Mattering

my daughter Pallas (2nd from the left) and her friends

She says to me “Kim, you’re important. Other widows want to meet you. They ask if you will be there.”

I was talking to Michelle, the founder of this blog, Camp Widow, Widow’s Village and Soaring Spirits Foundation.

She was trying to convince me to come to widow camp.

I wasn’t going. Even though I live just two hours away.
I wasn’t going.

I’m important, I whispered to myself. I’m important.
I matter to other people.
I had not felt that way since…
Art died.

The moment Art died I felt like I mattered less.
Like the space I took up in this world was not nearly as important as the space others take up.

I was not a wife anymore.
As a wife I knew I mattered to one other adult. I mattered a lot to him.

As a widow there is no one to call to say “I’m on my way home.”
There is no one to worry about me, or worry with about the kids.
My day doesn’t matter to other people.
They guy who cut me off matters less.
The great deal I got on a dress doesn’t really matter either.
My life and all it’s little insignificant happenings does not matter to anyone else.
It would take days for anyone to realize that the kids and I were gone…or dead.
Without a husband I questioned my matterness.

And it was not until Michelle spoke the opposite of what I believed that I saw how I carried around that little belief. I carried it around as sure as I carry around my kids were born from me, that Obama is our president and that I will wake up tomorrow and it will be Sunday.

I don’t matter as much now that I don’t have some to matter to.

That belief just sits there,
quietly,
solidly.
I matter less with no one else to share my life with.

And the thing is I didn’t realize that was my belief until I spoke with Michelle.

“I matter,” I whisper again, this time just a little bit louder.
The funny thing is:
if I take a really close look at my life.
if I am honest about who I have become since Art gave me the gift of his death
if I really look at it, I matter more
now
than I did when he was alive.

And if this is true for me, then it is true for many of us widow’s too.

We matter.
We matter to each other.
Every blog that is discovered at 3:23 am, when a widow is terrified of what has happened to her or him,
matters.

The comments that widows leave, the open, honest, "me too" comments that are left and read by THOUSANDS
matter.

The visitors, lurkers, outsiders
matter.

We all matter! It just doesn’t look the same way it did before our partners died.
Heck it doesn’t look the way we were taught it was supposed to look, dead partner or not.

I matter
You matter.

So when you see me at Camp Widow, or out and about in LA, come up and give me a hug.

I need it. I need to be reminded that I matter.
And my guess is you need to be reminded that
you
matter
too.

I think we all do.

Tweet

Death Sucks

I was wearing this t-shirt the other day.

It was a "you think your life is bad, I dare you to try mine" day.

I was feeling righteous.

I was feeling mad.

I was feeling "How dare you world go on and leave me here, in this life, struggling today to just do enough.

How dare you!"

I was willing to take it out on any poor sap who dared comment about death sucking.

So I put on the t-shirt, hoping that one person would comment,

would open their mouth and say

"Life can't be that bad." or something that would let me tell them

how bad my life was at the moment.

And then I saw her.

This young woman.

She made eye contact

and came towards me, purposefully.

I rehearsed my lines in my head.

She smiled.

She leaned into me, gently holding my arm and said

"I'm so glad you are wearing that t-shirt. I sometimes think I am the only one who truly believes that Jesus will rise again. Death does suck and that's why it does not happen to the believers. God bless you."

I give her a faint smile.

I nod.

I leave the grocery story.

I
laugh
all the way home.

I take off the shirt.

My death suckiness day having come to an abrupt end.

Tweet

On a Four Star Floor

Written on Thursday, January 13, 2011 during my two day break from the kids.

I’m sitting on the floor of a four star hotel (paid for with Amex points)
I’m crying
and
I can’t seem to stop.

This is not how I wanted this break to go.
I wanted it to be about rejuvenation and rest and self-love.

Instead it feels, right now, like it’s about not enoughness and loss and fucking grief.

It feels like it's about transition and learning.

It feels like there will be no peace from the hole, the void, the confusion that has placed me on the floor of this four star hotel.

I got this email from a client, someone who should have never been a client.
She is upset with how I am working with her. I take her criticism and turn it global. I smear it all over my body.

I become
what is wrong,
instead of just my wrong action.

After two glasses of wine,
I send a bit cocky email to a guy who I like.
This afternoon, I reread it and am amazed how there is no gentleness or softness, something I like to be, I need to be, I like to be with him.

I layer that mistake on top of the one I made with my client.

I become all things bad.

And then I open up my web browser
And I see
a photo of
Christina Green’s brother (Tuscon shootings)
wiping tears away.

I stand up, sobbing.
I pace the floor.
I walk over to the window, back to the hotel door.
Then without knowing that I am doing it,
I am on my knees on the floor,
hands covering my face, forehead leaning of the floor.

I laugh for a moment, I have spent a lot of time on floors this past one year and 8 months!

And I think:
How is it I’m grieving again?
How is it that the sobs can come from a place so deep I forget it exists?

I think:
I don’t’ want this life.

I think:
This is just too hard

The kids, the dating
The business

I think:
I want it all to be easy
Because after what I have been through,

I think I deserve easy.

I want easy.

I desire easy.

I think:
Easy
is not
what this is!

One sob out, a slower breath in and I remember,
it’s not them.
It’s not what they do or say or what I write or the photo I saw that leave me on the floor.

It’s that I have forgotten
I am still a well-functioning

raw nerve.

The emotions from Art’s death are just a short dig, a disappointed client, a stupid email, a photograph away.

When will I stop being so sensitive?



Maybe that’s the
wrong
question. Maybe the question is:

When will I just give into the sensitivity and learn to embrace it?

I think

it’s what

makes me real.

Tweet