HEY, DOLL
The last thing you probably want to hear right now is exactly what you are about to read in this first post: it’s about grief. I’m sure many of you can now fully relate to Charlie Brown’s favorite way to agonizingly protest, “Oh, good grief!” I know, I know. What a heavy start. But hang in there with me. Because there is no other way for me to begin; the experience I’m about to share with you led me to KIND.EST
The concept for KIND.EST was created over a year ago during the most grief stricken moment of my adult life. You know how your parents say that they are terrified to receive a phone call from their children in the middle of the night? Well, it goes both ways. Kids get equally concerned when there is an odd-hour call from their parents. This particular early morning call was about my grandmother. She was passing. We didn’t know when, but soon. Could I come to her nursing home now? Yes, right away.
To be candid, I wasn’t in the best shape to begin with. And no, I don’t mean lack of exercise. I had been out late the night before with a couple of friends, and we entertained a bottle of whiskey. It’s called hangover shape. Bleary eyed, I took a couple of aspirin, brushed my teeth, threw on some jeans, and got in the car. Armor up, I thought. Breathe. Remain a functioning human being. Putting on my seatbelt, I noticed frayed bits of yarn and an unanticipated black tag. My sweater was inside-out.
My grandmother is my favorite person in the world. To me, she is “mum.” When I was a little girl, my mother tells me that I wouldn’t let her join in on our play dates because I wanted mum all to myself. She had the most incredible imagination and an absolutely brilliant way with words. ‘See the fairies and the elves and the dragons?” Oh, yes I did! It didn’t matter that no one else saw them but us. Mum’s creativity; the enchanting, unique kind that springs from both the mind and the heart, is what made her twilight years so especially heartbreaking. Over the course of a decade, she slowly drown in the insidious and complex attributes of dementia. Like being swallowed up by Pinocchio’s whale. She was 94 years old. Driving over, I knew it would be the last time I would ever see her. It’s such a surreal thought, this kind of finality. Even with a ten year warning signal, when she started to forget my name and could no longer feed herself.
How do I describe the moment of her passing? I don’t have the words to accurately articulate how hard and sad and profound that experience was. I brushed her hair. I thanked her. I assured her that it was ok to go. I whispered “I love you” in her ear over and over again. A prayer was said. She took her last breath. Her hands, which had become so gnarled and clenched from arthritis, uncurled, now relaxed.
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.”
As an 80’s kid, we used to love those paper mâché toy kaleidoscopes. I was always amazed at how something so small could contain an entire galaxy. You know the ones, where you press your eye to look through the hole and shards of different colored glass magically dance and fall as you turn the device in the light? That is what it felt like. To watch her go. The memories rose and fell all around me like pieces of colored glass … twenty to thirty year old memories I hadn’t thought about since the day they occurred. What’s strange about experiencing the intensity of death is that I imagine there is a similarity to experiencing the intensity of birth, though at the opposite end of the spectrum. You are so focused on assisting the transition, you lose sight of your own awareness of the moment. You lose sight for a blink-of-an-eye, and then consciousness returns with an incredible and excruciating focus. And the focus is pain. Losing my grandmother was like someone split me open and removed all of my organs. Blinding, aching, paralyzing suffering. Looking back, I know the only reason I was able to function at all was out of necessity: I functioned for my mom. I may have lost a grandmother, but my mother lost her mother.
Ping! An email. How ironic that you can eagerly wait by the mailbox as a kid and now can’t stand the sound of an email alert. Opening the portal to the digital world was a shocking accost. Products! People! Places! The content itself wasn’t disturbing; the images and text were typical. The shocking part was me. I was not the normal one. Which led to an even greater sense of despair and anxiety. I wanted to call out, “does anyone else ever feel this way?” We must. We’re human. Clearly I’m not an expert on grief, and I absolutely do not claim to be one. However, I do know one thing for certain - grief is a feeling we will all undoubtedly feel at some point in life. It’s a complicated topic, but I believe one worth exploring together. Especially in these times.
Through this personal and intense experience of the loss of my grandmother, I gained something else. A desire to connect more deeply and to create a place to do so. A place to be vulnerable. To put down our defenses and to lean into an exposure of the heart. A place established kind. With death, comes life. This is the imprint she leaves to me.
Perhaps if you are reading this now and enduring your own struggle with grief, you will allow me to share a sentiment with you. In doing so, I wish not to diminish the importance of your own experiences, but to amplify something else: hope. One day the pain will not be as sharp and overwhelming as it feels in this moment. Heartbreak is what makes us so distinctly and remarkably human. It can lead to an intimacy of one’s own heart that is deep and diving and beautiful — allow yourself to find it.
It’s been fourteen months since my grandmother’s passing, and I think of her every day. The intense, suffocating weight of the sorrow has gone. I see a monarch butterfly today and I smile. Or I wear her University of Michigan sweatshirt and I feel her embrace. I hear her voice chime, “Hey, Doll!” And I know she’s with me. Now, gratitude has replaced the grief and all I feel is love. For there is no grief without love — and love, in my opinion, is life.
Kindest,
Kate
