All Around Me Are Familiar Places
First off, yes—I turned in my final assignment for my second doctoral class a few minutes ago. So I’ve gotten all three of my massive projects that were due over the weekend finished with plenty of time to spare, which is a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I now have no homework or coursework to do until the fall semester starts in almost a month, so that gives me some time to breathe.
I woke up today thinking about how it was going to be a third day in a row just sitting and staring at my laptop all day (which wasn’t very palatable to me). Coco woke us up at 6:40, so by the time I had showered, made us breakfast, and spent a few hours working on my project I found that I was nearly done with that and it was only around 10:30am. What a difference getting up at 6:40 instead of 9:40 makes!
I’m serious when I say that I really am enjoying this waking up early thing, against all odds. I’d imagine I would feel differently about it if I were in misery all my waking hours, but that’s not the case, so more time awake doesn’t correlate with more time being sad and depressed for me.
Since it wasn’t even 11:00am and I had nothing else planned, I gave into my random impulse and went searching for a Jewish deli in the Cleveland area that could give me a good pastrami sandwich. I ended up trying Davis Bakery and Deli for the first time, and was absolutely shocked by how incredible that sandwich was—I’ll be back for sure.
Since I was already out that direction, I randomly went from there down to Chagrin Falls. If you knew Kellie well, you probably know something about our connection to that place. If you didn’t, some back story is worth establishing here.
Kellie had a great deal of love for Chagrin Falls. That’s a small but fancy community built around a river and waterfall. There’s an independent bookstore there (Fireside Books), along with a branch of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream (one of our faves) and all kinds of other shops and food options, in addition to the falls itself.
Part of her adoration for the town came from her love of Gilmore Girls. In that show, the town of Stars Hollow was a character unto itself. That town made Kellie feel happy and relaxed and at-home, even though it’s fictional. Chagrin Falls always reminded Kellie of Stars Hollow. The (real) town also carries so many special memories for me.
Kellie and I have gone there more times than I can remember. We’ve also spent time there with a bunch of people we care a lot about. A few random Chagrin Falls trips:
For one very special birthday, our friend Kim drove there secretly and waited in Fireside Books without Kellie knowing. I brought her there to browse the books and she got the surprise of getting to spend the day with Kim and her family, which was a treasured memory for the rest of Kellie’s life.
For a different special birthday, I rented an entire movie theater (the one in Chagrin Falls, of course) and had a bunch of friends show up there to surprise her by watching a movie she was dying to catch. She was so happy that day!
For the amazing Christmas when Ria, the daughter of Kellie’s foreign exchange sister Yukari was staying with us (in addition to my parents), we all went down to Chagrin Falls for ice cream and roaming around (there is no wrong weather for ice cream, btw). That trip will always be linked to that Christmas for me, which will always be one of the best holiday seasons we’ve ever had.
For many years, Kellie and I went Christmas shopping for a day every December with our friends Corey and Tyler. A stop down in Chagrin Falls was a mandatory part of those annual gifting excursions, and Kellie loved and looked forward to that tradition for a very, very long time.
This is just a tiny set of some of my recollections that are tied to that place. So what do places mean to us, and what role do places play in my grief?
I miss Kellie pretty much all the time, no matter where I’m at. But when I’m in our home, where we spent most of the last seven years of her life, memories of Kellie permeate every bit of the space. That’s not as painful for me now as it was a few months ago, unless I’m specifically sorting through a part of our house that is especially Kellie-specific. But I feel like my memories of her here blend into one another and make me just feel her presence here, you know?
When I’m away from our home, I don’t always feel the constant reminders of her everywhere I go. That’s probably a good thing, since it gives me a breather, especially on a bad day.
So when there IS a place that is tied incredibly closely with my memories of Kellie, it feels like a shock to the system sometimes, like being immersed back into a stream of her. I don’t always expect it when it comes, and it can be a little overwhelming. That can require me taking a step back and trying to figure out why those reminders are so strong there.
I’ve written about how travel has changed for me now, especially to places that I’ve never been with Kellie. I have the occasional moment of wishing she were with me, sure, but that’s not the same thing as the firehose blast of memories to the face that happens in some of these places.
More than anything else, those new places make me homesick to go back to a place that DOES carry such a strong memory of her, i.e. my house.
With Chagrin Falls, I knew that was going to happen the next time I went there. Maybe all the times I ever go there. Who knows? But I was ready for it.
I’ve spent a huge amount of my time thinking about what it is about my loss that makes it so hard. I don’t just miss her as a singular person. The hardest part for me is the millions of spaces in my mind and world that she inhabited and is now missing from. It’s not her as one idea, it’s the part of her that held my hand. It’s the part of her that smiled when she saw me come around a corner. It’s the part of her that laughed a goofy laugh when she saw a silly video (and then the part of her that forwarded the video so I’d watch it too). She, and those pieces of her, inhabited those millions of spaces of my life. And those millions of spaces are all without Kellie. There’s no way to sum up all the ways Kellie was a part of my life. It simply isn’t possible.
So when I go to a place that has such a strong echo of her for me, based on all the time we’ve spent there, it can be really meaningful to me. I’ve seen other widows say that’s impossible for them to do, and that life makes me feel so sad to consider. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t go to a coffee shop that Kellie and I loved, or a bookstore, or an ice cream place, or a park. I’d probably need to stay home, but I couldn’t do that in our house if that was the case, so I’d need to move and then stay home THERE. Which sounds both excruciating and exhausting. I feel beyond blessed to not be in that headspace.
I’ll just share some of my most favorite photos from Chagrin Falls. Those memories are one of the biggest things that keep me going, sometimes. If you’ve spent time with us there, thank you for adding to the whole in that way.
Love you,
Matt
