Are you THERE God, It's me Amy?

I learned of a new place that exists. A place called “There”. “We’ll get there”…”You’ll get there”…wherever ‘THERE’ is….. what does ‘THERE’ look like? What will ‘THERE’ feel  like? Sometimes I think, “Oh, I’m getting THERE”, only to realize I am so, soooo far from being THERE. Who has time to get THERE anyway? And why is it such a great place to be, anyway? And why do we want to arrive at it at all, ever? THERE must be this magical place of amnesia. A beautiful blank slate. Does that sound like a place I want to get to? I realized this morning, as I got ready for work, that the road to THERE means change, big change, and it sucks big time. THERE means you have to go through all the steps to dig out of holes, and climb mountains, and swim from beneath a valley of tears. THERE knocks you to the ground when you don’t even realize it is about to happen. THERE sounds like a place so far away from where I started. I was strolling through my life, beginning the next 50 years of my existence, in the life that was so known and expecting. THERE pulled the rug out from under my feet. Just this morning, as I prepared for work, THERE left me standing with tears streaming down my face, with a sucker punch to the face. That’s what THERE does. Just when you think ok ok ok I’m making progress, it shows up and makes you realize how much you are NOT getting THERE. I realize much about getting THERE. I realize that THERE and I are NOT friends, not even acquaintances. No Map Quest in the world would direct me to it…any time soon. I don’t know about this place called THERE, but I do know the path to getting THERE, quite well, and what it looks like. I’ve memorized its dark alley s and side streets like the lines on on my own palms. Getting there means that instead of the “Honey, I’m leaving” hugs in the morning, you will stick your face into the stiff and unwashed shirts hanging in the closet for a deep inhale, just to take a piece of them with you when you start your day…and everyday you think (no, you know) that the smell is getting lighter and less ‘him’ than before. Getting THERE looks like a tap on the side of his photo as a virtual ‘hug’ before leaving your home. Sometimes getting THERE means realizing the many things that AREN’T THERE…and won’t ever be THERE again. I don’t know how quickly people are supposed to get THERE. My mother has been gone 30 years and sometimes I don’t think that my family is THERE yet. Or a flow of memories flash through the day and then you realize well maybe you aren’t ever going to get THERE. But people will tell you not to worry that you will get THERE. How do they know that? Have they arrived safely THERE before?  I would ask them why it was such a coveted destination. Or maybe they don’t know that getting THERE is a place that we really don’t want to get to because we don’t know what THERE will look like, or feel like.  However and truthfully, nobody said it was an easy road to get to. Right now I don’t  know if I want to get THERE. So I continue to find ways to getting THERE, and many more ways to avoid it,  as I navigate through this place that I never wanted to get to. For now, it just sounds like a place that I wouldn’t like very much. I would like a refund on that ticket.

Wilted Lettuce

I threw away the last of the flowers today… and the wilted shredded lettuce that I told him to grab the night before. My blue nail polish is faded and chipped from the July 4^th vacation. The house resembles an ordinary life. The laundry is still in baskets in the laundry room. The open toothpaste container is still next to the sink. The phone charger is still on his side of the bed. A single lottery ticket is propped in his car’s cup holder. His phone will occasionally ring. I can put the television on now. I moved his ‘important papers’ pile. I am moving within a space we called ‘ours’. I left the house last week. I left the house last week to go to the mall. I left the house last week to go to the mall to buy a funeral dress. It’s a time like no other when the living world touches the grief world. It’s as though you can almost hear the crash. Eye contact is non-existent. Things need to be accomplished but you only want to retreat back to your safety net. If you have ever lost someone very special to you, then you already know how it hurts, and if you haven’t, then you cannot possibly imagine it. But, unfortunately, someday you will. You see, there is a club that you never want to join. But you will one day. When just one person is missing, the entire world feels empty. We will all feel it at one time in our lives. It’s God’s funny way of reminding you what is important. “Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be”. And you move, even when moving is all that you can do. Moving without a plan and moving within a stillness that has no description. When you look at the world through tears, you see things that dry-eyes cannot see or feel. Immediately nothing matters; not the bills; not the laundry; not the workouts; not the vacuuming. Nothing. So you take a step forward…and then another step…and the next thing you know you have another day coming to a close. But you count them, much like a new mother counts the days of her newborn. Two weeks. We are at two weeks. Our loss is two weeks old. In 16 years I have never gone two weeks without seeing him. I have never gone more than 24 hours without talking to him. So I listen to the one text message from months ago saved in my voicemail just to remember what my past sounded like. It’s amazing what people can accomplish when tears are streaming down their faces.

I spent 8 hours, without sleep, writing the hardest story I have ever written. I had to write the most important story of all true stories. All the English classes in the entire world do not teach you how to write the obituary of your husband. The story of a man who left us years and years before he should have. I wanted to simple say: “Wally Christopher Kelly left this world on the night of July 11, 2019 and this is complete BULLSHIT!”. He always said I never listened to him. He always rambled on and on about things he had accomplished in his life. I have rolled many an eye to the stories he so loved to tell. Well, guess what honey, I listened. I remembered. I remembered the stories through a foggy brain and a shattered heart. It’s odd when your ‘co--rememberer’ is gone. Sixteen years of ‘inside stories’, kindergarten graduations, little league championships, family vacations, nights dancing in a Hawaiian hurricane, new business ventures together, room service in bed, our favorite restaurant in New York, our secretly despising the same people, the snowstorm of 2008 when we felt like the only people in the city, knowing exactly how each day begins and ends, and then… dissecting it. And then you realize you are the only one left that has that memory bank. I didn’t plan on doing this thing called  life without him. Muhammad Ali said that every fighter has a plan until they get hit. We got a one-two punch smack in the face.

There are images of Jackie Kennedy standing on the tarmac when her husband was assassinated. Pillbox hat. Blank state. Deflated. Unless you’ve known sudden and devastating loss I do not think that you can relate to that image. A picture says a thousand words and that photo says what words cannot describe. Deflated. Crushed. I read the funeral program today. Two weeks later. I am sure that I read it that day. I don’t remember. A gauntlet of grace from friends and family surrounded me, but my only thought was inhaling and exhaling. I have never experienced this in my life. The ability to be present but not. I remember thinking that it hurt to smile. I could hear myself breathing in and out and not much more than that. I wanted soft places like bed, pillows, arms, or laps, not the sterile reality of a wooden church pew.  I remember not having the strength to wipe the tears rolling down my face.

I know the sound that a heart makes when it breaks. It does not simply hurt inside one’s chest. It crumbles and thrashes. It wells up inside. It explodes with ferociousness. It is felt to the ends of your fingertips. It shakes. It wipes away worries and thoughts and plans and steals you of your strength. It leaves you lying on the floor begging God to wake you up from your horrible dream. It makes you remember and forget all at the same time. It makes your brain race through every memory both good and bad. It makes you replay and replay every word said to each other that last time together. It makes you retrace their steps in hopes of feeling them again. It makes you light candles. It makes you sit in silence. It makes you scream and curse at them for making you do the rest of life’s crap alone. It makes you look directly into the face of the ugliest giant there ever was. It makes you mad that the world is moving forward but you are stuck. See, when great hearts break they make a sound that you will never forget; a sound that feels like silence mixed with commotion. They say when you die your entire life flashes before your eyes; a broken heart causes the same results. It makes you see yourself from the outside looking inward. It makes you want to comfort the person that you see. It makes you watch this person that you know to be you but do not recognize. It has brought many a great man to their knees. It makes you pray to a greater God for the ability to stand when your knees are giving out. When a heart breaks it gets confused with what to do with the empty space within it. They say that the chemicals in tears when a loved one dies are not the same chemicals as in other tears. I tasted one (lots actually). They are different. They drip in my mouth sometimes when I am just too numb to grab a tissue.

I can’t begin to describe the feeling of the funeral. I sat among hundreds and hundreds of friends and family representing a life well lived. The service conducted around me, but I only heard myself talking to my husband. I watched him as he was placed in the front of the aisle of the church. I told him that this room was filled with all of his connections he made for the last 62.11 years. I have never felt more loved and alone; of which these words have no space within the same thought. I asked him why. I cursed him. I thanked him.

One-week prior we were on the streets of Coronado, California watching the Fourth of July parade. I watched the videos last night. I listened to him talking in the background. It was our tradition. It was part of ‘what we did’ every year. Little did I know that one week later I would be sitting in a church back office picking out psalms for his funeral. I heard it. I replayed it. Over and over. There in the background I hear his voice. My phone is recording the bagpipes marching down the street. I don’t remember the conversation at all, but it is there as my witness. I say, “Honey, we could have bagpipes at your funeral” (another inside banter we had following the death of his mother). “Now that would really hit the ball out of the park” he replied. One week later four pipers marched my husband out of the church…son holding his urn…blessed by our priest. You see, life does not fucking prepare you for this bullshit. Goddamnit!!!! Why the fuck? I don’t want or need these lessons in my life, God!

As I sit here and write this I know that he is still with us, although he is placed behind me in a beautiful blue urn, surrounded by mementos of his life. A life well lived. We feel him move around the house. I haven’t been able to let anyone in my/our bedroom. I told my Ashley that I feel like he is in there. An energy. I laughed when I told her that I am keeping him trapped in there and not letting him out. She replied that he would hate that. “I know”, I said. I know. God dammit, I KNOW! I know too much about this person. I hear him. I feel him guiding me. CS Lewis wrote, “As if God said, “Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the rest…”. But God, I needed him here. HERE! My only comfort is thinking about why God reached down and pulled him from us. I can only imagine that a man with so much power and drive and larger than life personality down here with us would only be just as strong of a powerful force up there…as he watches over us…and writes the next chapter of our lives under his direction.

A Griswold Moment

Looking through my window one would believe that our family tree was decorated with the help of the Griswolds. The mismatched patterns would send Martha Stewart back to a jail cell. You see, I inherited 'Fancy Tree Syndrome' from my father. My mother did not have this trait. She allowed my father to have his tree and decorate it any way that he wanted. Fancy tree syndrome carries several characteristics; usually they have ornaments (usually glass) that all have a similar color structure (usually gold or silver). These trees usually are in the 'fancy room' (living room). On a side note, I used to have a friend when we lived in New Jersey, whose parents would block off their fancy room with string so no one could ever enter the fancy room unless they were allowed (usually holidays). Anyways, these fancy trees were perfection. They would also be the place that the special gifts would be placed. I remember waking up one morning to a moped underneath the tree when I was 12 or 13 years old (insert hospital visit notes here). My mother didn't help in decorating the fancy tree. It wasn't really her thing. My dad always does everything gracefully. Fancy tree in fancy room peering through a front window and BAM Christmas has arrived. Then there was the 'kid tree'. Ya, that was the name of it. The kid tree was the ugly stepsister of the Christmas holiday. Glitter felt snowflakes made at Girl Scouts night...hang it on the kid tree. Oh, a framed picture covered in glue and beads from preschool...hang it. A souvenir from your trip to the Rockettes one winter...here's a hook. A gourd shaped like Santa...move over Rockettes. Baby's first Christmas...First Christmas together...new home ornament...new dog ornament.... you got something for me to hang then just provide the hook and it makes it to the kid tree...otherwise known as the the 'kid junk tree'. I usually do a fancy tree and a junk tree. This year I decided to do a kid junk tree. Ok ok maybe because that was the box that made it from storage...maybe because this has been a tough year and we all need to be reminded about what really matters (you decide). If you come into my home I might give you the 'tree tour'. This tour consists of a detailed description of each and every ornament on the junk tree. As I was unraveling the ornaments yesterday I was taken back in time. Each ornament has a story. As Parker was laying on the couch I would constantly bring him each discovery and tell him a quick summary of the ornaments history. He didn't care much for the details. The junk tree is much like a Dickens' novel of Christmas' past. There are ornaments for Baby's First Christmas. There are ornaments from when I would take the kids to the store and let them pick their own ornament for that year. There is a Sponge Bob dangling from a rope. There is a Minnie Mouse wearing a nurse outfit. There's a rustic star that was used as a place setting at Parker's first birthday party. There are frosted ice cream cones that remind me of what was on our tree when I was growing up. There's a fragile silk silver and gold ball that was on my tree when I was little. The tree consists of glue and beads and framed pictures of days gone by. This tree will never make it into any Chip and Joanna Gaines segments. I don't need it to. I do not care if anyone walks into my home and gasps at the sight of the tree that looks like an episode of Hoarders. What the tree means to me is that we lived. We loved. We shared a life together. We created memories. Each ornament takes me back to a place where time can stand still for a moment.... where Hannah is 7 years old and making a glass ornament with her picture inside, adorned with some gold ribbon... or Ashley writing 'Love you Mommy' in red beads on a piece of wood. And Parker's face glued (so much glue) to a piece of fabric and a tree hook from preschool. These ornaments have been lost in our storage unit for the last several years. This year, when I went to retrieve our Christmas crap, they were front and center with the decorations. How this happened is not quite sure. Maybe we can call it Christmas magic. So this year our Christmas theme is centered around our junk tree. I have filled my home with treasures that were made with tiny hands and big hearts in a time where mommy and daddy were the center of their universe. A time when Christmas was magical. A time when Santa was Superman. I know that everyone has different visions of what Christmas looks like to them. Believe me, I like your fancy trees. Perfectly spaced balls of similar color and ribbon that looks like the wind swept it haphazardly across the tree. Perhaps an occasional glass ornament. Yes! Love it. But that won't be OUR tree this year. This year we are doing the hoarder/junk/kid tree. Just to remind us all of where we have come from and who we are as a family and how much love is in our home. So if you come visit our home this Christmas, grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and prepare to sit for a while as I explain the story of the glitter stork at the top of my tree....

Green Ball

I look for inspiration in writing almost daily. I rarely write when I don’t have a strong, overwhelming NEED to write. I felt that pang to write today. I initially was going to write about something as small as a molecule.  Yup, a molecule. Something so small that looks like a whole other galaxy under a microscope. With all the memes and Facebook videos streaming through our lives, one in particular has stuck in my head. It depicts a giant green ball being led by a rope that appears to be walking it, as if it were a family pet. The title of the video was “This is happiness”. I’ve included it as the photo for my blog. So freaking cute. A myosin protein dragging an endorphin along a filament to the inner part of the brain's parietal cortex which creates happiness. Who knew that a protein is so adorable. I initially was going to write about all the myosin proteins swirling around in our bodies during Valentine’s Day and what not. I initially was going to go into depth into my myocin thresholds yada yada yada. Not today. And please hold that thought about the protein while I go off on another tangent.

I watch the Olympics for the sport of it, of course. I love to see people pushing their limits and living their dreams.; however, it’s more than that to me. I like to watch the ‘aftermath’. After the runs, the twirls, the racing, etc….I like to see who the athletes run to. I like to see a semi-god of an athlete, an epitome of determination and focus, …become a real person. One who searches the crowd of photographers and fans to find their ‘happiness’; their ‘love’; their ‘reasons’. The 17 year old Gold medalist who finishes her half pipe and whips off her snowboard boots and her helmet and says “where’s my mom”.  And as tears of joy run down their faces, which minutes prior were steadfast and focused, I always think that I want to collect their tears. WTF Amy (I can hear you saying that now). I want to take a little vial and collect the tears of these athletes when they are at the pinnacle of their lives. I wonder if their tears, much like the myosin protein, look different then the tears of perhaps someone who is sad, or scared, or reflective. Do their tears have a zillion tiny proteins on leashes walking around in them? Freaking happy protein parade? Do sad people have different looking proteins walking in their tears?

Watching the news this morning we are reminded of the school shootings happening in our lives. They flashed to the Sandy Hook attack. A photograph showed children being led out of the school after the massacre. One little girl’s face in that photo promoted this blog post. Utter fear and terror was on her face. But within her grimacing look I could see that it wasn’t so much what had just occurred within her peaceful little school, but it was a look saying, “I need my mom/dad”. You could actually see that expression. And her tears were steaming down her face and landing on her once dry rainbow t-shirt. That innate NEED for someone or something. I thought of her tears, too! What a contrast there would be if we could see them under the light of a microscope against those in a completely opposite tearful moment. All the events that are occurring inside of us that we don’t even know are happening. I hope that little girl and all these young people have those happy molecule walks that will far outweigh any of the bad stuff.

The shooter…a troubled boy…lived with some family friends, ‘since the death of his mother’ as stated on the news. Perhaps when his body was at it’s lowest point and he couldn’t feel that happiness microscopically running through his body he was also looking for his reason out in the crowd; perhaps that was his mother that was no longer there. And in all the pain and hatred and anger that this horrible, horrible person did to his former classmates, you see how people, whether the gold medalist athlete or the worst possible person imaginable, to the innocent child or the guilty adult; that there is one thing that we all have in common. It can’t be seen but we feel it ever day. It can’t be seen but we show it daily. It can’t be seen but it drives us in both positive and perhaps negative ways. It’s that damn little protein on a leash looking for all the other little protein friends in this big beautiful body of ours. It’s the happiness we feel when we know we are loved and we know we can love that person back, whether we are on the top of a mountain going for the gold or in the darkest depths at the bottom of your hill and see no way out.

My wish for you is to always search for your ‘faces in the crowd’…the ones who make your happiness walk around in your body a million miles over…and never lose faith that rainbows after the rain will dry up someday and you can be at the top of your mountains once again.  

In All The World There's Only One....

Twelve years and 14 hours ago my little Ashley made her grand entrance into the world. Jodi Picoult said it best: “I’ve only known her for 13 years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end – they’d reach forever”…and I can’t ever remember NOT having Ashley in my life! I would have liked to say that I had her name chosen for years, or it was a great-grandmother’s, or some strength name that I could direct her life’s path; actually, she was named because I heard someone say ‘actually’ and because I was so epiduralled up I thought they said, “Ashley”…and I thought that was pretty. She has always been a brainiac. She is a perfectionist almost to a fault! She hated diapers and trained herself at 14 months to NOT wear them. She has always had a fiery stare and a determination beyond no one else. Many parents utter “were you raised in a barn?” when doors are left open…well, Ashley WAS raised in a barn! She has spent many hours and made many friends (human and animal) at the ranch. She would rather wear paddock boots than high heels, she would rather clean a stall then clean her room, and she would rather spend her weekends with a 1600 pound gelding than ANY person in the world, and that I say is the way to raise a strong girl!