Everyone Deserves a Jessie!

I mean it, you really should hire someone to help you clean and organize your house. It is an incredibly positive experience (once you get past the shame and dread, anyway).

That said, last night sure was rough.

I’ve written about this in the past, but I don’t seem to be able to predict when I’m going to struggle a lot more and when I’m going to be able to bear my grief a little better for a given period of time. On the face of it, yesterday was a perfectly fine day. A little slow, even, besides all those referrals for Kellie’s clients. But last night was really hard.

I spent an indeterminate amount of time just kind of sitting and staring. In order to understand why that sucked so badly, you have to understand that I’ve always got SOMETHING to do. My brain tends to have multiple threads running at the same time, and I’m always thinking and processing. That doesn’t just apply to work, which is why I have a multitude of hobbies and interests, all of which can absolutely keep me occupied at any given time.

This past month (as of tomorrow) since Kellie’s death has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I am quite literally trying to find things to occupy a little bit of time all day long. Those time-occupiers stack on top of one another and eventually let me make it through another hour, another afternoon, another evening, until I finally give up and go to bed. Going to bed each night quite literally feels like a failure for the first time in my life. Or at least, I’ve never experienced this kind of a failure.

Revenge sleep procrastination has always been my cross to bear, and Kellie has borne it with me for many years. I don’t want to go to bed—there are things to read and listen to and think about and enjoy. But now the days and nights stretch out in front of me in an almost infinitely long line, and that is completely different for me. So I COULD head to bed at 9pm (like my dad does), but I don’t want to. Or at 10. Or at 11. Or at 12. Or at 1. Or at 2. But I have always delayed sleep because of not wanting to stop doing all the stuff I’m doing instead of my current reality, which involves me trying to find anything that holds my interest until I give up.

That dynamic is exacerbated by the fact that Coco has decided, since Kellie’s death, to wake me up at increasingly ridiculous times. Today, it was 5:55am. So I have a bunch of extra hours in my morning to fill at the same that I don’t have enough to fill my day to begin with, which is kind of torturous.

I want to point out here that I don’t see myself as some kind of grief and loss hero. People keep telling me that I’m doing this—whatever this is—perfectly. That I’m a model griever (ew). That I’m managing incredibly well. I don’t know how to respond when you tell me this, because I don’t have any bar to measure myself again other than myself. I have been telling my clients for decades that the way we each grieve is how WE grieve, not how anyone else does. It can be both pointless and even harmful for any of us to hold ourselves up against someone else’s process. I say it can be because of course there can be benefits to feeling like you’re not alone and that others might share some understanding of this situation you’ve found yourself in.

Sadly, though, there are so many harmful aspects of how we tend to view death and dying and grief and loss, and we cannot take someone else’s lived experience as gospel. Their experience might inform or rhyme with our own, but how we grieve is how we grieve. We do not need to take anyone else’s word for it when it comes to how we will feel and how we will manage every day (or not manage every day, whichever the case may be).

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that me speaking about my own muddled mess of a brain in these delightful days is helping others process some of their own experiences surrounding grief and loss. And that makes me so happy! But I’d ask you not to take my word for it either—I’m just figuring it out like everyone does. Piece by piece, minute by minute. I promise I’m not an expert in your grief, though, and I’m not trying to say that I am. All I know (beyond my own clinical experience) is what I’ve lived. And it’s awful. Especially last night.

At some point I lay down on the living room floor and cuddled with Coco for a bit, which turned into playing with Coco for longer, and that probably helped me better than anything else did.

Today, I did a number of things. I worked on course prep and school stuff, did some advising with a few different students, cleared out my work inbox down to zero messages (some of you know how much I used to love doing that on a daily basis), and stressed over Kellie’s path construction work.

Because, yes—the concrete guy has officially redeemed himself! (You can feel free to play a trumpet fill in the back of your head now.) He and his crew showed up and spent several hours here setting up everything they needed to do to officially pour the concrete tomorrow. Please send good vibes that the thing actually gets completed tomorrow, so we can then start working on Kellie’s garden next to it.

Here’s proof: the concrete guy demonstrated the incredible skillset required to make a curved concrete form, which is amazing. I can’t wait to see the path tomorrow! The bare space on the left will be the Kellie Garden, which everyone will always have to walk by while visiting.

Jessie came and did an even more incredible job of cleaning the house and organizing more spaces here than she did last week, if you can believe it. She really is the very best, and I am eternally in her debt for her expertise and time. If you’re looking for someone to help you with cleaning and organization and sprucing up, let me know because I would love it if she had more work than she can handle (she deserves her own TV show, I swear). I walk around the house marveling at all the little touches she puts into the place after she’s done each week, and it’s just a really great experience so far. I’m on Team Jessie, if you couldn’t tell. She’s the absolute best.

So as to be out of Jessie’s way, the dogs and I spent several hours in my bedroom just resting and doing a little work (but mostly resting). I probably needed it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t also involve me trying to keep myself busy for those hours, and it doesn’t mean that process wasn’t still excruciating (only in a more confined space). To be clear, nobody but myself forced me to be in that confined space, but I want to let Jessie do her magic without the dogs and I being underfoot.

I taught a live class for the first time since Kellie died tonight, and it went really well. The students were fantastic—very engaged, very smart, great observations and all of them seemed happy to be there. It’s Social Work Perspectives on Aging, and focuses on deeply considering the perspectives we have about the aging process and how those beliefs shape how we work with our clients who are also aging (as we all are). There are so many positive aspects of the aging process, and yet so much stigma persists when we look at how we view age in our society. It’s one of the only classes in my program that I neither designed NOR have ever taught, so I’m very excited to spend the summer delving into this topic with these really great students.

Tonight was something I’ve been anticipating and also anxious about for several months—the orientation for my doctoral program lasted until almost 8pm. I have always wanted to continue forward and get another degree, but something always stood in my way and it was never the perfect time. When I got accepted to this program this spring, it felt like the exactly perfect time. Kellie was so proud of me, guys. She was the biggest support to me I could ever imagine. I’m not sure how I’m going to keep myself motivated for the next three years without her here, but that is a problem for another day. Right now at least, I’m doing it for her, and that’s going to have to be enough. Rest assured that I will force you all to call me Dr. Butler once I graduate. You have three years to prepare for that blessed event. (I will accept Dr. Matt, but only if you say it nicely enough.) If you’re curious, it’s an Ed.D. in Interprofessional Leadership, and I’m looking to focus on the problem of how we can build a sense of community between students across hybrid and distance learning environments, despite all the barriers that exist in that setting.

Four days until the service is over. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I can do this. We can do this.

Here’s Kellie in a tiara. I’ll have a lot to say about birthdays as this process goes on, I’m sure. But she was the best birthday girl ever, and we spent 30 years as a couple celebrating a birthday month, not a birthday day. November will be hard for me for the rest of my life.

My sister-in-law said on Facebook today that she’s not ready to say goodbye to Kellie on Saturday because it’s too soon. I want all of you to hear me say what I told her—the calling hours and celebration of life on Saturday are not about saying goodbye to Kellie! Nobody ever has to say goodbye to her, honestly. It’s about honoring who she was—who she is—what she has meant to so many of us—not about closure or about shutting some imaginary door. Kellie is still my wife, still her mom’s daughter, still my sister-in-law’s sister. That did not cease to be the case on April 22nd. Please don’t force yourself to see this as the end of something. Her physical life here on this planet ended (as far as we know) a month ago. But there are a ton of different ways we can visualize the myriad of ways in which she continues to live on: in all of her friends’ lives as they experience joy and love and humor, in all of her clients’ lives as they think back to lessons they learned or realizations they had or support they received from their work with Kellie. There are so many ways she lives on: in our memories, in a movie you watch that she recommended or a book you read that you know she would have loved, in a cupcake you eat that she would have enjoyed (but probably without the icing). Kellie’s still alive, just not in a physical sense. Don’t forget that, I beg you.

I think that’s enough for tonight. Love y’all.

XOXO,

Matt