This week is going to be a lighter load for me than usual, which is probably a very good thing (since next week is going to be the heaviest of heavy). So this week—we rest. Next week—we dread. That sounds healthy.

Yesterday ended up being really nice, overall. My dad and I did end up up heading out of town for a bookstore run, lunch in a lovely park, a great movie, and then a stop at Trader Joe’s for assorted goodies.

I definitely had my periods of immense and uncontrollable grief. That’s a given. Most of the day was a respite in general, though, and it was good for me.

I told my dad yesterday (and I’ll tell y’all as well) that I feel like a biggish part of my reasoning in writing here revolves around me wanting to start this grieving process off honestly from the very start. If I were to pretend and put up a brave front or whatever, then I’d have to both maintain the energy to do that long-term and also would have to remember to keep straight what people know and what they don’t. All of that just sounds exhausting to me. So what you see is what I’m experiencing, no fakeness here. For better or worse.

I felt pretty lonely last night, and was so, so grateful for the two friends who chatted with me for an hour or two. That helped.

Here’s an Emily Dickinson poem that reminded me of Kellie today.

To see her is a Picture -

To hear her is a Tune -

To know her an Intemperance

As innocent as June -

To know her not - Affliction -

To own her for a Friend

A warmth as near as if the Sun

Were shining in your Hand.

We went to bed relatively early, well before midnight, which is pretty unheard-of for me. I was able to get a little bit of reading done yesterday and last night, so that ability is slowly returning to me. Coco woke me up extremely early, sadly. We were up by around 6:25, which is even more unheard-of. That’s a trend I don’t love. Kellie was the one who would roll over and tell me to take Coco to pee and then come back to bed. Without her voice, I tend to just stay up when she gets me up.

This morning, my dad made me an omelet with one of the special things I’d gone to Trader Joe’s for—soy chorizo. It was pretty incredible. If you’re a chorizo fan, you should seek this out. 12 out of 10.

Coco and I then went on a walk for the third day in a row(!!!!) which is an unusual habit for me to be developing, but one that she and I are both benefiting from, so I guess that’s a thing for us now.

It has been an incredibly difficult thing for me to consider cleaning and organizing. Before you say that I’m trying to purge Kellie from my life or from my house, well, you obviously don’t know me very well. Because that’s not what’s happening. But I am allowing my dad to slowly help me make decisions about things that were specific to Kellie which do not carry memories and I can’t see myself using. For instance, I do not need all these electric blankets or heating pads. I don’t believe I’ve ever used one of those. And I really would prefer someone getting some use out of them instead of them sitting in my basement or linen closet. That sort of thing.

But every time I opt to get rid of half-used mascara, or a pair of jeans, it gives me a moment of terror that Kellie is going to get home from the hospital or work or something and get SO MAD at me for making her replace them all over again. I know that the decisions she made around purchases were intentional and thoughtful and meant something to her, and I don’t know that I’m ever going to be able to stop expecting to get in trouble for disregarding that intention.

I told a friend last night that I know how this grief thing goes, and that I know time is the only ingredient that will help some of these challenges. But I also know my brain and the fact that it is going to default to solving problems and coming up with solutions. I’m not consciously looking to fix my grief response and move on with my life. But my brain is doing that on a less-than-conscious level, I think, as a defense mechanism. My conscious mind is often stuck in a grief loop, thinking about all the things that have now ended and changed and about how incredibly sad I am that she’s not here anymore. But my unconscious mind is convinced on some level, I think, that this is a logic problem to be solved, and that if I can happen upon the correct answers it isn’t going to be so incapacitating all the time. I don’t think any of us has the capability to turn it on and off like that, so I know my brain is incorrect.

So one of the decisions I have made (or which has naturally evolved) is that I have no interest in ever having a romantic relationship with anyone besides Kellie. I know, I know—we publicly said wedding vows twice, and “til death do us part” is one of those lines that gets thrown around a lot. But it absolutely feels like a totally arbitrary distinction to me. Kellie dying doesn’t end our marriage, and it doesn’t make me somehow on the market for love—I HAVE love, and I don’t see that ever changing. People don’t want me to be lonely, and so there’s a discomfort that surrounds me making this declaration among those who care about me. A quiet “I know why you feel that way, but just wait and see what happens”. And I get it as a response, I really do. You might think close to three weeks is super early for me to be making a judgment call like this. But you don’t understand that this is a conversation Kellie and I have been having with each other for decades. Just like the decision to live in Ashtabula and put down roots here, the decision that we are permanent soul-mates is not either impulsive or made lightly for me.

I’m going to keep saying this, and you can feel free to keep being kind and gentle and letting me know that whatever comes into my life someday, comes into my life someday. And I get why you would all want me to find that eventually. But I have had the conviction for thirty years that she is everything I want in a partner. Nobody else is going to be her, and I’m not interested in second-best. Maybe it’s easier for you all to conceptualize if I say that wouldn’t be kind for whatever hypothetical lady, either? Being weighed against Kellie would only result in her coming up short, and that’s not fair.

I sincerely think I was supposed to be with one person, and that’s her. I don’t hold it against you if monogamy isn’t your cup of tea or if that doesn’t feel right for you. But that’s just where I’m at. I don’t see that ever changing. It’s about respect for Kellie, respect for what we’ve had, and about honoring the lifelong commitment I’ve made to her. My lifelong, not her lifelong, if that makes sense.

This afternoon, a friend provided me with a really helpful framing of this discomfort I pick up when I tell people I’m never going to be interested in finding a new partner. She said that I don’t need to worry about causing other people discomfort, since it’s a lot less than my discomfort anyway (which is true). She also said that she thinks that insistence from my loved ones that I might find SOMONE else someday is a knee-jerk response to their own hope that they, themselves wouldn’t be lonely in case their partner dies at some point. And I can accept that fear in others of them being alone a lot more than I can accept everyone believing that I don’t know my own heart. But you know what? Ultimately, I’m the one who has to make my own life decisions, and so it doesn’t really matter what everyone else thinks. I know who I made those vows to.

What all of this also means is that I will be pretty lonely if I don’t make a conscious effort, on an ongoing basis, to be purposeful about cultivating and maintaining friendships. The making of friends isn’t always easy, but the maintenance is the real challenge, and that’s the part I need to work on with great intention and energy.

I’m lucky that I already have so many wonderful people in my life. I just need to keep them there. So if you’re one of my loved ones, please stick around. I need you, buddies.

Counseling with my clients continues to go well today. The bigger trial is closing out Kellie’s final billing—I suspect my reluctance lies with the fact that when I finish a piece of her outstanding affairs, I will lose a piece of her. But I can know that and still experience that reluctance. I’m working on it, just slowly. I’d imagine her final documentation will be completed by today or tomorrow, and then I need to individually and manually bill each of those sessions to a ton of different insurance companies (so I can accurately document her as the provider and me as the biller rather than giving any insurance provider the false impression that I’m claiming to have done these sessions, which I didn’t). Insurance billing is a ton of work under the best of circumstances, and this is not the best of circumstances. Kellie actually did all these sessions, though, so it’s just all the legwork of billing on my end. Which, again, takes more energy from me than I have gas in the tank. Slow and steady may not win the race, but hopefully it gets the mortgage paid, in time anyway. A friend told me today that “billing seems like the grading of therapy”, which is the best metaphor I’ve heard in a really long time. Teaching is so fun. Grading is not. Therapy is (often) so fun—but billing work sucks.

I’m feeling the lack of Kellie very keenly today. It may feel a little less sharp, like a stabbing in my gut, but it feels every bit as painful, like a very large splinter just sitting in that wound. The wound has existed for almost three weeks, and I know it’s there pretty much all the time, but it’s the continuing pain rather than new pain that I’m feeling. There’s not much time in my day when her lack isn’t sitting there on the back of my mind. I don’t get surprised, generally, by the realization that she’s gone. I know in my bones that she’s gone. But it just hurts a whole lot. The nature of that pain is transitioning into something else these days. I remain interested to see what happens next.

I hope your week starts off well. I’ve had good moments and bad today (good moments and bad in the last hour, for sure). Know that I’m trying, still. If you want a recurrent theme, it’s that. I’m doing my best.

XOXO,

Matt

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What We Can

Week Three, Here We Go