We'll Make It Out Together

This morning, I met with my new financial planner. I told a friend that I had to do that because I guess I’m an old poor widower now, and she said that she thinks the goal is to make me a financially stable widower (if the widower part isn’t negotiable), which is probably a much better framing.

Kellie and I always put the energy into setting up a retirement account or whatever and then leaving it alone for five or ten or twenty years. Which, admittedly, isn’t the most effective way to “grow wealth”, but helped us avoid thinking about our own mortality, so that was probably the point.

I think I’ve mentioned before that we didn’t have life insurance on Kellie, beyond a very small policy that a family friend bought for her as a gift when she was born. Kellie’s mom always told her how important it was to keep making those premium payments, even when we didn’t have much money, and I’m grateful for that advice because it’s what paid for her funeral expenses and her path/the start of her memorial garden. If I had died, Kellie would have gotten a pretty huge payout from the policy Kent State automatically puts into place for employees. If Kellie had died prior to the first week of December, I would have gotten a ton of money as well. But that’s not what happened—instead, she had the great joy of leaving that job and having true independence with our private practice for the last four-ish months of her life.

She was so happy to be doing our own thing. I was too. It had been a lifelong dream for us both, and I can honestly say that if she had never left her former agency before she died, I would have so many more regrets! We could have started up a practice five years ago, or ten years ago. We could have done it in all kinds of ways. It’s always so tempting to look back at your past with the benefit of hindsight, right? We could have taken out millions of dollars of life insurance on us both. We could have saved for a situation like this. We could have found the magical, perfect doctor who would have been able to predict whatever stupid thing it was that ended up killing her. We could have infused more love, more laughter, more joy into the time we had together. But we didn’t know.

And truthfully, there’s no way for us to have known. You just don’t think about the worst-case scenario, except in abstract terms. You also probably don’t focus on living your life to the fullest, or whatever sappy phrase you’d prefer to describe not wasting a single second with your soulmate. I know I didn’t. And I regret all of those choices, though there is no way I could have been able to predict this. If I had, I wouldn’t have eaten, or slept, or done a single thing with my life over the last day or week or decade of my time with Kellie other than love her and search desperately for a way to avoid what my life has now turned into.

Does that mean my life is all bad? Of course not. I have had so many moments of joy and connectedness and love over the past month. But I don’t want to be where I am, and I would sacrifice anything to have her back for any length of time at all.

I said this after we lost Sage, and it’s still true: paying $15,000 for her final surgery, even though she still died, was the best choice we could possibly have made. From a purely financial standpoint, it was a dumb decision. At the same time, we could never have lived with ourselves if we made the call to just let her die without trying everything we could to keep her here.

And that’s why I have a huge problem with the idea that Kellie “knew” she was going to die, that she somehow anticipated what was about to happen, that she planned for her sudden and completely unexpected death. Because Kellie and I had an infinite number of conversations about our end-of-life care. We both committed to each other over and over that we wanted to prolong our lives, and thus our time together, through any available means. She didn’t want to go, and I would have done anything to keep her here. You might think it gives me some peace to hear that Kellie was extra nice to you right before she died, so she must have been planning to die. But think about that for a minute—do you think it gives me peace to hear in this narrative you’ve constructed that she kept any hint of that knowledge from me? I don’t agree with the idea that she was ready to die, because I know her more fully than anyone ever has (and she, me) and she did not want this for either of us. Why not believe that she was nice to everyone, pretty much all the time?

Five years ago, Kellie got a cancer diagnosis. We knew that something was very wrong, and she felt that when we went to the hospital it might have been a pretty dire medical situation for her. So she delayed that trip to the ER for a few hours while she painstakingly wrote down every bill we owed, every due date of every utility payment, etc. on a calendar for me. She said that she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the girls and I without more financial stability or the chaos of having to figure it all out on my own.

Given that experience, there is zero chance that Kellie anticipated her death. Zero chance whatsoever. Because she did not plan, she did not prepare either herself or me, she did not write things down to help me through this process.

It was a complete surprise for us both.

Sometimes I think about the whole “if we knew, what would we have done differently” question. That’s mostly due to guilt about not having been kinder to Kellie myself. I know that I have been a good husband and a good friend and a good partner. And I also know that the things we do and say don’t carry the same weight when there’s always a point five minutes from now when we can say we’re sorry. Kellie and I have never had the kind of relationship where we’ve stayed mad at each other for days—I could probably count on one hand the times when we’ve even stayed mad at each other for hours. But if I knew she was going to die that afternoon, there are a hundred things I would have done and said differently on the last day of Kellie’s life. I can never change any of them, and that’s just the reality.

So anyway, I met with my new financial planner. That conversation went really well. It was more a discussion about what my values look like, what my life looks like, what I would like to be able to do (and what I don’t care much about) than a discussion about how to get rich. I’m not likely to get rich at any point, anyway. I told him that if true financial wealth was my goal, I wouldn’t have gone into social work to begin with. Having to think about what I would want to do with my house after my death, or what would feel like financial comfort to me, or how long I want to teach and see counseling clients (if you were wondering, the answers to those last two were the same: until I die, probably).

Maybe it feels weird to you for me to meet with a financial guy immediately after losing Kellie. And maybe it feels weird to me too—it’s certainly interesting to think about topics like retirement now that it’s just me. It’s not because I’m suddenly wealthy without her. Honestly, though, it’s maybe an ideal time to make some of these decisions. My financial picture has changed dramatically (for the worse) without Kellie’s income, and so why not figure out what to do to stabilize my finances for the future? It was interesting considering what amount of risk I’m comfortable with, too. Anyway, it ended up being a really positive conversation, and I’m glad to have initiated this process when I did.

After that meeting, I went with a dear friend to the funeral home to pick up Kellie’s urn from the funeral home. I didn’t cry (then), but I was so happy to have the moral support rather than being on my own. That was a task she volunteered to help with several weeks ago, and I’m feeling really grateful to have had her with me. We then went to lunch and I got to spend a couple of hours just hanging out. Not talking about Kellie and my grief, necessarily, just being a human being. It was something that I hadn’t realized I was missing. So much of my time and mental energy has been wrapped up in all the decisions and paperwork and tears for the past five weeks, and this was different. Again, so grateful. It was a huge gift.

If anyone wants to just watch TV or a movie or eat a pizza or go on a walk with me sometime, let’s. Just say the word, and we’ll figure it out. I’m a widower, but I’m not just a widower, and so if I can get away from my sad feelings for a little bit I’m going to be pretty happy about that.

Anyway, as the day turns into evening I’m sitting here feeling pretty relaxed and pretty okay, even though Kellie’s urn is sitting with me in the living room. It’s nice to have it here, in fact.

Get some rest—I plan to. Tomorrow’s another day.

XOXO,

Matt