For weeks after Kurt died my routine was the same. Get up and smoke a cigarette and then perform the very basics of living. In and out; in and out; in and out — breathing was compulsory. The only thing keeping me tethered to Earth, really, was my body functioning as it was born to function. If I’d had the option to flip a switch and be gone … I’d be gone.
Of course, that’s the immediate story — the story that was my inner life in it’s truest and most unedited form. The story of me after sudden and deep loss.
The truer of the true stories I tell myself about losing Kurt is there was plenty that kept me tethered. My parents, my cousin who flew out and got lost with me on some random Ohio road, steady to my insecure. My brother, whose letter to the court I couldn’t even read or submit it was so full of rage. Kurt’s dad, who stood up that day and acknowledged me as family. His mother and brother and sister who did the same, every day, before and after. My friends.
Music.
I vividly remember meeting Kurt, sitting next to him that night as he sang this song, one of his mom’s favorites. I don’t think he chose it from the jukebox, but he sang it like it was a part of him.
Then, he looked at me and said: “Nevermind.”
My marriage was never good. The signs were always there, but I ignored them and in some ways, perhaps, I needed to punish myself — not just with my marriage, but with everything. I wore living like a hair shirt. If I wasn’t suffering, I wasn’t paying mind to his memory.
He never asked for this penance, of course. He never demanded that my husband come home one day and simply say: “I’m moving to Colorado. I don’t think I want to do this anymore.”
Similar to Kurt dying, my physical body took over. I walked down the stairwell of our condo building, through the first door, through the second, the phone ringing in my ear. I don’t remember being panicked. I don’t remember silently hoping that my mom would pick up, though I am sure I did wish just that. The air was cool and I gulped its crispness into my lungs, similar to how when you wake up hot and hungover you gulp water.
When she answered, I’m not sure what came out of my mouth first, but soon enough the cards were on the table and everyone knew what was happening, everyone waited in shock. By the end of our conversation though, I knew I’d be OK. My parents were in Colorado visiting my brother and niece, and though they offered, though my brother nearly insisted, I didn’t want them to fly back. I was fine. I was going to be fine.
“You don’t come from a dysfunctional family,” my dad reminded me a couple of days later, and by this he only meant that I had people who fully supported me — and I did. I did. I knew I had resources, both financial and emotional.
I played this song endlessly during my divorce, which was frantic and stressful. My mom was the only other person in the courtroom who knew me the day my marriage was dissolved. The only thing the judge asked me about directly was religion. “What if your spouse wants to raise X in X way?”
The answer was short and agreed upon. My child’s dad didn’t want them caught up in endless battles, so whatever was fine.
My lawyer, who, as I remember her, was good and thorough and kind, told me as we walked to file the necessary papers after appearing before the judge: “Being a divorce attorney is surprisingly family friendly.”
My kid was crying when I opened their door. A friend of theirs had suggested they might harm themselves. “Nobody can get ahold of them,” they told me.
OK, I thought.
The protocol around suicide is … slippery. Post, everyone hurries to talk about what they could have and should have done. You think you’d move mountains, and in all likelihood, you would.
If the lead in, the preparation, didn’t get in your way.
Because the lead in, … she’s complicated. You don’t want to intrude; you don’t want to overstep, even when every instruction you’ve ever been given has made overstepping necessary; you don’t want to assume you know the person better than they know themselves.
Outside of outright confessions of suicidal ideation, when you’re here, soaked in the interior, your moves become calculated because there is risk on all sides. Push too hard and, like a turtle seeking refuge, you witness who you’re trying to help slowly recede. Push too little and you get a phone call that immediately signals failure on your part.
It’s an impossible position for anyone who loves someone.
“Hi …” they finally text.
Now, the tears suggest relief, not fear. A giving over to the notion that the outcome could have been entirely different — but isn’t — even when the fear and the endless texts asking for assurance would never have prepared them for the alternate reality, the timeline where their friend suddenly stops existing.
I don’t know how close my kid’s friend came to completing suicide. I don’t know how seriously they were truly considering death, what was the angst of age and what was indescribable despair.
I know that to speak that word out loud, to fill it with the very breath that keeps you here, is an act of self-preservation, a call for back up.
A few months later, we’re driving home from a birthday dinner for my kid. We’d all stuffed ourselves with salad and pasta, everyone ordering a dessert to share. When we’re done, we lean back in our chairs and sigh, smiles all around.
I drive and and my kid and their friend pick the music. At first, they can’t decide. But when they do, we spend the rest of the car ride singing loudly, joyfully. Alive.
Dying is a bitch.
And that’s simplifying everything we know about dying.
There is a mythology that surrounds dying that promises release and freedom without ever mentioning the agony and pain that bookends the experience. We’re conditioned to want death to be peaceful. “They died peacefully,” we tell ourselves. “They’re at peace now,” we assure the mourning.
For me, there is a real fear attached to knowing that I will one day be every person I’ve ever buried. Every time I notch a symptom that might speak to larger problems, I have a moment of calm followed by a laundry list of reasons why I’m not ready to shed my mortal coil.
My kid. My family. My friends. My dogs. The perfect day. When we first hit 65 degrees after consecutive cold months. Sunshine. That feeling of accomplishment when I finish a hard workout. Teaching my kid something new. Smiling at strangers. Talking to people with similar interests. Trying new beers. A big sigh before I finally relax enough to sleep. Watching baseball.
I’m not thinking of death today. But perhaps my experience with death, in all of its immediacy, has prepared me for loss in all of its iterations. Loss is everywhere, especially in times of uncertainty, especially now.
Loss of income. Possible recession. Decrease in intimacy, closeness, warmth. Death, certainly. There is loss everywhere in this time, this right now, and it’s hard to reconcile the world that we’ll emerge into, reborn, not in a religious sense, but fundamentally. Everyone who walks through the door to freedom, to any sense of a renewed normalcy, will be a survirvor.
Survivor.
Strangely, my constant — music — has left me. Here, now, today and these past weeks, I’ve depended on my kid, who, like their mom, has found the sheltering quality of music. I haven’t listened to any of my own, save the one or two we have in common.
I’ve largely relied on them, and have found a beautiful mix of rebellion and community in their play list.
Rebellion not in the sense of misunderstanding what’s at stake. Rebellion in the sense that we’re all underdogs right now. There is a sense of fight, as unintentional as it might be with my kid, that is rooted in knowing that these are unusual times that require both individual and collective strength.
My memories will be both individual and communal. I’ll have made personal decisions that could haunt me, or not. I’ll have worried too much or not enough. I’ll have either contributed to a greater good or I will have …
I don’t know.
What I do know is that I heeded a call. A call that, when I listened, spoke to the best in me. The need to be fiercely me coupled with a focused determination to take care of my larger community, my kid, the next generation, the previous generation— myself —so we all might learn, I might learn, that we’re always interconnected, always dependent, even in solitude.
Always our best when we hold both me and you together.
