Visits and Other Surprises
I want to make sure everyone has the YouTube link to Kellie’s celebration of life this Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern. It’s here:
That link should also be where you can watch the recording afterward if you want to do that but don’t have the availability to watch it live.
This morning, something pretty visceral happened to me that I want to talk about for a minute.
Let me just say that I don’t have much faith in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief. I know that many people have heard of this model and believe that everyone goes through them, in order, in a very prescriptive way. It’s so weird how society as a whole often absorbs partial truths from specific scientific work as fact but ignores wholesale all kinds of other established facts. That should be enough to make you question lots of stuff you always thought you knew, but that’s a topic for another day.
Those mythical five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The way many laypersons would phrase it is to say that everyone who has had a major loss first doubts it, then gets mad about it and looks for someone to blame, then tries to reason through and negotiate a way out of what has happened, then sinks into a state of depression, and then hooray, starts to accept it has actually occurred and looks for a way to move forward in their life.
I have a lot of criticism for anyone who thinks that any two people go through an identical grief journey on any level, for starters. But beyond that, Kubler-Ross didn’t initially intend for this model to be applied to grieving loved ones—it was all about terminally ill folks who were coming to a state of acceptance about their own impending death, which is a very different application than to look at those who have lost someone in their lives.
But anyway, enough about misapplied theories from the late 1960s that everyone seems to believe are 100% true (and aren’t).
I just had the most vivid dream of Kellie, and it’s the first time that’s happened since I lost her. We were in bed together (which makes sense as it’s where I was located at the time). In my dream, I was SO EXCITED to see her. I couldn’t stop telling her how much I’d missed her and how I couldn’t believe I had the chance to spend time with her and kiss her and talk to her again. But the main focus of the dream was an argument we had which ran throughout the experience. She was saying that she had to die, and I was giving her all the reasons why it should be me instead of her—she’s a better clinician, better educator, better daughter and friend and parent to our dogs. I kept telling her all of the things people have said about her since she died and why the world couldn’t handle her being gone. I kept trying to get her to understand why she’s so much more valuable than me. And I kept begging her to listen to why it needed to be me that’s gone, not her. But she was stubborn and told me again and again that I was wrong, that if it was going to be one of us it had to be her that was going to die. When I tell you I begged her, I BEGGED her. But if you know Kellie, you know how stubborn she was. When she decided something, she had decided it. Nobody was going to change her mind. And in this very vivid and very heartbreaking dream, I could not convince her that she’s more important in the world than me. I also tried to convince her to write notes to all the people who have been missing her and to take more photos and videos with me before she goes, since thousands of pictures are never going to be enough. And then I woke up. At 6:01am. Before Coco was even stirring.
So. Good things and bad things: It was amazing to get to see and interact with Kellie, and I’d gladly take any kind of Kellie dreams over no Kellie dreams at all. I had a lot of dreams about Sage for the first year or so after she died, and it’s been a little bit distressing to me to have that not happen with Kellie yet. At the same time, it WAS distressing to spend the entire time focused on a desperate desire to swap places with her. Some of it is probably coming from a desire to escape this reality I’m facing, but from a logical perspective it wouldn’t be any better for her to be alive and me to be dead (since what I want is to be with her).
The workers were here this morning to put down a layer of gravel which will sit below the cement and keep it more stable regardless of the weather. They left their wheelbarrows blocking off both ends of the path and have now been gone for several hours. Let’s hope they don’t plan to leave those there overnight? (Update: they’re leaving them here overnight.)
Kellie’s memorial garden will be absolutely lovely once it’s done. Someone suggested that they would like to bring or donate a flower or pretty thing for the garden, and I think that’s a great idea. So let me know if you want to do that and my dad will work it into the overall plan. It’ll have a bench too, so you can sit and spend some time thinking about her.
I got some organizational work done, worked on university stuff, saw some counseling clients and saw my own therapist as well today. My sister and her family will arrive later tonight, and my brother and his family will be here tomorrow (and then my mom the following day). I’m really looking forward to seeing all of them (and all of everyone who wants to share their love for Kellie), but in very small groups and in very small increments of time. There’s maybe a natural desire to spend SO MUCH time together hanging out and having a good time if you haven’t seen someone in quite a while. And I don’t judge anyone for having that impulse. But all I can speak to is my own capacity, and I know that my capacity is far, far less than I’m accustomed to.
The grief is sucking up all of my extra mental and emotional capacity, it feels like, and that means I do not have my regular faculties in any domain of my life. Everyone tells me repeatedly that that’s understandable and that they get it, but I get the sense that folks are surprised when my reduced capacity actually manifests itself. So on a global level, people know and accept the fact that I’m not myself, but on a concrete level, I think many people in my life haven’t totally come to accept that I am most definitely not myself. I don’t say that out of some sense of malice, because I’m not upset by it at all when it comes up.
I guess I’m conceptualizing it as this—I am in my own head and nobody else is, so other people just don’t see the everyday ways in which I have lesser abilities. It’s the difference between the conceptual and the concrete, maybe. What usually happens, then, is that I need to let folks know (gently) that I’m not up for whatever, and that’s enough of a nudge to remind them where I’m at. I would always rather be approached than not, though, so please keep approaching.
Some fun interactions from this week:
Someone offered me drugs to help me get through Saturday in an altered state. It was so kind! I said no because it’s not my thing, but thank you for thinking of me, friend!
Someone said I should write a book on grief. I think that’s a great idea, when I’m in a place where I’m able to embark upon new projects. Plus, a month of experience does not make me an expert in my own grief yet. Stay tuned. Maybe I’ll move in that direction someday.
Several people thanked me for giving voice to some feelings they’ve had within their own grief journey (not necessarily related to Kellie’s death at all). I love to hear that, though once again, I’m not the boss of you or your path.
Someone asked what type of dress code I’m expecting for the calling hours and celebration of life. I’ll tell you what I told them: wear whatever the heck you want, but please wear clothing of some sort because if you get arrested for nudity at the funeral home, that’s all everyone will ever remember about the service.
Kellie’s memorial at our Quaker Meeting will be done on Zoom, so there’ll be ample chances for people to be a part of or just watch that as well. We don’t have a date for it yet.
Here’s hoping for another dream of her tonight—for me, for you, for all of us.
Matt