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.