Death is an Asshole

Yeah, you heard me.

I hate death. It’s not a natural process, it’s not calm and peaceful and easy and something we all have to come to terms with. We all die sometime, but I still hate it. Yes, we are all technically slowly rotting all the time, but that doesn’t mean we need to accept the inevitability of death. Death is mean. It’s too often violent and harsh and damages everyone in its vicinity. Death sucks.

I’ve always felt that way, and so did Kellie. We both resolved to prolong our lives, when the time came, by any means necessary. Anything that would give us just another minute together. That was the plan.

But death is an asshole. And we didn’t get to turn our plan into action. Kellie died in seconds, maybe even one second. Neither of us could do anything to change that or stop it from happening. We didn’t get that extra minute. No chance to hold each other and say we loved what we had together. No opportunity for one last kiss. Not even a smile—she was facing away from me, and wouldn’t have seen my face any more than I could see hers.

Death is an asshole.

I was talking to someone this morning, and she called herself an asshole because our conversation made me cry in public. So I needed to let her know what I’m telling you all tonight: she’s not the asshole, death is.

Two miracles happened yesterday. I was on my way to the post office to take my photos and send in my passport application. While driving past the mailbox, I hopped out to grab yesterday’s mail, and opened it gradually while I was driving.

One of the difficult financial decisions I had to make last month was what to do with Kellie’s retirement account. Usually, you face all kinds of penalties for withdrawing funds from your account before retirement age, as a disincentive for doing so. But that’s not the case if your spouse dies—the only penalties you incur are the state and federal taxes you’d have to pay at the end of the year anyway. I knew that Kellie and I still had some decent debts out there (the loan for Sage’s final surgery, Kellie’s private student loan, and a few credit cards). My thinking was that if I took this disbursement it would help me wipe out those loans and credit cards, while also making the transition to not having Kellie’s income a little less painful for a few months. I calculated the taxes I’d lose and the bills I could pay off, and turned in the forms a couple days before Kellie’s celebration of life.

But remember I told you two miracles happened? The first was that I received the check for the retirement account yesterday (it somehow only took a couple of weeks). It was also way higher than I had expected, since nobody would ever accuse me of being a math major. It was the largest amount of money I have ever held in my hands at one time, and was enough to take my breath away.

The second miracle was that I got a letter from Kellie’s student loan company letting me know that her debt has been forgiven due to her death, even though I was the co-signer. If you don’t believe that’s a miracle, let me tell you about this loan.

Private student loans are from banks, not the same process as your typical student loan. You only take those when you’ve hit your student loan limit, because you can NEVER get rid of them. Not in bankruptcy, not due to poverty, not for anything. Except, apparently, your death. Kellie had to get this loan, in December of 2006, because she had reached her undergraduate student loan limit and needed to pay for her last semester of school plus living expenses. The bank she had worked for for seven or eight years, scheduling classes around them, had said they would not alter her schedule to let her take what she needed to graduate. She had to quit that job in the hopes of something better post-graduation. So we borrowed $14,500.

And how much, dear reader, do you think we still owed at the time of her death? After having paid almost $200 per month from mid-2007 until now? Yes, that’s nineteen years, or 228 months. By my math, we have repaid the bank more than $42,000. And we still owed them $11,100. Yes, they had decreased her principal by $3,400 and profited around $38,600. That’s evil. You think death is an asshole? So are private student loans, honestly.

But just like that, they’re gone. That made me cry, too. I mean, the bar is kind of low these days, but it did.

I got the passport photo taken in a daze and then went to my bank and waited in line, only to be told that I should really come back first thing today for a meeting with their banker so that I could open up a savings account and get a few percentage points of annual return for a check that big.

So I brought the check home, made my parents both hold it (so they could also experience what it was like to have that much in their hands at one time) and then was very very sure not to lose it or get robbed overnight. I deposited it into my new account this morning, and that was a real series of weights lifted off my mind, believe me.

Miracles, am I right? I don’t think that you necessarily have to believe in a God to believe in miracles, but since I believe in both it’s probably easier for me to ascribe divine intervention to the outcome.

There’s no doubt that the money will help me a great deal. There’s also no doubt that no check, of any size, is ever worth losing Kellie. It feels devastatingly unfair that the thing which gives us the ability to get rid of that evil student loan is her not being here anymore. The trade-off isn’t even close. I would take every debt I’ve ever incurred on this planet, multiply it by itself, add another twenty billion dollars or so, and double that if it meant one last minute to hold Kellie’s hand, tell her I love her, and see the smile creep across her face like waves hissing up a beach, higher and higher, making everything new and fresh and okay again.

Since that cannot happen (because, as I have noted, death is an asshole), I’ll take this savings account. I’ll pay the debts. I’ll use the rest in a way that I think would please Kellie. And I’ll stay here without her as long as I have to.

Honestly, I don’t know what else to do. Am I doing great at grief? I don’t know. Am I sucking terribly at it? No idea. I just keep waking up, far too early, and facing each new thing the day brings. Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m devastated (I cried so hard this morning that it made me throw up for a bit), but I never feel okay about her being gone.

I never knew how hard this was going to be, but I wouldn’t have believed myself if I went back in a time machine anyway. This is way more difficult than I anticipated, even in those devastating early moments after she died when I kept repeating “What do you mean you can’t do anything” to the paramedic who gave me the news. When I allow myself to realize that she’s not gone for now, she’s gone for good, I still have panic attacks that make me completely lose it.

I’m still here. She isn’t. And the wrongness of that takes my breath away many, many times per day.

Miracles do happen, and yes, everybody say it with me: death is an asshole.

Hug your people tight tonight.

Matt