You Get What You Give If You Decide To Try

Fridays used to be the time we would most-often spend with friends. We’d get off work and go to some local restaurant and then spend a few hours eating and laughing and basking in the joy of fellowship with someone who really got us. Those were special evenings.

Now, Fridays are the time when I lick my wounds, take stock of how I’m feeling, and try to make sense of both the good days and the bad ones, with the satisfaction of knowing I’ve been able to make it through another week.

I know that I’m going to spend the weekend ahead resting and relaxing and trying to just do things that feed my soul, so I don’t feel as urgent about making sure to wring every last bit of joy out of my Friday nights.

I also don’t have Kellie here to commiserate with, to debrief with, or to vent to. That doesn’t mean I can’t (or don’t) still share these things with her, but it’s very different now that she’s not able to smile and tell me she’s proud of me.

Several people told me that they were proud of me, today. And one even told me that they’re sure Kellie’s proud of me, which certainly hit me hard. I’m sure she is too, I just wish she could tell me herself.

Here was my view while I ate breakfast this morning. It’s become one of my favorite spots.

I’ve been trying to be intentional in so many moments of my life, these days. I feel like life is so ephemeral, so transient, so fragile. I don’t have any way to predict when everything is about to change. I don’t know whether I’m about to lose someone. I don’t even know what the weather’s going to be when I wake up tomorrow. Though I guess that last one is just because it’s early fall in Northeast Ohio.

It was another busy day of grading, teaching an ethics workshop, and helping to put out a few metaphorical fires. But once I was done, I was done. I took a luxurious nap with the girls and then grabbed supper while watching the sun set over the lake.

I wanted to highlight something for y’all tonight: I haven’t had any awful days over the past week. This is honestly the first time I could make that statement across all the time since Kellie died, and I don’t know how to feel about it.

Obviously, I’m grateful for having so many days in a row which were either good or certainly-not-bad. It would require a special kind of stupidity for me to wish for bad days, particularly because those bad days (when they pop up) are BAD DAYS. I wouldn’t wish those days on anybody, including myself.

At the risk of being cliche, however, it’s bittersweet to be able to report that my days have been either okay or great for an entire week. Of course I want to have good days, and of course good days are a positive thing. That doesn’t help me not feel guilty when I haven’t suffered (because I get to still be here and Kellie doesn’t get that luxury). Survivors’ guilt is a real thing, and it’s a rough thing.

I’ve spent a lot of time considering the deeper symbolic meaning of things lately, and I think that’s probably a result of my brain still trying to make sense of things which can’t really be made sense of.

If you’re wondering how things are going with my book, they’re going well. I’ve written first drafts of all the poems which will be in the final volume. There are forty-five of them. Fifteen poems about our life before Kellie died, fifteen poems about my life in the immediate aftermath of her death, and fifteen poems about life a little bit further away from the loss. I’ve started to make some tweaks and slight edits, and would like to feel brave enough to share them with a few trusted folks in the coming weeks for their thoughts on the work. They’ll probably continue to take shape in those three sections, because that’s the most natural flow of the project for me.

Speaking of symbolism, I think I’ve shared here in the past that I had decided while at Pendle Hill that I needed to write about Kellie and about this grief and loss experience, since (as the widower I encountered there told me) if I don’t try to sort through some of these feelings through my words, I’m not going to be able to write about anything BUT her. That resonated with me, and still does.

It’s hard for me to articulate this, but I have some fear that when I finish these poems and send them out into the world, it will mean I’ve said all I have to say about her. And that that will give others the permission they’ve been waiting for to stop talking about her, stop thinking about her, and move on from her life and her death.

I know that’s not a logical way for me to think. Fear is rarely logical, and is much more gut-based in the way it sneaks up on us from behind. It’s a very The Last Leaf-coded way of processing this stuff, and I know it’s not reality. None of that stops me from thinking it, though.

I got to spend some really lovely time out in Kellie’s garden this evening. As I told a few folks tonight, I miss her a lot more when I’m in that place. I also feel closer to her in that place, and the benefit of that far outweighs its cost.

I’m still here. And today, this week, I’m okay. That’s a good thing.

XOXO,

Matt