Jamie minus Kirk plus 365 equals

Hard to believe an entire year has gone by, living my half of a whole dream.

It’s been a complicated week.  August 29 was Kirk’s birthday — he would have been 63.  And today, September 3, is the one year anniversary of his passing.  I still shy away from using the word “death”.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps using it would be a final admission of the finality.

I believe the universe sends you things when you need them, if you pay attention.  I’m a big Sinatra fan.  A couple of days ago, via Andrew Hickey’s excellent podcast “A History of Rock Music In 500 Songs”, I became aware of Frank Sinatra’s 1970 concept album “Watertown”, which was a critical and commercial failure at the time but has undergone a reappraisal.  Upon sampling it, I found a brilliant song, “For A While”, which has been a touchstone to carry me through this week.

“Lost in day to day

Turn another way

With a laugh, a kind hello

Some small talk with those I know

I forget that I’m not over you

For a while”

I vacillate between the everyday times I’m not remembering Kirk, and the times when I suddenly remember him in some context, sometimes with associated but decreasing guilt over the forgetting. 

Complicating this is my brain state called aphantasia.  It means that, when I close my eyes and try to picture something, there’s nothing there. On one end of that spectrum, people can visualize entire vivid, lifelike movies.  On my extreme opposite end, there’s nothing visual at all.  If you ask me to close my eyes and picture, say, a dog, I have a detailed concept of that dog in my head, partially a verbal description.  But I can’t actually see anything.  Paradoxically, the concept is clearer if I have my eyes open, but it’s still not an actual picture.  My infrequent dreams are the same – conceptual and minimally verbal, but not visual. It interferes with my memory of events — I know I did something, but I can’t visualize it, and my mind’s concept-in-a-box has fewer and fewer details over time.  Relying on my phone’s pictures and videos helps, and I love the random picture of the day, but there is so much of life that went undocumented.

This complicates my grieving.  I’m losing my memories of him rapidly, and in a way not common to some other people.  And worse, with the continual drip-drip loss of detail, he’s becoming more of a concept himself, and less the actual person he was.  Which is immensely frustrating.  Being aware that this is how my mind works, I make an extra effort.

On the positive side, I’m slowly becoming more me, which is a good thing.  When Kirk and I met, we both had become very comfortable with our lives as single people, happy with ourselves, and OK with not having a partner.  That made us stronger as a couple when we surprisingly found each other, as we both had strong senses of self to bring to a relationship.  We both believed that having that individuality was an attractant to find the right person to share your life with. Over time though, I think there was a natural drift toward an ever-changing common sensibility as a couple, which in a long term relationship can be positive and healthy if both people stay conscious of it and contribute to it.  But without Kirk, it’s just me in the equation.

Many people have told me various versions of “Kirk would have wanted you to meet someone else and be happy with him”.  Rather, I think he would have wanted me to return to that state of individuality I had before meeting him.  And then let life take its course.  I feel I’ve made good progress in that direction.  The last few months, with my frequent trips around Ecuador, have been the initiation of that exploration, which continues, and I constantly surprise myself and am surprised.

On those monthly trips, inspired by a friend’s comments, I’ve been sprinkling a little of Kirk’s ashes in various places, and intend to continue. 

Shortly after getting Kirk’s ashes from the funeral home, I sprinkled half of them in the Cajas, the Andean national park outside Cuenca.  I did that at Tres Cruces, the highest point at 13,550 feet (4,310 m).  My plan was to bring the other half back to the US when I returned for his memorial in November of 2024, and cast the remaining remains on our grave at Spies Church outside Reading, PA. Through a series of unfortunate events — I thought I had all the paperwork to take the ashes out of Ecuador but didn’t — I ended up with that half back with me in Cuenca. Hence the trip sprinkling. Things work out as they should. 

I have a ritual: I find the right place; I spend a few minutes thinking of him; and I [badly] sing the end of “Origin of Love”, starting with “Last time I saw you…”.

This morning I took a bus to the Cajas and did some hiking, spread some ashes (not at Tres Cruces but at Laguna Toreador), and reflected on my Kirk, and my year. 

And when I did that, I realized I’m pretty damn happy being me.  

And I think Kirk would be proud of me.