Happy Happy Joy Joy Joy

If you’re here to see how my birthday went, I’ll satisfy your curiosity right at the start: it was really, really nice.

I felt loved, seen, and cared-for. It was a day that demonstrated the kind of connection and support which I’ve experienced pretty much constantly since I lost Kellie. Many people checked in to see how things were going. One of my friends came and spent time with me (as well as delivering a delicious affogato). Someone else also spent a big part of the day with me at my house, cooking my favorite meal and making sure I wasn’t on my own. A third person brought me freshly-baked goodies, and the day ended with another two friends coming and sitting with me in Kellie’s garden while we talked. I honestly couldn’t have planned out a better day for myself if I tried, and I didn’t have to make any decisions, which made it even better.

So I’m 49 years old now, and that brings with it some complicated feelings. Of course it does, since everything seems designed to make me feel complicated things these days.

Kellie was born in November of 1976, and I was born in July of 1977. That means that for the past 49 years (especially the 30 we shared) Kellie was older than me for most of the time, except the four and a half months between my birthday and hers. For that third of the year, Kellie and I have always been the same age. This week, it has been challenging for me to internalize the fact that I’m now 49, as she was when she died, and that she’s never going to turn 50. So after these four and a half months, our pattern will be disrupted for the first time in five decades, half a century. Kellie’s never going to be older than me again, and I have to figure out how to live with that truth.

Speaking of living with truths, that seems like something I’m doing on a daily basis. I can’t escape all kinds of truths. If you can, more power to you. But it feels like everything in the world seems designed to make me accept this loss, and that I’m being pushed down a conveyor belt toward being okay at an ever-increasing speed. I don’t want to accept Kellie’s death, for obvious reasons. I mean, I’ve accepted it on all kinds of levels.

But I don’t want for it to be an understood part of the universe, for it to be something that’s as true as anything else, like the reality of the sky and the rocks and this house. Kellie—the fact of who she is, who she was, and what she will always be to me—is an immutable truth in my head and my heart.

I read a metaphor for community the other day that has stuck in my head all week. The author says that the communities we inhabit are like a rope, and that we are each a strand of that rope, woven together and through one another. She writes that none of our individual strands are as long as the rope itself—the rope outlasts us as individuals, and yet we’re all still part of the reality of that woven object as a whole. It sometimes gives me comfort to feel Kellie and the choices she made around me in this house, in my life, in the world. Her strand was a lot shorter than any of us knew, but she did not leave this place unchanged.

I know that when I treat someone with kindness, it’s at least partly because of the lessons Kellie has taught me about compassion. I know that when I place a book on one of our shelves, it has a place to go because Kellie carefully decorated our space with objects that give us both comfort and utility. I know that when an old song leaves me breathless from its beauty, it is because of the memory of that song floating over a lake in the dark, sitting next to her on a blanket in our most favorite place.

The pain is still here, oh—it’s still here. I’m doing pretty well with my tears lately, or I was until today. I’ve cried more today than in the past week put together. Some of those grief storms have hurt beyond belief, and they’re all unbearable in the moment.

I’ve decided to stop writing for today, in fact. I have so much more to say about my birthday and about the meaning I’ve been taking from this week, but that will have to come another day. For now, I need to sit with the pain and be gentle with myself. Sometimes the telling helps, like bringing my pain out of my chest and sharing it with everyone else makes it less all-consuming and overwhelming. But other times, talking about how I’m feeling feels like flaying an arm or a leg, opening it to the world without tangible benefit in the moment. In those moments, simple pleasures like a good meal or a smile or a silly TV show or a good book are what I need to bandage the wound for a bit. That’s what I need this evening, not rubbing in more salt. The tears are a bit much.

I love you all for caring and for being here.

Birthday boy signing off for now,

Matt