And so a Valentine’s Day special moment of happiness, despite the news.
I was originally just going to make this a short post on my Facebook page. But I’ve decided I need to place more of my attention on it, on my thoughts and feelings, on Valentine’s Day.
Out of all the holiday and personal celebrations of the year, and each year, since Michael’s horrific accident and death, I was amazed the first year to find out that Valentine’s Day is the hardest. From that first Valentine’s Day, when he was still alive, but hospitalized, trying to heal from multiple and horrible injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, and when he didn’t recognize me as me, but as his sister, and he didn’t even recognize himself, thinking he was 23 years old, to this year’s, Valentine’s Day has been excruciating.
I was supposed to lead a 3-hour workshop this morning, a workshop I’ve led for years and that I love. Much to my surprise this morning, when my eyes opened, it was to find the time was 45 minutes into the start of that workshop, and I had a student frantically pounding on my doorbell, worried that something happened to me.
Something has happened to me.
In this case, it was a situation where, somehow, I set my alarm clock of many years for “weekdays” instead of “everyday”, and so it hadn’t gone off. After I reached out to my students, rescheduled the class, and tried to take a deep breath myself, I sat on the edge of my bed, feeling completely disoriented.
And then I fell back asleep for another several hours. It was like my body and mind were trying to help me sleep through this day.
Last Valentine’s Day, in 2025, I was in a panic because I couldn’t find the heart pendant that Michael gave me before we were even married, even living together. He came to celebrate with me, traveling from Omaha, Nebraska, where he lived. He knew my birthstone is ruby, and he gave me a small heart-shaped pendant made from rubies and diamonds. Every year from then on, for 25 years of marriage, and including that day in the hospital, I wore it on Valentine’s Day. But last year, I couldn’t find it. It was kept, along with other special jewelry pieces, in a separate jewelry box, which I also couldn’t find. Last year, I cried over the loss of that pendant, and also, over the loss of Michael.
During last summer, I decided to clean out the antique chimney cabinet where I keep my jewelry. As I opened little plastic boxes, I discovered many pieces that I’d forgotten I even purchased. And then I found the plastic box that held all of those missing pieces, including the heart pendant. Between Michael’s accident, and that day sorting through jewelry, I’d totally forgotten that I already sorted through things, trying so hard to find organization and stability in my life again, and I’d already put it in what I thought was a safe space.
This afternoon, after I woke up again and dressed before going downstairs for a late afternoon breakfast, I put the pendant on.
In my recliner, with my breakfast and an orange cat on either side of me, I finished the novel I’d been reading and loving, The Collected Regrets of Clover, by Mikki Brammer. The main character of this book is Clover, who is a death doula. On these last few pages, first I read:
“Inevitably, they’d face the agonizing moment when they had to accept that the only way to keep that essence alive was to carry it in their own hearts.”
And then I read:
“Grief, I’d come to realize, was like dust. When you’re in the thick of a dust storm, you’re complete disoriented by the onslaught, struggling to see or breathe. But as the force recedes, and you slowly find your bearings and see a path forward, the dust begins to settle into the crevices. And it will never disappear completely – as the years pass, you’ll find it in unexpected places at unexpected moments.
Grief is just love looking for a place to settle.”
And finally, the last words of the book:
“You can find meaning in anything if you look hard enough. If you want to believe that everything happens for a reason. But if we completely understood one another, if every event made sense, none of us would ever learn or grow. Our days might be pleasant, but prosaic.
So maybe we just need to appreciate that many aspects of life – and the people we love – will always be a mystery. Because without mystery, there is no magic.
And instead of constantly asking ourselves the question of why we’re here, maybe we should be savoring a simple truth:
We are here.”
In the last several years, I haven’t been grieving just Michael, though there is no “just” in the grief I feel over Michael. I’ve also been grieving myself.
I’m 65 now. While many would say I’m successful, and even I say I’m successful, I have not attained the success that I always thought I would have. My singular goal in life, from somewhere around the first grade on, was to be a New York Times Bestseller List author. To write full time. To be like the authors then, who did have a chance to support themselves with their writing.
A chance that is no longer available to today’s authors.
When I met Michael, the part of him I loved beyond all else was his belief in me. He said I didn’t have to become a New York Times Bestseller List author – I already was. I’ve had others who believed that too, from the first grade on. My first book publisher once sat across a table at dinner with me, shook his head as he told me he was accepting my second book, and said, “New York really missed the boat with you, Kathie.”
I loved that – but I truly didn’t want to be a missed boat.
Did you know that, to be on the bestseller list, you have to sell 5000 books in one week? Did you know that, of the 30 million books published every year in all formats, less than six thousand will make it onto that list?
It is next to impossible to be on the bestseller list. And I wanted to do the impossible. I believed I could. So did Michael.
Since 2015, and the publication of my novel Rise From The River, I have run to the places where I feel closest to the universe, or a higher power, or whatever it is that created this world. The Pacific Ocean in Oregon. The Atlantic Ocean in Maine. The Gulf in Florida. Lake Michigan, right here, and Lake Erie in Ohio, and Lake Superior in Duluth. Dwarfed and looking up at the great expanse of a redwood tree in California. Standing under or beside all of these places, I have shouted and whispered and wept, “What do I need to do? What do you want from me? Why am I here, if not for this?”
I received answers, or at least reassurances. The line of whole sand dollars on the wall behind me speak to this. Last summer, when I was in Oregon, and I looked at the ocean and said, “I don’t even know what to say anymore,” I found not one, but five whole sand dollars, nested together at my feet. And each time I received an answer, I settled back into my life and continued doing what I was doing. Writing and teaching and advocating for literature and for writers.
But now I am without Michael. Someone who truly believed in me. And despite book #17 coming out any day, and book #18 coming out next year, and AllWriters’ turning 21 years old, and I’ve been teaching for 31 years this April, I have found myself mired in a grief so very thick that there are days I just can’t see to find my way. This blog has, in every way, been a lifesaver, forcing me to find a moment of happiness in every week.
This afternoon, in my recliner, having read all the above words, I closed my hand around the pendant and looked across the room at Michael’s urn. And I looked down and read again those final words in the novel I was reading.
And instead of constantly asking ourselves the question of why we’re here, maybe we should be savoring a simple truth:
We are here.
I am here. Still.
Moving forward.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
Oh, Kathie. One breath at a time. Bless the days when we’re feeling strong. 💜