I miss writing here. I'm going to start posting occasional musings, and see what happens.
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I dropped my car off at the mechanic's this morning, a shop I haven't been to before. His garage is towering, at least two stories high, though neither wide nor deep. There was a deer head made of nuts and bolts, old tools and odd pipes near the entrance, a really artistic piece that would never make it in a museum, their loss. Right below was a vintage Coke machine that would cost hundreds in an antique shop, but here it's still in use. On top sat a few glass insulators, like the ones I have in my living room window where they can catch the light.
His office walls were wood panelling, covered with thank you notes from various local teams and a signed picture from a tv show. I expected it to smell like cigarettes, but I guess he quit a long time ago.
I've spent many hours in shops like this. Once upon a time I loved working on engines, and my 1963 Dodge with a slant six made it easy. The aroma of motor grease and lubricants and rubber is a sweet scent to me, and I smiled as I smelled it again.
My hands miss knowing how to change an oil pan or a carburetor. They are clean most of the time now, and my knuckles are rarely scuffed. Some might call it growth, but I wonder about that alternate path, the place somewhere in a nearby universe where I know more about engines and less about words. So it goes.
In this universe I can, at least, share the scent and memory with you.
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I have so many seemingly-disconnected thoughts in this moment. I try to write fairly cogent essays here, but this won't be one. Please forgive me. This is not the usual longing love letter, though both the longing and the love are here.
I'm sure part of why I'm not thinking in a linear way is because I spent the weekend at Sharing the Fire Storytelling (STF) Conference. This conference was integral to our relationship. It's where our friendship really nudged into more. It's also an annual event we both worked hard at (Kevin did a lot of the audio work, I ran it for several years) and decompressed from together. It took me years to return to STF after he died, it's so full of memories and triggers. I went in 2018, I think, then not again until this year, its return from the pandemic. It felt very strange. Mostly it felt like a reminder that Kevin has been gone for a long time. I taught a workshop, told a story, and mostly had one-on-one conversations, hid in my room, or walked. I didn't want to open the door to all of the feelings. I think sorting through STF will take some time.
This far out, the feelings are so much more layered than they used to be. Yes, I miss him deeply, but I now have a whole rich life full of things and people he never knew. I live in a state he never visited, many of my friends are people he never met. That is both a blessing and a weight right now. It is both a solace and feels very lonely. I wish he could have known these people and things, yet I know I wouldn't have known them were he still here. This feeling is especially strong when I look at Charley, a man Kevin would have really enjoyed, yet a relationship that never would have been were Kevin still alive. It's complicated.
Time both dulls and releases memories. He is a memory, and some aspects of those memories are sharp and clear, while others are faded and hard to work out. The release of memories is not only a distancing, but an ability to look at things that hurt to much before. I'm looking.
Kevin died at 55. I am 55. Next year, on the tenth anniversary of his death, I will be older than he ever had a chance to be. This is making it all harder; this year the grief feels like walking through a marsh with both beautiful moments and treachery. This year, too, I know there is a path through. That also feels like a blessing and a weight.
Finally, I have some stuff going on that moves energy from this anniversary. I'm learning how to live with back issues. I'm thinking about how to restructure my business, a business he believed in, in the long tail of the pandemic. Oh yeah, there's still a pandemic. Some other people I love are making their way to the end of their lives. And so on.
There is more, but not stuff I'm ready to share. All of it together means that, while I'm thinking of Kevin often, missing him, and having some hard memories, it's not the cutting pain it once was. This is a good thing. It also is a pain unto itself.
So it goes. Tomorrow I will go someplace beautiful for the day. I will eat foods he loved. I will feel and write and be grateful and sad and joyful that he was. Love doesn't die, it expands and fills us and helps us live.
Nine years ago today was a Saturday, Kevin and I planned to go look at several houses for sale. He was feeling crappy, so we didn't. We stayed home. I remember sweetness to the day, talking about what we might want in a house, watching a movie, taking a nap together. He took a lot of naps. We made love for what I did not know would be the last time, very gentle and tender.
Around 9:30p.m. that night, nine years ago tonight, he was bent double from pain, and he finally agreed to go the E.R. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, when he was wheeled back into the room after having a C.T. scan, I remember thinking, "Remember this moment, this is the last moment of not knowing," because I already knew.
It's been many years now and I am happily remarried, but the grief is still there. As I and many others have said so many times, grief is the price of love.
What I am learning more and more every year is that the body remembers. I woke today with a sense of dread and I'm having a hard time concentrating. I know now what nine-year about me didn't, about what is to come, what came.
Love never dies. I am so grateful for the time I had with Kevin, even the hard parts.
I'll be kind to myself today, and in the coming days leading to March 28, the anniversary of his death. You be kind to yourself, too. We all are carrying burdens.
I am writing this on the morning of the eighth anniversary of your death. It is a clear, cold day here in Minnesota. It's cool and clear in Kansas City, too. I don't remember the weather that day, though so much else is crystal clear. Your hand in mine. Your breathless voice. Your eyes. I have vague memories of the others in the room, both seen and unseen.
What strikes me today, this day, is how assimilating grief works. I know this is what's supposed to happen, but it feels so very strange. Way back when I was still just a skin coat of grief, tattered and dripping, several people told me that eventually it would be easier. I knew they were right though I couldn't see how.
I'm getting there, with very mixed feelings about it. I've said this before, but it feels like I'm betraying you by being mostly okay this morning. I rarely have great, roaring cries for you now. I cry, but as often as not I can finally remember some of the good times, like when you were cuddling Toby the dog and moments after this photo was taken, he farted. We laughed. I can remember laughing with you now as a visceral feeling, rather than knowing it happened but not being able to feel it.
Today grief feels like a deep heaviness in my body.
It is a good thing that finally those feelings are a strong part of my memories of you, not just the loss, but it also means you are more of a memory. That's hard. At the same time I am, finally, so grateful for the memories. I miss you every day and yet, here I am, mostly okay, loving you still. In many ways it feels like a profound betrayal or personal failure that I'm mostly okay. It's another one of those paradoxes we all have to live with, I guess. There is no moral value attached to grief, yet I feel like somehow there is. If you grieve too much, you're broken (and plenty of people told me that I was broken in the early days), yet if you let grief become a gentler feeling it's somehow saying I didn't love you enough. I know that's not true, but the feelings are there. What I remind myself of is that you wanted me to be okay. I promised you that I would be, and most days I am.
You meant and mean so much to so many. I can finally look at pictures of you and not start crying. I can smile at these memories. Here are just a few, not necessarily favorites but little bits of sweetness and sorrow.
I tried to make the layout tidy, but blogger doesn't make it easy. You would have spent the time to make it work and make it chronological, but this morning I just want this posted. Forgive me.
Hanging out with Brent and Buff
You were so proud of your book. You and Whitney did such a good job.
Toasting me in Jamaica for our tenth anniversary.
As a young man, maybe in your mom's house.
I'm not sure where, visiting someone you enjoyed.
At Stephan and Vered's Wedding. You were so so so happy!
Where you were born to be, with your mom and kids.
A very serious young man.
With Cynthia, probably at First Night. Elaine and I are there too, but off camera.
With my mom, in whom you had endless faith as you did/do for all of us.
On one of our adventures, probably in Europe.At a Riding Through History/birthday event, Boston Harbor.
.With your mom in LAAnd, of course, performing at StorySpace at the Out of the Blue gallery. I love this photo.
It is a relief that I can look at these and smile, that today of all days I can remember you alive, moving, speaking, laughing, touching. It is also uncomfortable, because it means so much time has passed.
This is how I want to remember us, alive and full of light.
What remains is the love. I know you loved me, and still do. I know I still love you, and finally that love is not always inextricably tied to the pain of losing you. It often still is, but not always. And I know that you knew/know how much I love you.
It bugs me when people say, "I loved them so much." The love doesn't die. Love is stronger than death, though death can overwhelm it for a time. Grief is the cost of love and I will never regret loving you.
i carry your heart with me, i carry it in my heart.
Somewhere in the late hours of January 18, 2014, or the early ones of January 19, Kevin Michael Brooks was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the emergency room of KU Med. He would die 69 days later, surrounded by some of the people he loved most in the world.
There are before and after moments in everyone's life, usually not realized in the moment, but this one was loud and clear.
It's been long enough now that today is mostly a day like the ones before and after (though that carries pain of its own) with spikes of grief and gasping sorrow. The grief, truthfully, is my companion through the year but some days it's sharper than others, today being one of them.
If you were to have told me when I first met him, that loving Kevin would lead to this, I still would have said yes. I still do. Grief is the price of love and I pay willingly.
This essay was originally published on my Patreon and is slightly modified here. Most of my blogging happens there now, so if you want to read more of what I write, please check it out.
I have a very clear memory from maybe second grade. Even at that tender age my father was talking to me about suicide, death, and nothingness. It was a dour diet for someone so small, but I loved my father and so did my best to understand. There was no one my age I could talk with about these things, even though they occupied my mind. At that age I was yet to have losses I understood as such. Some great aunts had died, our small dog, but death wasn't yet conceivable, it was merely absence and my father's ruminations.
That second grade morning my class walked around the outside of the school, from the back to the front. I don't know why we did so, but I remember the chill in the air, the bright sunlight, the texture of the brick. My father and I had been talking about death last night, so I was thinking about our conversation when I turned to some kid walking next to me and asked, "What do you think happens after we die?"
I was the weird kid in class (shocking) too interested in reading and writing and imagining and nature, not enough in television or pop culture. This didn't help.
She looked at me like I was crazy. I remember two distinct answers, but only one could be what happened. In one universe she said, "We go to heaven. I will. You're a weirdo," and went to walk near someone else. In the other she just called me weird and walked briskly away. In either case, the conversation didn't go well and it only increased my reputation as a weirdo. Had that happened in the last decade (and the teacher overheard) I'm sure I would have been sent to counseling and a letter sent home to parents, but as it was in the early 1970s, the only result was the other kids thought I was even stranger.
Not long after that another kid told me I was weird (I think it was because my favorite tv show was Nova, not Happy Days which was all the rage) and I replied, "I like being weird."
That was a formative moment. From then on my defense against being different was to embrace it, or at least to try to.
In Jr. High (again dating myself) I met E and finally found someone who was also weird. It was a powerful and important event, seeing that I wasn't the only one who wasn't like everyone else. Together we embraced our weirdness, and since then my path has always been individual, though sometimes lonely. In high school I found a few more familiar weirdos, and again in college, but for most of my life I've had to chose between embracing the weird or toning down.
When I found the storytelling community, I found a kind of home. I could tell strange stories, old folktales, vulnerable personal moments, and no one ran. I'm still weird (my material isn't festival fodder, that's for sure) but at least here I find relatable weirdos. I am certain it has saved my sense of self over and over again. I am still an outlier, telling stranger stories than most, but at least here it's not a reason to hide.
None of us should have to hide our weirdness. As long as it is ours, and doesn't hurt anyone else (which most weirdness does now), let your freak flag fly.
I hope you feel accepted for the weirdo that you are, but if you feel like an outlier and it's hard, please get in touch. You're not alone. We need you. Know that I like you just the way you are.
Some of you may remember that I forgot how to cook when Kevin died. It took me about a year to be able to make anything that required any thought, and longer still to become at all interested in cooking. It remained a pretty spotty proposition for a long time. I had no interest in cooking anything that required much thought for years. Once I was involved with Charley, I had a little more interest but no drive to cook anything beyond simple dishes. When I tried something other than the very tired and true. I was liable to make mistakes. Charley, in his loving and kind way, never complained and said that everything tasted fine, but I knew.
I still don't cook the way I used to and I may never do so again, but this morning I realized I am interested in cooking again. I am interested in trying new recipes that take some time and thought. I am interested in planning meals and seeing what might happen. I miss being an enthusiastic and skilled cook, but I'm no longer indifferent or easily worn out by the tasks associated with cooking.
This is a big deal. Kevin had a gastric cancer so his ability to eat was quickly impacted by his illness. My cooking changed from focusing on delicious to figuring out how I could pack more calories into a broth. He couldn't taste well, thus flavor had little to do with it. Once he died, the trauma of his illness remained in my ability to cook. Initially I wasn't interested, and then I found trying anything new felt like a violation of his memory. Even once I was involved with Charley, I needed to cook simply because trying much new brought back so many memories of cooking for Kevin. If I made something Kevin never ate, it had a bitterness to it because I wanted to share it with him, even as I delighted in sharing it with Charley. I also lost my touch, and my seasonings were off, especially salt. I couldn't taste it clearly anymore.
It's been almost eight years now, and I cook almost every day. This morning I realized I have regained some of my relish (get it?) for new recipes, new techniques, and deliciousness. I cans eason things well again, and only rarely mess up the salt. It hit me like a pie in the face, a combination of sweetness and pain.
That's how it is with loss and love these many years later. I still carry the grief and pain. The good memories are finally almost as strong as the hard ones, but there are ways that those hard emotions feel like the most tangible connection to the man I loved who died. When I hit an emotional milestone, like realizing I enjoy cooking again almost the way I used to, it feels bittersweet. It is a sign I am healing and it is also a reminder that he has been gone for a long time.
I don't have a good conclusion to this writing, other than the reminder that grief is the price of love. I am blessed that I loved and was loved by Kevin so well. I am grateful for the grief that reminds me of the love. And I am just as blessed, just as lucky, to love and be loved by Charley. How lucky I am that when I cook, I am cooking for living, the dead, and myself. How lucky I am that I finally remembered how.
The days and weeks leading up to today have been very odd. It's such a hard time–the pandemic still rages, I haven't traveled in over a year, the country is still a mess post-Trump (though there may be blessings in disguise by revealing our wounds)–and I expected the days leading up to today to be awful.
They weren't.
I've been mostly okay, which is pretty uncomfortable. I'm afraid it means I've betrayed you somehow and that I've relegated you to what was, though I know you would laugh at the thought. You still are. You are in my heart and the hearts of many others. And yet, here I was, occasionally sniffly and mostly okay. It felt very strange.
I decided I needed to be alone today, so I went for a drive to a park on the Vermillion River, near the Mississippi. That's another weird thing. I don't know if you ever set foot in Minnesota, yet here I am. Anyway, I went for a walk. I looked at the water. I talked to you. I didn't cry. In years past I've gone to a movie because you so loved movies and would then sob in the parking lot, but this year with COVID, that wasn't a wise idea. And the tears didn't come.
When I was done with my walk I got back in the car and thought about you. The sweet memories come so much more easily now, though today has its share of flashbacks. I remembered when we went to the Paul McCartney concert at Fenway, and put on The Beatles so we could sing together as I drove back home, to another man, in a house you would love but didn't know existed, with a dog you would adore.
It didn't take long to start. Crying and singing and driving home, you were with me.
Do you remember?
In 2009, when we were still in Boston, Paul McCartney announced he was touring and coming to Fenway Park. I staunchly said I didn't want to go, but you kept asking. Of course I wanted to go even if I didn't want to admit it, so I bought tickets. You suggested I ask one of my old friends to go with me, but I was clear that we should go together.
Our seats were directly across from the stage, but far back. McCartney was a tiny figure, far smaller than life, flanked by two huge screens where he was larger than life. It was a great concert. He knew why everyone was there and played only a few songs from the newest album, then song after song from The Beatles, with a few from Wings thrown in for good measure.
You had never seen me like that. At one point when I was lost in the music, in my past, I was playing air guitar, utterly unconcerned that there were 34,999 people around me. I saw you smiling at me and froze, suddenly aware of what I was doing. You told me to go ahead and began to air drum. You accepted me as I was in that moment, as you so often did, and joined me there without hesitation.
You sang along with all of us, and wiped tears away at Let It Be. It was, hands down, the best big concert I've ever been to, for all that it was huge, loud, and McCartney is an overwhelming ham.
When I was driving home today I remembered us there, together, and so much more. I pulled over and sobbed. It felt good to finally cry, to feel the feelings that I suspected were there. It also felt good that I didn't need to cry for hours. That I could talk to you and feel comfort. That I was, even if sad, mostly okay.
When you died I sought solace in some online grief groups. When I or someone else would ask if it was this bad forever, someone would say that it changes. It's not that you don't miss them or grieve them, but it eases. In time you find a new balance and remember the sweet as much as the pain. I think I'm getting to that point, uncomfortable though it may be, it is as it should be.
I'm wrung out now, as you might expect. I still love you, and always will. There is room for more love than I ever imagined. I'm missing you terribly and full of cognitive dissonance about the life I now have and the one that might have been. And I am mostly okay.
Love always,
Laura
P.S.
It's not the year we were there but it's similar enough. You can hear thousands of people singing along. I like to think I can hear your voice. I love you.
Those of you who knew Kevin well, know he had complicated feelings about marriage. We had been together for 14 years when we finally married, after many long and arduous conversations. I had wanted to marry for some time, but he was resistant. Because we were moving to Missouri, a former slave state and one with active KKK etc, it seemed wise to give our relationship legal protection. While this wasn't the only reason for our marriage (it wouldn't have happened at all without the love and commitment) it was what pushed him over the edge to be able to say yes.
We didn't tell many people we were getting married, but instead had a pop-up wedding at our going away party, hosted by Tony Toledo. I remember walking to the venue to set up for the party and looking at each other. I don't know which one of us asked, Are you ready and who replied As ready as I'll ever be, but we went in and the party began. After awhile we got up to "say a few parting words" then Kevin dropped down to one knee and asked me to marry him (I wasn't expecting that part). I said yes, and lo and behold, there just happened to be a minister, a huppa, and a marriage license ready to go.
It was fun, watching all of the surprised faces, and it was lovely publicly stating our connection and love for each other. It was wonderful stating our vows, including til death do you part.
By our first anniversary he was very sick, though yet undiagnosed. I remember he apologized for not doing anything special, but he was so ill we couldn't. We'd been seeing doctors who stuck by gastritis and back issues, but I knew it was something more. Anyway, on our first and only anniversary celebrated together we had something inconsequential for dinner, sat on the couch and reread our vows to each other. It was loving and sweet.
Each year since I've reread our vows myself.
Today is, of course, bittersweet. On anniversaries like this one I have taken to thinking about how different my life is now from what I expected. It is no less sweet, but it is not what I thought I would have. I live in a house Kevin would love, with a dog he would adore, with a man he would really like (and with whom he would enjoy discussing the awesomeness of Captain Sisko), doing the work he helped me grow into. He would love this life and yet he is not here with me in any physical form.
While my life has changed the love has not. I remain so grateful for his time in my life. Kevin was and is the love of my life (so is Charley - love doesn't have to be a scarce resource). I am grateful for what we had and that now, almost seven years past his death, the sweet memories outweigh the painful ones.
I've written many times that if you are lucky you will grieve deeply because it means you love and were loved deeply. I am so very, very lucky.
While I lived in Boston for almost 30 years, I never fell in love with it. What made it home were the people I loved and the New England landscape outside of the city. I never felt deeply bonded to the place the way one does with a capital H Home. I carry a sense of home inside of me and that's enough.
Why do I feel homesick for Boston these days? I've been noticing this feeling for weeks, wanting to go Home, even though the home I'm yearning for is long gone. I couldn't go back to the same apartment, Kevin is dead these six years, and I am content enough in Minnesota with Charley.
In thinking about this, what is no doubt obvious to you became clear to me. It isn't that I want to go back to a place, but I want to go back to a belief and a time. A time before Trump and pandemic and constant fear. A time when the future seemed brighter, when I was able to believe the illusion that there was some kind of certainty and positive momentum. A time when I had some confidence in the world as a relatively benign place. A time when I was more hopeful, maybe more innocent. I want that Home, and it doesn't exist. It never did.
The fact of its non-existence doesn't mean I can stop yearning for it. The pandemic has created a great sense of homesickness in me. I am hungry for a sepia-toned-Dorothy-Gale-Kansas version of home, but that doesn't work because I never liked the ending of that film. The message that we're not supposed to dream bigger, full-color lives never rang true to me.
I'm pretty good at sitting with whatever I'm feeling, but this one makes me impatient with myself, because it comes perilously close to nostalgia, a feeling that I see used in many wicked ways (the good old days never existed and were pretty bad for many). So what am I supposed to do with this feeling?
I'm asking myself that every day. Some days the answer is to feel the feeling then deliberately move on to other things. Some days it's to feel sad and scared and recognize that what I want isn't possible nor should it be. Other days, my better days, it becomes a spur to act in some way to create a better world. Sometimes that helps.
Today? Today I am homesick. Today I am angry and afraid and ready for change. Today I am sitting with those feelings and realizing I want to build a better idea of home. Today I need to remember that I am not alone in these feelings. Neither are you.
If there's no place like home then let's make it a home we want to be in. Let's build a world where homesickness doesn't need to be.
Today I'm calling elected officials and reminding them they work for me. I'm donating what money I can to a variety of organizations, among them some to help those who have lost their homes. And I am sitting with those feelings, yearning for what was, mourning what is gone and then picking up the phone for another call.
Ever have a conversation in a public place and think someone might be listening and taking notes? That's me, over there, pretending to look out the window. I’m hoping your story might end up in one of mine.
I tell stories, I listen to people, I help organizations understand and tell their own stories.
I believe storytelling is among the most basic of human activities and is what separates us from other animals. When we listen to each other we have a chance to understand another person and change the world.
This blog is a collection of stories, observations, and random thoughts. Send me an email, tell me your story. Who knows what might happen?
Posts
Hanging out with Brent and Buff
With Cynthia, probably at First Night. Elaine and I are there too, but off camera.
On one of our adventures, probably in Europe.
With your mom in LA
