For Kellie

Some things you should hear

I’ve written here before about my wife. I’ve talked about her to anyone who will listen, too. I’ve said she’s the best person I know, that she and her worldview are the reason for me being who I am, and that she’s the most important piece of my entire life. I’ve said that she’s an incredible partner, the best friend I could ever imagine, and my one true soulmate. All of those things are still true. But today, I’m adding one more item to the list: My wife is dead. I’m a widower. My wife is dead, and nobody can do anything about it. The one thing I CAN do, besides busywork, is talk. I feel like I’ve never talked so much about one event in my life.

The worst thing is that her presence--her utterly vital, utterly perfect presence--is so clearly felt by me in every single aspect of my daily routine. I can’t wake up without needing her beside me. I can’t watch a commercial on TV or listen to a podcast or read an article or piece of trivia on Twitter or an annoying comment online without needing to share that with her. Having her presence missing is like adjusting to losing an eye. You know the world is still there like usual, you just can’t see it because you’re MISSING AN EYE. I’m missing Kellie, and half of my world has gone dark.

All the other girls here are stars, you are the Northern Lights

They try to shine in through your curtain, you’re too close and too bright

They try and they try, but everything that they do

is a ghost of a trace of a pale imitation of you

-Josh Ritter

Also on the list--though much lower--is the fact that there isn’t some dramatic story about how she went. She had been struggling with a lot of medical mysteries since mid-December, especially over the past month. We had started to adjust to her having some major mobility challenges. She was still seeing clients, teaching multiple social work classes, and loving her life with me and the dogs. It might be a lot more titillating for everyone if she had gone skydiving with a faulty parachute, or if she was lost in a dramatic search-and-rescue operation at sea, or even tragically swept up by a tornado. But nope. Kellie was the farthest thing from performative, and so it actually makes a lot of sense for it to be quiet and peaceful and without a lot of fanfare. With Kellie, you saw what you got--she was honest, she was sincere, and she didn’t want attention for attention’s sake.

We both got done with work around 4 that afternoon. I was headed out to run an errand, and she asked if I could help her out of her chair to go and use the bathroom. We walked down the hall together (she wanted me to be close in case her balance got wonky), and after we turned the corner, she took two or three steps and just collapsed. I screamed and she didn’t answer. She didn’t have a pulse and she wasn’t breathing. The ambulance crew arrived within six or seven minutes and told me pretty quickly that there was nothing they could do--she was gone. I just kept asking them over and over, “There’s nothing? Nothing you can do? Nothing at all? There’s nothing you can do?”

That’s the story of how our thirty years together ended up. She experienced no pain, and in fact probably didn’t even know it was happening. My therapist says that the last thing Kellie experienced was me steadying her in her walk down the hall, a truly tangible act of love, and that there’s something really special about Kellie knowing fully just how much I love her. I agree with my therapist, though I would absolutely swap out that final act of love for even thirty more seconds of talking with her, or even seeing her smile one more time. And if you ask me if I would trade my life for hers, the answer is unequivocally yes. She’s the one who deserves to be here, far more than me. I’m grateful that she doesn’t have to experience this pain in the same way I do. At least on her end of things, she’s got the absolute assurance that we’ll be together again (or I’m betting she does, anyway).

I’m so glad Kellie got to experience joining the private practice with me--for the last few months of her life, she was her own boss, and that gave her a great deal of joy. We were both positive, heading into 2026, that this was going to be our year for sure. But it wasn’t.

These last few months were hard--really hard. You don’t really necessarily understand loss of function and pain and the difficulties that go along with them until you experience both for yourself. I would gladly re-live the last few months over and over for the rest of my life if it bought me any extra time with her, so even those challenges are all relative, in the end.

As I’ve told more and more people across the past 30 hours or so, Kellie absolutely hated Facebook. She hated being performative, remember? She hated the insincerity of making a post for the likes or the fake engagement or as a way of pretending to support a cause. Kellie was all about doing the actual work.

Perfect example: Kellie saw a lot of transgender clients over the years. At first, she was randomly assigned a trans kid and had to make the most of it while trying not to make the situation worse for them. She was terrified of making a mistake way back then. We would talk about strategies for helping ease gender dysphoria and about different clinical approaches with that population, and she slowly built up her confidence with the client. And then she got another trans referral. And another. And before she knew it, she was working with a LOT of folks in the trans and gender non-conforming community. You know how it goes: one person tells another person who tells someone else that they’ve found a therapist who won’t treat them like a mistake. A mental health professional who values them as a human being who’s worthy of love and joy and believes they’re capable of having a great life. Ultimately, Kellie was asked by the county Mental Health and Recovery Services Board to teach a continuing education workshop on gender-affirming care and clinical strategies for supporting trans clients. She was terrified of that too--but it turned out to be a really great way to pass on some of the things she’d figured out along the way to clinicians who needed to learn that stuff. What does this example teach us? Kellie didn’t spend her time sharing memes on Facebook about supporting the trans community. No, she actually SUPPORTED them. And helped them to feel valued and seen. And helped others to do the same thing. Kellie was about the doing, not the posing. This is just one small example of what I’ve witnessed over and over and over in her life: Kellie did the work.

So now that she’s gone, I have to do the work myself. I have to make sure I’m walking the walk, for her. Someone told me today that Kellie was not only incredibly proud of everything I’ve done, but that she actively went out of her way to show everyone else that they should be proud of what I’ve done as well. She was the biggest cheerleader I’m ever going to have. And I need to show myself to be worthy of that faith she’s shown in me for 30 years.

Shadows play on the snow

Gently moonlight casts its glow

Close your eyes, stars appear

when you wake, we will be far from here

there’s a promise, left to keep

I will drive while you sleep, while you sleep

-Hugh Christopher Brown

People have told me today that she’s a shining light in the world. They’ve told me that she was the favorite professor they’ve ever had. They’ve told me that she helped them when no other therapist could. They’ve told me that she was special in a million small and large ways. My favorite thing has been hearing so many of our loved ones share what she meant to them (please, keep it coming). Friends have dropped off breakfast and a journal and Legos and miso soup (okay, those last three were one person). Friends have given me legal advice and made me laugh and made me cry and made me reminisce. Friends have reminded me about things I’ve forgotten, and long-lost friends have come back to let me know they love me.

I’m not on my own. Some part of Kellie’s here, somewhere, even if I’m still learning to discern the piece of her that still lives somewhere just outside my field of vision. I have family (both mine and hers) who love me. I have friends who won’t let me hide from them. I have my spiritual community, too. The only thing I don’t have is the only thing I really, really want. And that’s her.

She was only 49. We thought we had decades and decades left, but we didn’t. I’ve been telling folks to please not talk about her passing on Facebook. Part of that is because she hated Facebook, and part of that is because I’ve felt the need to try and control the narrative, to exert some tiny piece of influence over who knows what about this most terrible thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world. But it’s almost midnight on day two, and random people keep offering me condolences, so it appears that the news has escaped containment. And that means I need to stop trying to keep people from finding out. My wife is dead, and that’s never going to feel normal. Go ahead and spread it to whomever you think needs to know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

-Mary Oliver

I miss her, and I know that so many of you do as well. Please spend the time you have left on this planet loving each other and letting them know you mean it now, not after they’re gone. And don’t just talk about making a difference--actually do the work, like Kellie did.

Forever hers,

Matt