s a photo of Kellie and I being happy at Hillside.

So I reached out to a small number of folks who have gone to the festival with us in the past to see if they would be interested in accompanying me in 2027. And that led to a hard conversation with a dear friend about how they wouldn’t be able to do it anymore (because of the physically-demanding aspects of an outdoor festival). That’s completely fine with me, and I would never begrudge them for making that decision. It’s a perfectly valid choice to make (if it’s even truly a choice on their part).

But that conversation just highlighted for me just how truly hard the passage of time can be. We never know when it’ll be the last time we do something we love. We just don’t. Time moves in one direction, and swimming upstream against is just isn’t always (or even usually) possible. We are, sadly, at its mercy. Even when it’s cruel. Especially when it’s cruel.

The other thing that conversation brought up for me was just how inaccessible so much of the world can be for so many of us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in good physical shape myself. I’m trying to do better with this, but I’m not in a position to even go on a strenuous hike or something. That said, there were a lot of spaces that were just not accessible to Kellie. People who say they care about being open to everyone and care deeply about diversity do not regularly consider so many aspects of accessibility that would make a massive impact for people with Kellie’s challenges.

In my experience, there is so much privilege tied to having a body you feel comfortable in. I will always advocate for a focus on access, because I know how much Kellie was unable to do just because nobody thought about putting in a little effort to create more opportunities for people not like them.

I was in a meeting recently with a lot of folks who care deeply about justice and diversity and kindness, and was so surprised and disheartened to hear a perspective expressed that completely ignored differential levels of ability in a specific way. And that made me sad. It can be so hard to inhabit someone else’s point of view, but I wish more folks were able to at least try to do that. Or CARED to do that.

When I think about how much smaller my world was before Kellie died, that doesn’t make me sad because I could do fewer things and had a smaller set of activities available to me. I wouldn’t ever have left Kellie alone so that I could go to things like the Power to the People Festival last weekend. She knew I wouldn’t leave her alone, and she also knew she couldn’t have made it happen physically-speaking. That gave her a lot of guilt, at times. I’ve been making the argument to her for years that I wasn’t staying home with her by default, or out of a sense of obligation. I was staying home with her because I chose her over anything else. And I would do it the same way all over again, a thousand times out of a thousand. With zero hesitation.

That’s not something that’s always been easy for other people to understand. They didn’t have to understand, honestly. But not everyone is able to think about and care about someone else’s needs over what they might choose in a vacuum. I don’t care what other people would do—Kellie was worth picking, again and again and again. She still is.

Kellie thought she was preventing me from going on adventures. That’s not true: she WAS my adventure. And that’s why I need to find new adventures now.

I can’t change the fact that Kellie’s not here anymore. I have more freedom (physically, geographically, temporally, and even financially) than I ever have. I also need to have things to look forward to, and so I keep packing my schedule with joyful events. And hey, I can be sad anywhere. In spite of all that freedom, I would give back every bit of it for the chance to choose Kellie again. Since she’s not here, I’m choosing joy. Both of those things are true simultaneously. There are an infinity of things which are true simultaneously, pretty much.

I’ve spent a ton of time in Kellie’s garden since last night. That’s because Ashley came over and spent two hours making it absolutely beautiful again. I feel so close and connected to her out there, and it’s the most peaceful place in the world to me. Ashley is a treasure, and I tried to tell her via text how glad I was that she had the time to come over and work in the garden last night. My phone thought I wanted to tell her what I typically say on someone’s birthday, which was “I’m so glad you were born”, so I went ahead and told her both things. Because I am! I’m so glad so many people in my support system were born, because if they weren’t—I’d miss them so much!

If you’re reading this, and are a part of my support system, I’ll just tell you right now—I’m incredibly glad you were born, because the world is a better place with you in it.

She was able to save the incredible asters which decided to grow in the garden without us choosing to plant them, and that’s made me really happy too. Sitting on my bench and watching all the happy bumblebees busily pollinating the flowers has been my favorite thing over the past several days.

Just look at these before and after pics!

If I haven’t asked you to come to Hillside with me next July, that’s just because I’m not sure who might want to go and who wouldn’t. If you’re interested in driving to Guelph with me for a few days in mid-July 2027 and being a part of Hillside with me, please let me know!

Also know that I’m not trying to take a time machine back to my past with Kellie by going back to this festival again. I know she won’t be there, and it won’t be the same experience for me as a 50-year old (!) as it was for me as a 25-year-old (!!). That said, it’ll still be incredible, and I’ll be there whether I’m on my own or not. If you’re interested, let me know and we can talk about whether it makes sense for you or not.

I hope your day is at least somewhat joyous, and I hope you have somewhere to go that brings you a moment of peace in these turbulent times. For me, it’s Kellie’s garden (and those incredible bees).

Love,

Matt

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We had 30 years and 3 weeks together since we first found each other on April Fools’ Day 1996. That’s one thousand, five hundred and sixty-three weeks, not counting things like leap years and variances from month to month.

Comparing 24 weeks to 1,563 weeks might seem like it’s not very useful an exercise, but it helps me put things into perspective. In order for me to live as long after Kellie’s death without her as I did before her death with her, I’d have to make it to 78, which seems like a very long time from now. Not impossible, mind you, just far-off.

My great-grandfather on my dad’s side of the family lived to 77, and his wife (my great-grandmother) lived to 84. My maternal grandmother died at 59, but my maternal grandfather lived to 80. My paternal grandmother only lived to 69, but my great-aunt (her sister) lived to 95. And my paternal grandfather only lived to 72, but was randomly killed by a drunk driver. Taking the average of those seven lives, you get 76 and a half. One of the three youngest to go fought cancer for many years, and the other two were randomly killed by (different) drunk drivers. So those three skewed the (very un-scientific) data pool somewhat. Without them, you get an average of 84. Therefore, me living to 78 might not be that improbable.

Both of my parents will be 75 later this year, and are doing pretty great health-wise. That’s heartening as I consider my age and mortality and all the things that go with them. Out of all those family members, only one of them arguably had dementia, so the odds are pretty good for me to avoid that as well (which is good, since it’s probably my biggest fear).

My mom’s dad lived just 18 years past the time when he became widowed. That’s really the only example of this in my immediate family tree, since my dad’s parents were long-separated at the time his father died (so I wouldn’t really consider widowhood to have dramatically impacted my grandma).

I remember how challenging it was for him to cope in the very early days of being on his own. My parents and little sister and I moved in with him for a few months after my grandma’s death, and it was a rough time. He spent most of the days locked away in his room, mostly just coming out at night when everyone else was asleep. He was so, so angry. And I get that—to have your 59-year-old wife killed in a senseless accident by a drunk driver is a situation that tends to make you mad. The echoes of my parents moving us in with him to help out for a few months sure do feel similar to them doing the same thing for me after Kellie’s death.

My grandpa struggled greatly with that loss, and I don’t begrudge him that. I like to think I’m a generally healthier person than he was, not that it makes sense to compare one loss to another. But even so, he got to have her for a full decade longer than I had Kellie.

It’s just not fair.

I know that everyone’s loss is its own monster. I know that most people who lose someone significant are devastated by that loss, in both large and small ways. But you don’t understand just how incredibly unique Kellie was! She was responsible for creating real change in this world, and she helped so many folks. The ripple effects that she caused here continue to expand, and arguably always will. I’m never going to be able to quantify just how much good Kellie’s done (though I’m going to keep trying to do exactly that). To have her gone from the world is something which should stagger all of us, not just me. And yet life keeps going on for all of us, which isn’t fair.

Maybe you’ve heard about the widowhood effect. That’s the increased risk each of us has of dying in the time immediately following the loss of a spouse. Research seems to show that there’s a more than 60% increased risk of death for us after becoming widowed. It also shows (thankfully) that that huge increase in risk drops significantly if you make it through three months post-loss. So I’ve doubled that (hooray for me), which likely means I’ve dodged that particular bullet. But I sure get it!

There are a lot of potential reasons for this increased level of risk, and I think the most important thing to consider with it is the fact that although the huge rise in mortality drops a bunch after three months, everyone still says that the second year post-loss is the hardest. I’ve heard this across my entire career, pertaining to all kinds of loss. Although I think it’s far from being a universal experience, one commonality that folks often share is that their support systems have dropped off a great deal by the time that happens. So even though the period of time between three months in and three years in doesn’t bring an increased risk of death for the widow/er, that’s a really hard time to live through mentally, emotionally, and physically.

That’s what I have to keep in my mind with all of these decisions surrounding my supports, including incredibly important parts of the team like Ashley, and Jessie, and Amber. I have every intention of making it to 78 or 88 or 128, but that’s not going to happen without people who love and care about me helping me get there.

And don’t get me wrong here—I’m not setting some arbitrary date upon which I plan to die (at 78)—but we have a natural tendency to come up with goals, right? And living as long after losing Kellie as I did with her is as good a goal as any!

So anyway—six months. It’s such a huge length of time for me to wrap my brain around. In so many ways, she still feels so present and real and concrete in our home, and I usually just can’t grasp the truth of her absence. It’s elusive most of the time, probably as a defense mechanism.

I carry on, not because I have to, but because I choose to.

Love you all. Thanks for being a witness (and active participant) to this season of my life.

Six months of chronicling my experiences in this way feels like a whole lot of writing. I just went back and checked, and this is the one hundred and thirty-fourth entry in this Substack that I’ve published since Kellie’s death. Which averages around five and a half newsletters per week over the last six months. That feels like a staggering number, but I don’t really think about that. All I’m thinking about as I write is getting today’s done, not about the mountain of words I’ve already previously written about this loss and about my grief and about how incredible a person Kellie was—or is.

Take care. I made it through another one.

XOXO,

Matt

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I’ve been teaching self-care workshops for a lot of years now, and they’re so much fun for me to do. I can speak for three hours right now about self-care practices, and you know what? I’d have some pretty well-informed things to say! You know what else? I don’t use a lot of the strategies that I teach people to put into place in their own lives, because…it’s so much easier to teach stuff than actually do it yourself!

My Spiritual Formation group last night was really great (as usual). A big part of the conversation was about the ways that we can try to clutter our minds and our environments less, so we can feel less oppressed by all of the stuff. We talked about change and about transitions and about rest. It gave me so much to consider. At one point, I chose to share with the others in the group about my newly-found commitment to rest on my days off. Rest is something I care about deeply on an intellectual level. I always have! But to actually just sit and be, without anything else planned and without feeling like I’m ignoring important tasks by not focusing on anything besides rest, has always been really difficult for me. It’s so easy for me to do all the things (at once) and so hard for me to just stay in one spot and try to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all the other things.

I spent a long time out in Kellie’s garden this morning. It’s been a little while since I’ve sat there for an extended period of time, and I think that’s probably because it’s started to get some weeds and other plants that we didn’t plan on. I have been strongly determined to not work on weeding the garden. That might sound lazy or dumb to some of you, but I feel a lot of trepidation and dread when I consider pulling out some of those weeds. I want it to look perfect, but I also want it to feel comfortable to me and others to hang out in. When the path is covered by stuff, or when the bench is overshadowed by the rosebush that needs to be woven better into the arbor, it feels bad. I don’t feel like I can do it justice to do the weeding myself, because that’s always something I’ve done a really bad job with. But beyond that, when I consider starting to weed her garden I feel a wash of exhaustion flowing over me. It makes me feel frozen and just plain bad to think about doing it myself, so I haven’t. And when I see it with the weeds, it makes me feel worse, since I feel like I’m letting Kellie and her memory down by not doing it myself.

My dad has been working to find someone willing to do garden maintenance for an hour or two a week for a few months now, and I’m so happy and excited that we’ve gotten someone who’s willing and passionate about gardening to sign on. I have very high hopes that she’ll be able to get things into shape very soon. But for now, I just need to force myself to be there in that space anyway, regardless of how it looks. Because I feel her there—I feel her everywhere, if I try hard enough, but that garden was built and grown for Kellie since her death, and I’ve spent so much time talking to her out there that it feels like a sacred space. Some of her ashes have been scattered out there, too (theoretically—if you’re a member of law enforcement, this was just a joke. I’d never scatter human remains in a garden in case that is legally questionable).

It was a really chilly morning today—in the mid-40s—and the brisk air actually made it more palatable for me to spend time outside than it would’ve been if it was 80 degrees and sunny. I enjoyed listening to the wind chimes and carrying on an ongoing dialogue with Kellie, as I love to do. In times like that, the gap separating me from her—wherever she is—feels thinner and more porous. I can almost imagine her sitting out there with me. Almost.

I’ve gotten many counseling referrals over the last few weeks (more than in the last year or two put together) and so I’m in the process of scheduling and getting to know several new clients this week. It’s always both a joyful and a scary process to acclimate yourself to someone else’s life and challenges and belief system, and it’s such a gift to me that folks trust me to care about them and hold their cares with love and compassion in the midst of the storm that brought them to me in the first place.

It’s also a challenge to have extra emotional energy to spare, in this season of my life. Since new clients require a lot more emotional energy than long-term clients, that’s one more area I need to be cautious about at the moment. So many areas to be cautious about, I know—the exhaustion is exhausting, though. If you don’t be careful, it sneaks up on you and leaves you so wiped out you’re gasping for enough air to make it through the hour, or day, or week. Slow and steady does it, sometimes.

I’m happy about seeing one of my favorite musicians in Cleveland tonight (Martin Sexton). I know that I have many favorite musicians, and I don’t feel bad about that. Life is short, oh so short, and we need all the good things we can possibly pack into the few moments we have on earth. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen him play, but probably at least ten shows, across the last twenty years? This was the second concert ticket I bought after she died, because I knew how seeing him again would make me feel, and I knew I needed that.

Here’s a clip of Martin performing one of his songs that still makes me tear up, despite having heard it hundreds of times.

I don’t know what your day has been like, and I don’t know what’s going on in your head at the moment. I can only speak authoritatively about what’s going on in mine, and it’s been a real mixed bag. That said, in spite of all the tears, I’ve had a great day today. I’m glad to be alive, I’m glad to have the privilege to carve out work-free chunks of my week, and I’m overjoyed to get to see this guy share some of his heart with me again.

XOXO,

Matt

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My weekend was absolutely wonderful. It was full of hope and love and connection and joy. I don’t say that to make anyone feel less-than if theirs was absent any of those experiences, but I think we need to celebrate the positive things we find in our lives. I’m doing okay, and I’m also not doing okay, but which of those is accurate really depends upon when you ask. Either way, I’ll commit to continuing to be honest about it. Tonight? I’m doing okay. And my weekend was incredible.

I have to thank my friends Mike and Carmen for both stepping up in order to allow me to make this weekend happen. I initially planned to buy tickets a few months ago when they went on sale, and had fully intended to go by myself. But when Mike told me he was happy to try to get the two of us tickets and that he’d love to go with me, I was very excited to have backup. And when he was placed in the queue thousands and thousands of spots ahead of me and was able to buy us our tickets when I got shut out, I was overjoyed. The last piece I needed to put into place was who could stay at our house and watch the dogs for me, and Carmen immediately volunteered to babysit my two dogs as well as bringing their two dogs (for a total of four dogs on her own).

Mike was also glad to drive us there and back (being a passenger is a very novel experience for me), and he even found us our hotel room! In addition, all four dogs were very well-behaved and got along very well for Carmen. They were lovely angels, which only makes sense because all of them are wonderful babies. And she’s the best caregiver I could have ever asked for.

The Power to the People Festival itself was an unbelievable experience. There are all kinds of think pieces out there about how incredible the event ended up being, but here are just a few highlights. (With the caveat that there’s no way I can possibly list all the incredible things that happened on Saturday.)

• Seventeen of the musicians who performed at the festival have been individually inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

• The youngest musician who played was 15, and the oldest was 85.

• Jack Black played a set of Black Sabbath covers with a backing band of teens (which also included Geezer Butler from Black Sabbath for a song).

• Joan Baez was brilliant (of course).

• I was shocked at how much I enjoyed Cypress Hill and Public Enemy.

• I was not at all shocked at how much I enjoyed Tom Morello and Bruce Springsteen.

• I haven’t been to a Dave Matthews show in about twenty years (though several times before that) and I really appreciated the chance to see him again.

• Foo Fighters were, of course, fantastic. So were Dropkick Murphys.

• Although I’ve heard his name for quite a while, I’d never heard Nathaniel Rateliff’s music, and he was incredible.

• Grandson was very angry and also pretty great.

• The collaborations between artists were unbelievable.

• The goal of the day was to mobilize the people, and it sure did. The focus was peace, love, justice, and music—all those boxes were checked for me.

If you caught any of the livestream on YouTube, that’s great! If you missed the show (it only broadcast once) then let me know, as I may have an idea for how you could find it online.

I was struck again, many many times, by the power of music and time and place and experience. I’m so happy that I was there. I missed Kellie so, so, so much. I had a very strong urge to text her after so many things happened this weekend, and then remembered again each time that she’s gone.

I also miss her now, back in my house and my regular life. I miss her pretty much all the time. It doesn’t take away the missing, or the grief, or the horror. But intentionally seeking sources of love and joy seems to make at least some of the shock of the worst times feel slightly cushioned by this blessed pile of softness and comfort and light.

Coco and Ivy are overjoyed that I’ve returned. And I am too. I slept incredibly soundly last night. My bed is my favorite place to sleep, and with the girls in the peace and quiet is my very favorite way to be.

Enjoy some of my photos from the weekend. It was a special time, and I’ll always treasure these memories.

Also, vote. We need to change some stuff in this country pretty significantly, and that’s an actual tangible way to make some changes happen.

Love you.

Matt

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