It’s now been six months since Kellie died, and it feels like a million years. That’s twenty-four weeks as of this afternoon, for those of us doing the math.
We had 30 years and 3 weeks together since we first found each other on April Fools’ Day 1996. That’s one thousand, five hundred and sixty-three weeks, not counting things like leap years and variances from month to month.
Comparing 24 weeks to 1,563 weeks might seem like it’s not very useful an exercise, but it helps me put things into perspective. In order for me to live as long after Kellie’s death without her as I did before her death with her, I’d have to make it to 78, which seems like a very long time from now. Not impossible, mind you, just far-off.
My great-grandfather on my dad’s side of the family lived to 77, and his wife (my great-grandmother) lived to 84. My maternal grandmother died at 59, but my maternal grandfather lived to 80. My paternal grandmother only lived to 69, but my great-aunt (her sister) lived to 95. And my paternal grandfather only lived to 72, but was randomly killed by a drunk driver. Taking the average of those seven lives, you get 76 and a half. One of the three youngest to go fought cancer for many years, and the other two were randomly killed by (different) drunk drivers. So those three skewed the (very un-scientific) data pool somewhat. Without them, you get an average of 84. Therefore, me living to 78 might not be that improbable.
Both of my parents will be 75 later this year, and are doing pretty great health-wise. That’s heartening as I consider my age and mortality and all the things that go with them. Out of all those family members, only one of them arguably had dementia, so the odds are pretty good for me to avoid that as well (which is good, since it’s probably my biggest fear).
My mom’s dad lived just 18 years past the time when he became widowed. That’s really the only example of this in my immediate family tree, since my dad’s parents were long-separated at the time his father died (so I wouldn’t really consider widowhood to have dramatically impacted my grandma).
I remember how challenging it was for him to cope in the very early days of being on his own. My parents and little sister and I moved in with him for a few months after my grandma’s death, and it was a rough time. He spent most of the days locked away in his room, mostly just coming out at night when everyone else was asleep. He was so, so angry. And I get that—to have your 59-year-old wife killed in a senseless accident by a drunk driver is a situation that tends to make you mad. The echoes of my parents moving us in with him to help out for a few months sure do feel similar to them doing the same thing for me after Kellie’s death.
My grandpa struggled greatly with that loss, and I don’t begrudge him that. I like to think I’m a generally healthier person than he was, not that it makes sense to compare one loss to another. But even so, he got to have her for a full decade longer than I had Kellie.
It’s just not fair.
I know that everyone’s loss is its own monster. I know that most people who lose someone significant are devastated by that loss, in both large and small ways. But you don’t understand just how incredibly unique Kellie was! She was responsible for creating real change in this world, and she helped so many folks. The ripple effects that she caused here continue to expand, and arguably always will. I’m never going to be able to quantify just how much good Kellie’s done (though I’m going to keep trying to do exactly that). To have her gone from the world is something which should stagger all of us, not just me. And yet life keeps going on for all of us, which isn’t fair.
Maybe you’ve heard about the widowhood effect. That’s the increased risk each of us has of dying in the time immediately following the loss of a spouse. Research seems to show that there’s a more than 60% increased risk of death for us after becoming widowed. It also shows (thankfully) that that huge increase in risk drops significantly if you make it through three months post-loss. So I’ve doubled that (hooray for me), which likely means I’ve dodged that particular bullet. But I sure get it!
There are a lot of potential reasons for this increased level of risk, and I think the most important thing to consider with it is the fact that although the huge rise in mortality drops a bunch after three months, everyone still says that the second year post-loss is the hardest. I’ve heard this across my entire career, pertaining to all kinds of loss. Although I think it’s far from being a universal experience, one commonality that folks often share is that their support systems have dropped off a great deal by the time that happens. So even though the period of time between three months in and three years in doesn’t bring an increased risk of death for the widow/er, that’s a really hard time to live through mentally, emotionally, and physically.
That’s what I have to keep in my mind with all of these decisions surrounding my supports, including incredibly important parts of the team like Ashley, and Jessie, and Amber. I have every intention of making it to 78 or 88 or 128, but that’s not going to happen without people who love and care about me helping me get there.
And don’t get me wrong here—I’m not setting some arbitrary date upon which I plan to die (at 78)—but we have a natural tendency to come up with goals, right? And living as long after losing Kellie as I did with her is as good a goal as any!
So anyway—six months. It’s such a huge length of time for me to wrap my brain around. In so many ways, she still feels so present and real and concrete in our home, and I usually just can’t grasp the truth of her absence. It’s elusive most of the time, probably as a defense mechanism.
I carry on, not because I have to, but because I choose to.
Love you all. Thanks for being a witness (and active participant) to this season of my life.
Six months of chronicling my experiences in this way feels like a whole lot of writing. I just went back and checked, and this is the one hundred and thirty-fourth entry in this Substack that I’ve published since Kellie’s death. Which averages around five and a half newsletters per week over the last six months. That feels like a staggering number, but I don’t really think about that. All I’m thinking about as I write is getting today’s done, not about the mountain of words I’ve already previously written about this loss and about my grief and about how incredible a person Kellie was—or is.
Take care. I made it through another one.
XOXO,
Matt