My Life After His Death

I went to the Medina ballroom on Saturday with Paul and my daughter’s in-laws. I’ve been there many times since your death and never had the same reaction that I did this time. Maybe it was because I was sitting in between several of your old friends.  Maybe it was  the smell of Grant’s cologne that brought back the unwelcomed memory-related feelings.  Grant has been wearing the same cologne as long as I’ve known him and it has been both a comforting and at times, repulsive smell depending on the memory it is associated with.  Tonight, it brought vivid flashbacks of the Halloween party and the annual CRT holiday gatherings. 

Remember that night?  You and I had to dress up in costumes…I hate costumes and we managed to use things we already had to create a steampunk-themed combination. We took a few pictures and for some reason, those pictures are still floating around and seem to surface either on the anniversary of your death or Halloween. Anyway,  the girls in the club wanted you to dress in a suit and be part of their minion themed costumes.  I’m glad you didn’t as I would have been left out and that really would have felt really strange. What does it say when the girls want you to be part of their costume competition and it doesn’t include me?

All that aside, you were there at the Medina Ballroom on Saturday night and I haven’t felt your presence like that in a long time. I SAW you superimposed on the back table, your larger-than-life personality filling the space and your steampunk costume adding the extra flair. We were at the same table to the right of the bar for the CRT holiday party. I cowered in the corner, likely had my chair pushed back as I surveyed this interesting group of people.  You had just started to associate yourselves with them and I immediately felt like I was an intrusion on your good time.  The girls in the group would now realize that you were “taken” (does that word ever apply to you?) and the threat to you would be that they would no longer pay you any attention.  

You shouldn’t have worried about that. I preferred being in the shadow of your personality. 

I looked across at the dance floor and remembered dancing with you.  I could SEE you there, superimposed against the rowdy crowd trying to dance to the 80s bands as if they were teenagers again.  You would have been in the middle of them and loving every minute of it. But when I SAW you there on Saturday night, you just looked forlorn, as if you knew you were missing out on something.  Maybe you saw Grant and Casey and this made you long for the days when you were alive and could ride with them. Maybe you saw me and my husband and this made you sad/mad/regretful of your decision to leave this earth and all the fun it held for you. I won’t ever know and the speculation doesn’t soothe me.  

But you were still there.  I saw you in your halloween costume, in your leather “Live to Ride” jacket, in your expensive Rock button down shirts. Your clothes morphed as if they were moving through the memories like I was. Your face was changing, but I couldn’t tell if it was aging or if my memory was fading. Lucky you.  You get frozen at age 55. I just keep getting older, collecting more wrinkles and more weight. You will always look good.

Your daughter contacted me yesterday and I haven’t talked to her in years.  She is having problems with your grandson, who is now in 3rd grade.  He is throwing tantrums and has severe anxiety and ADHD. She wanted to know if I remembered you having the same issues at his age.  I can’t remember your parents or you ever saying you had issues with your temper, although I saw it as an adult.  I know you were diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD as an adult, but couldn’t answer her questions about her childhood.  

I took a deep breath though, and typed back that I would be willing to meet with her to talk about him. Truthfully, it will feel good to see her again even though those memories might be difficult.  I am so seldom with people who want to talk about you.  It will feel good to be able to say your name out loud.  It will probably feel good to talk about you too.  I will likely need to decompress and will do so by writing a letter to you. 

One more thing:  It’s 10 days before Christmas.  I do not intend on thinking about you for the next two weeks.  Please leave me alone out of any respect you might still have for me.  I would like to enjoy my time without being haunted by your ghosts of Christmas past…

I’m in the hospital waiting room, listening for my phone to chime with news that my husband’s surgery is over. Although 90% of my thought energy goes to him, you should know that you are still never far away. I sometimes feel you near me when I’m going through things like this and I’m not sure whether I find it comforting, distracting, or disconcerting. Probably a little of each.

Exactly WHY I feel your presence is still a mystery.  I think there are those who would say that this is part of a divine plan and that you are somehow being sent from “above” to comfort me. I don’t think I agree with that.  I think that everytime I go through an experience, whether it is good or bad, my thoughts go through a sort of filter, constructed of all the past emotional events and the accompanying drama and trauma.  You certainly are part of that filter.  If I were digging deeper into the way I think, I would also find that this filter includes the death of my father, my mother’s remarriage, the birth of my brothers, the death of my Grandma Nylund, my first marriage and divorce, the birth of my own children, and of course your suicide. 

And all the things in between.  ALL the things. Relationships. Jobs. Friendships. Family. Vacations. Sports. Faith. Music. Finances. And many other nouns that escape my thoughts at the moment. I am 58 now. There are a lot of other nouns.

But the focus of today is supposed to be on my husband. He’s the one that had surgery.  So why am I thinking about you? I find myself wondering what would have happened if you were in the hospital instead of him.  You had no insurance so this would have been financially devastating to you and by extension, to me. We would have been paying for your surgery for the rest of our lives. 

OK…I’m done now. I don’t need you to help me today. I’ve got this. 

Yesterday was one of those “anniversary days” again..the 7th…a number that will always be associated with you.  Sometimes the 7th day of the month goes by and I don’t even think about it.  Other times, I visit the occurrences of THAT 7th day over and over in my mind like a movie reel that I just can’t stop watching. I have talked to others who tell me that this is common when you lose someone, no matter what the circumstances around the loss may be. 

The mere mention of 2017 has the same effect.  I never have a problem calculating the amount of time that has gone by since that date.  It seems like that year will always be both an ending point and a starting point.  Any other year marker other than my birthday and my graduation from High School doesn’t have the same power.  I can’t remember which year the divorce was finalized.  I don’t remember what year I even met you. But I will never get away from 2017.

Today the dyson vacuum cleaner died and I threw it in the garbage can.  Every day for the past three years, I have fought the hose that kept cracking, the brush that gets tangled with my hair, and the wheels that scratch the wood floor.  Today was the last straw.  I tried to keep it going.  I put electrical tape around the hose to keep the suction…I sit down on the floor with scissors and cut the hair out between the brushes…and I make sure it’s always sitting on a rug when I use the wand to vacuum the wood floor.  And I think about you. Always. Stupid vacuum cleaner.

You had a purple dyson when I met you.  It wasn’t working very well and I remember going to Sears to help you buy another one. It was a cold, snowy day and we took your truck.  I have no idea why that memory stands out.  I also remember picking out the new dyson and I was concerned because it costs twice as much as the others and I wasn’t sure how you could pay for it. Back then, your financial struggles were just starting to surface and although you didn’t want me to notice it, it was pretty tough to ignore the bill collection notices and the certified mail about your mortgage.

But you bought it anyway and justified it as a business expense.  I’m not sure how that works, but I can honestly say that if the IRS ever asked, I would have a hard time telling them that you ever used it to clean out your truck or the shed with the United First Aid and Safety materials were stored. Mostly, I used it. And after your death, I continued to use it up until today when I threw it away. And every time I saw it, it reminded me of you.

Perhaps I should have gotten rid of it earlier, but I hate spending money on appliances, so I nursed it along as best as I could.  As I tossed it in the garbage, I wondered if there were any pieces of you/us/the farm/the business left in its crevices. I’ve washed it many times, but even the best cleaning can’t remove every memory. It took me about 15 seconds to say goodbye to yet another object that reminds me of you.

We didn’t buy a dyson. I never actually liked it anyway.  It was too tall and too heavy and my wrist hurt when I tried to lift it.  Paul and I bought a Shark.  New memories…new dirt in the crevices…another object not embedded with thoughts of you. 

This week, I found out my new husband has cancer. I suppose you would think he had it coming for getting involved with me, or maybe you would even suggest that I somehow caused it. One thing I know for sure, you wouldn’t feel sorry for him.  And you would NEVER feel sorry for me.

The past week has thrown me into a new space.  I am once again thinking about a future where I might be alone. After being with you for about two years, I knew you were not going to be in my future, and as I’ve told you before, I fantasized what it would be like to buy and decorate my own house, cook my own food, manage my own finances, and maybe, for the first time ever, find someone that I could love without any reservations.  (Note to self: if I knew then what I know now, every person in their 50s will have reservations.) Strangely, I WANTED that future alone.  And then when you died, I suddenly had it. And I found I really needed that quiet, that solitude, that ability to be 100% present with my own being.

Then came my husband. He filled a space that I didn’t realize I needed.  I DO need someone in my life to love me.  To take care of me. To spend time with me. To gently push me out of my comfort zone. To wake up next to. To grow old with. I am terrified that something will happen to him and I will be back to being alone.  Only this time, not by my choice. 

He’s handling it better than you would have.  I don’t know why I compare the two of you, but that seems to be an ongoing pattern of thought that has existed since the day you died.  I try to picture you going through this and all I can think of is that you would have enjoyed the attention it brought you.  And I know that deep down inside, I would feel a little bit happy…happy that this could be a more natural, yet tragic, end to your life and our relationship.  

Happy Birthday.  You would have turned 60 today.  Each of the five “heavenly birthdays” you have celebrated have caused me to pause momentarily to think about what it would have been like if you had made the decision to stay alive. Would I be throwing you a party?  Would I even be in your life at all?  (I believe we have sufficiently covered that topic in past letters and I think I’ve waffled on whether we would have stayed apart or together. As I said before, I truly believe that the only way I was going to have peace was to be separated from you.  And the only way you would have allowed that to happen would have meant one of us would no longer be alive.)

So far today, I have only seen two Scottie D posts.  Candace and Kelly.  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you.” I think about that sentence and wonder if that’s true with me.  (The only person besides his family who truly has a right to!) I think I’ve gotten to the place where a day may go by where you don’t cross my mind. Certainly not on your birthday though.  Definitely not,

Your birthday is the stuff of legends…or at least that’s what you like to think.  I know I’ve covered this in other posts, so I won’t go down that rabbit hole.  I’m just thankful that tonight, I will go home and be with my husband and I WILL NOT THINK ABOUT YOU.

It seems a little too soon to write this as I just wrote something yesterday, but I wanted to let you know that “Gascan” died.  Sorry. I can’t call him that.  He will always be Kevin to me.  I don’t know if you remember him and I honestly can’t remember the two of you ever being together.  You may have been on a ride with him as he was a good friend of Grant’s.  I owe so much to that man. 

The first time I met Kevin was at the CRT’s benefit, only about a month after you died.  I’m not even sure why I went.  My ignorance led me to believe that the group would embrace me and provide support.  I did get hugs, but I also got glares/cold shoulders/questions about why I was there.  Wendy, Ryan, Jan, and Gwen were there to help me.  I appreciated their presence. 

And then Kevin came.  He didn’t mention you at all.  He inserted himself into the middle of the group and introduced himself.  And then asked me to see Kid Rock. A date? I thought at first.  Turned him down.

He was persistent.  It was not about dating, it was about seeing pain and wanting to help.  I poured both my heart and my pain out to him almost immediately.  He was a good listener. And he encouraged me to seek help in the suicide support group, my family, and in good wind therapy…no alcohol, no Crow River Thunder, no you.

He died last week and my heart hurts.  I went to his memorial with Paul and sat purposely away from everyone.  I did OK although it was too similar to your memorial and that brought back a lot of emotions and sadness.  Grant posted pictures of you and Kevin riding your bikes and there were lots of social media posts about the two of you riding together in heaven.  Are you?  

Let me go down that path briefly…imagining that the two of you really are in heaven and have somehow found each other.  Did you ask questions about the club?  Did you want to know about your memorial service? Did you inquire about your friends?  Did you want an update on me? If so, I wonder what he said. Would he have told you that the last time he saw me was at Rockwoods with one of my friends?  Would he tell you that he sees my posts and he knows I’m happy, married, in my children and grandchildren’s lives? Would that reassure you or make you jealous?

I turn these thoughts around in my head and decided that it’s useless to pursue an answer beyond the question.  Waste of thinking time.  I’ll search instead for another topic to occupy my thoughts.

So much has happened in the past year and a half.  I don’t honestly know where to start.  Perhaps by admitting that even as I planned a wedding, then actually got married, went on a honeymoon, sold the townhouse and bought a new one, retired…even in the midst of all this major change, I never really completely stopped thinking about you.  I have decided that a new last name, a new address, new friends, retirement doesn’t really change the fact that you still somehow are part of me.  

I don’t fight it as much as I used to. I can honestly say that the wedding was beautiful and I can’t even remember a time when my mind drifted to a distant memory of your face.  You simply weren’t present at all.  As it should be. Even though you and I had visited Door County once, I didn’t see your outline fading into the image of Anderson’s dock, or feel your presence during the sunset. Again, you simply weren’t present at all.

Paul moved into the townhouse and soon thereafter, we sold it and moved away from all the horrors that kitchen, bedroom, living room, patio, and GARAGE held. If you thought that killing yourself in the garage would make it unsellable, you were wrong.  Sellers do not have to disclose suicide, only homicide. I’m sure the buyer will eventually be told your story and perhaps she has even felt your ghost.  Some people believe that the dead spirits stay at their death site. I hope that’s true. You are definitely not at our new home.

It was such a relief to move.  Walking into our home on Norwood Lane felt so different. Even the furniture that we purchased together somehow no longer had your imprint. All that I have left from our time together is the bedroom furniture (now in the guest room) and the corner shelving unit which I painted black in the living room.  The counter height table and chair set we bought in Shakopee for the rented house in Buffalo will be gone within the week, replaced by an expensive dining room set that I can’t wait to christen with my grandchildren’s fingerprints. 

Sometimes at night I glance around at the new house, straining to see if I can make out even the tiniest glimpse of your presence.  (I do have the horse art piece in the living room, but I can’t part with that…I love that too much and strangely,  you don’t seem to be represented anywhere on it.) All I see is Paul and I am comforted by that. 

Sometimes I look out the window and see the cardinals.  Funny though, I don’t see YOU in the cardinals.  I see my Dad, my Grandparents, Debbie…just not you. I haven’t felt you in the hawks that circle around me on my runs either. Are you stuck in Rogers or has your spirit moved on? I think you have moved on.

I should have written something in March. If I had, it would have been something like this:

To You,

Four Years, 8 months, 7 days

Today I put you back in the ocean.  I emptied the vial that had pieces of you (did I really see a part of a tooth or was that my overactive imagination?) into the sand and watched the waves draw you into the ocean.  It was actually a beautiful moment.  

I’m sorry that I didn’t bring you back to Estero Beach by the Tiki House at sunset with a dolphin swimming by.  I know that would have been your preference.  I couldn’t bring myself to go back there yet and I was far too impatient to perform this ritualistic burial.  The little vial that contained the last remanents of you had been beckoning me from its cradle in the wooden buffalo box.  I knew it was time.

When Paul suggested we visit his sister in Nokomis, on the gulf side of Florida, I flinched.  This was probably the closest I would ever get to Estero.  As a result, I hid the little vial (miniature urn?) in my running shoe and on the second morning, as I ran on the beach, I decided it was THE RIGHT TIME.

The beach was perfect.  Gentle waves.  No one in sight.  I pulled out my phone to record it for Amber and removed the lid (which came off easier than I thought…and briefly caused me to panic at the thought of it coming loose and spilling into my running shoes) and dumped you onto the wet sand.  I watched as pieces of you washed into the wave. The first wave came and pulled about half of you into the ocean. It took a few more to complete the job.  

I felt lighter. I know it wasn’t where you wanted, but I hope that that part of you feels peace.  I still held the vial in my hand and I knew I didn’t want to carry it back so I unceremoniously disposed of it and whatever dust remained inside into the nearest trash can.  That felt good.  I ran back to the house and sent the video to Amber and Gordy.  I think they were the only ones who would appreciate it.  

And not be disappointed in me.  I know that if my kids, Paul, or some of my friends had realized that I had that vial for the past 4 plus years, they would have insisted on its demise in probably a horrific, undignified manner. And they would have reprimanded me for hanging on to it for so long, reminding me once again of how you treated me and the years I wasted with you.  I wish they could see that behind the trauma of being involved with you, there were genuine feelings and grief.  Performing this last act of burial wasn’t trauma or grief.  It was closure. And I needed that.

It is your birthday day.  I’ve written before on your birthday but today, it’s different. Truthfully, I didn’t realize it was your birthday until one of your friends put your pictures online and wished you a happy heavenly birthday.  I saw that selfie group picture you took with Grant and Cuzey.  I always liked that picture.  Now I can’t see your face without thinking about the bullet that permanently marred it. I see the exact place you put the barrel of the gun…that wonderful crease by your eye.  How many times did I kiss you there?  Were you thinking of this when you pulled the trigger?

Deep breath…keep scrolling on facebook.  Ran into Candace’s pictures of you taken on our wonderful Ironwood trip. I think I actually stopped breathing.  It was sooo painful.  I didn’t expect that, but then again, I’m still processing the fact that it would have been your 59th birthday.  And I forgot.  I’m so sorry.

It’s been awhile since I wrote because I’m becoming more successful at picking up the pieces and moving forward.  I’m putting together a new life without you and I find that the space between when I last thought about you can be days, not hours like it used to be.  Not minutes like did during the months immediately following your death.  Perhaps I’ll get to the point where I can measure the time by weeks, perhaps not.  Either way, I know I’m moving forward.

I know I’m moving forward because I’m wearing a ring on my left hand.  Paul asked me to marry him and I said yes.  It felt so good to share the excitement of our engagement with family members who love me and Paul.  When you and I talked about marriage, I had a sinking feeling that marrying you would mean saying goodbye to my family.  The longer the time went on without their approval, the more I knew you and I would never be married.

I pause when I think about it.  I wonder what you would have thought if you were alive.  I can’t really figure this out because I’m still not sure whether we would have been able to handle a true separation.  Something would have always brought me back to you.  I know this.  I like to think that I’m strong, but the reality always was that I was powerless when it came to you.

And so I’m engaged.  Paul and I went to the beach the very day he proposed and I found it interesting that the first visitor to closely examine my ring was a dragonfly.  Was it you? I FELT you.  You didn’t fly away for almost 30 minutes…sat on my finger.  Lingered on my shoulder. It was as if you had to see it for yourself and strangely, I felt that you approved.  I think it was the sense of peace that enveloped me when you landed on my finger.  I took a picture of my hand and it makes me smile every time I look at it.  Two of my worlds colliding.  It helps me move forward.

Yet I am writing this because it is your birthday and I am still feeling a sense of sadness as I again remember our first birthday together at “I Love this Bar” in St. Louis Park, right after Mary died.  And then our second birthday together in Las Vegas, followed by the third birthday with your daughter at Red Lobster, and again with Todd and Zak at Chuck E Cheese, the infamous birthday party in Buffalo with Ryan, Wendy, Jan, and Al, and at the last one at the Meat Raffle.

Your birthday was important to you.  And so, Happy Birthday my darling.  I am going to embrace the memories of you that bring me joy and try hard to force the others to disappear.  A year from now, I will be married and I’m wondering if I’ll remember the significance of January 12th…