The older I get, the harder it is to mourn a life I didn’t have.
-Me, today
June 1, 2011 was also a Wednesday. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t checked the calendar just now. As I so looked forward to a long weekend of welcoming summer this year, working outside in my yard and BBQing with friends, I thought back to that year as I always do at this time. In 2011, there was no Memorial Day weekend. I have no memory of it. It was canceled. It was irrelevant.
I remember when Mama Jo (Ken’s Mom) returned from California at my beckoning in late May that year, but there was no Memorial Day bbq. No celebration. We were deeply invested in ensuring Ken’s last days were comfortable and fraught with as much joy as we could muster. In spite of what we knew was coming, there was still laughter in the apartment Ken and I made our home. It would not be denied. And I’m profoundly proud of that.
As I wrote last year, passing the decade milestone since Ken’s death has meant many things to me. As frightened as I was that it would pull me further from him, it hasn’t. It didn’t diminish us or our connection for me. It solidified it. Yet, at the same time, it freed me–as if my heart, sentenced to a decade of mourning, had been released from a prison of my own making. I unapologetically love Ken and will for the rest of my life. I’m forever grateful for who I became because I loved him…and most assuredly because I lost him.
I went to Costa Rica to celebrate my 50th birthday in 2018 with my college bestie. On a visit to a farm where we tasted the bitter cacao in its natural form, we learned about grafting. To make the plants stronger by combining two varieties, one was split open carefully and the freshly cut end of the other was placed into the newly created groove and wrapped with tape, making the new plant stronger overall. That sentiment really struck me then. And has stuck with me since.
It occurred to me recently that the instinct to plant my little garden this year was me. It wasn’t about something I thought Ken would like or something I could do to have a piece of him with me. His love of gardening was grafted to me during the last 21 years. This realization came to me while I was planting my pepper plants and a smile overcame me. It felt like some kind of reward. A finish line I’d crossed with no knowledge I was running a race.
It’s odd to say my relationship with Ken continues. And–like him–it still surprises me in wondrous ways, revealing more about me, and our life together. And all of it, still makes me feel so proud and lucky.
Similarly, my relationship with June 1–the day he died–is the chief indicator of where I am on the grief continuum. I’m grateful to see–and feel–it change over the last 11 years. It will always be a reverent date fraught with pensiveness and respect. But it’s not sad by default. Much like misunderstood grief, itself.
I don’t often read posts after I’ve published them. But I was scanning this site and came across this post on the first anniversary of his death in 2012. When I read old posts, it feels like I’m reading someone else’s thoughts and words. In many respects, I am. I’m not the same person today I was then. After I expelled the thoughts into the internet, they’re gone. But I was so impressed and touched by this very lost, very broken-hearted guy who ended the blog with:
In spite of it all, I’m still the luckiest man in the world.
Marking a Weighty Occasion, June 2, 2012
And that statement is still as true as it ever was.