I'm So Glad You're Here
As we stand, slouch, or slump at the beginning of 2022, I invite you to take a moment to look back and recognize those events, big and small, that have shaped us in the last twelve months. For my first dispatch of the new year, I’m returning to the early summer, when I had the privilege of sharing at the Celebration of Life for our dear friend Kristen Haskell, who showed us time and again the possibilities of a joyful, richly artistic life despite the constraints of muscular dystrophy.
In conversations following the service, one of Kristen’s longtime friends suggested—and then insisted—that I continue writing about my experiences with grief. Her encouragement ultimately led to my decision to start “If You Lived Here.”
Thank you so much, Susan Cook.
My gratitude as well to Joe Brainard, whose I Remember serves as a partial framework for what follows.
Celebrating Kristen Haskell, June 24, 2021
I’m not who should be speaking to you this afternoon, for I came to know Kristen and Steve (sixteen years ago) through Valerie, Kristen’s close friend and at the time my crush, five years later my wife, later still the mother of our two children. But here I am, and I want to believe that Valerie was there to welcome Kristen two weeks ago, as I hope that a source of love close to Valerie’s heart greeted her when she died at our home on a Sunday morning this past August.
It’s a lot… When I first talked with Steve after Kristen’s passing, we spoke of Kristen in the present tense. I put a lot of stock in the arts and a little bit too in the sciences. I know that energy is neither created nor destroyed, and Kristen’s energies—the atoms and particles, the generosity and kindness—continue, and I’m grateful to carry her memory forward.
I remember, for instance, Kristen the artist: her jewelry making and especially her paintings, several of which grace the rooms of our house in Chicago.
I remember my children, Emerson and Whitman, each with that newborn smell, lying on Kristen’s chest. A month ago, Kristen wrote, “When I die, I want the kids to know that I love them. If my beliefs are right, I will look after them from the afterlife.”
I remember Kristen’s laughter. During one visit, she shared an old resume, likely one of her earliest, and following her qualifications and experience, there was the heading “Hobbies,” under which Kristen included “walks on beaches” and, most importantly, “fluffy kittens.” I don’t know the official stance of the church regarding animals and their existence beyond this world, but I believe that Kristen is in the company of her pets and their warmth.
Kristen loves the spring and now the summer for their flowers. I remember too that we’ve already won a kind of lottery simply by being born. Kristen’s life is a gift, as is yours. I remember that Kristen and everyone here was once a baby.
I remember decorating Christmas trees, I remember birthday cakes, I remember ambitious dinners thanks mostly to Steve and Valerie. I remember the unanimous, collective joy of Andy’s Frozen Custard.
I remember that we’ve all lost so much in the last fifteen months and that you shouldn’t compare your grief to the grief of others. Don’t dismiss or diminish your loss because someone has lost more. You are allowed, as well, to mourn the loss of a job, the loss of a family heirloom, even the loss of what we used to know as “normal.”
I remember the dream, a dream Valerie shared one morning, in which Kristen is walking.
I remember there’s no right or wrong way to feel. Maybe you feel like you can’t cry at all or can’t cry any more. Maybe right now you’re bored. Or hungry. That’s perfect, & it’s okay. I remember that no two people grieve the same way.
Before finding a renewed power and sustenance in her faith, I remember playing Sequence with Kristen and Steve—more likely Mexican Train—and in the spirit of friendly competition, almost under her breath but not quite, I remember Kristen letting go a string of adjectives laced with profanity.
I remember that Kristen says, “Thank you,” and “I love you,” and “I’m so glad you’re here.”
I remember Kristen giving me this drinking glass. She said something like, “As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to buy it for you.” To this day, I have no… idea… why…
And I remember Kristen as Valerie’s maid of honor. I remember Steve and Kristen dancing at our wedding, Steve’s hand turning Kristen by the control—the “joystick”—on her wheelchair.
I remember that disease doesn’t define anyone.
From experience, I know that loss doesn’t magically end after a hundred days or a decade. For some, Kristen’s passing will be part of the daily fabric. After my wife’s death, a friend recalled the passing of her father. She shared—for this is what caring, empathetic humans do—what someone shared with her: Our grief is like a ball inside a closed box. At the bottom of that box, there in the center is a button, a kind of trigger, and those sharpest moments of grief arrive when the ball encounters that trigger. Over time, that ball does become smaller, though it never truly disappears and, often when we least expect it, the ball will again touch us.
When this hurts, especially when it really hurts, I remember that our tears reflect a connection that’s very much alive and present. It’s proof that those we love are not actually gone. Energy is neither created nor destroyed and some of those energies make paths inside us.
To Kristen, I want to echo what I said to Valerie in those first moments after she died: “Thank you, thank you, and thank you. We are so lucky.”