My Kelsey

My husband died on October 8, 2019, 200 days ago.

Outside of his obituary, social media posts, and some things for the organ donation website, I have not written anything about him in all that time. I am a writer. It’s how I cope. So why haven’t I written about the ________________________________________—-

That’s why. That blank space up there, that’s why. I – I can’t. It’s too big. It has no defined borders. If I walked you, blindfolded, up to the largest mountain range in the world, stood you 6 inches away from the base of it, removed the blindfold and asked you to describe it, could you? Tell you what, describe the universe.

I have lost my person. My Person. If you’re lucky enough to have A Person, you know what I’m talking about. When the doctor, the young doctor with the freckles and the bad shave, whose eyes were the same color as his hair, told me that my person would never wake up, I said, I whispered, “that sucks.” I have wondered how I, possessed of a large vocabulary and a decent fund of knowledge, could, when standing at the threshold of a world-swallowing abyss, only manage a triviality usually reserved for a bad haircut or a stumped toe. But even then, especially then, it was just too big. Maybe that’s what shock is.

I sometimes wish I had tried to write when it was all so fresh, so raw. When it was all one open wound. I thought about trying it, but I never did. I think I knew I couldn’t. I don’t want to relive those rawest moments of my life. “Let it scab over,” I thought. And now it has, and I find I still can’t.

I put notes into my phone to remind me of the things I felt would make good topics. “This is the worst thing I have ever faced and the person who helped me face everything is gone.” “So much of me, who I am, who I was, who I would have become, exists only in the context of him.” “I regret every minute I spent out of his company.” “In the picture I have by the bed I can’t see his eyes, and I am comfortable with that.” “With every day that passes, I’m closer to him in time than I will ever be again.” But they are worlds unto themselves. They don’t really need elaboration. Does any of this? Is it pointless digging, or is it a necessary part of the grieving process?

Very early on, I was a little bit obsessed about saving every kind word anybody said about him, especially online. I was screenshotting like a mad bastard, frantic lest any comment escape my notice. I was going to put them all in a little book I had bought to keep cards in, a little scrapbook with “Not all those who wander are lost” on the front. I stopped the day I realized I was gathering these things to show him when he got back.

I struggled with that concept a lot. I still do. I waited for him to return all day, every day. Obviously my conscious mind knew he wasn’t going to come back, but when you’ve been with a person every day for 32 years, you get used to their routine, their rhythms, their patterns. He was out on the porch, was all. He was out running errands. He’d be back. Of course he’d be back; he always came home to me.

The only times I’ve been angry is when I’m faced with something he would have loved. One of my earliest and hardest meltdowns was over these hooded shirts he loved. We never had much money, and with Kelsey being 6”8”, 300 or so lb, it was hard to find clothes that fit and that he liked. He had been out of work so much that he’d started wearing athlesiure gear around the house a lot, and he had found these sleeveless shirts with hoods, in performance material. He loved them. We bought two or three, all we could really spare for clothes, and he washed and wore them continually. He wanted several more, all the colors and a couple of spares, and we looked in the stores whenever we had a few bucks. Once, about a month before he went into the hospital, we found them on clearance for like $3 apiece. He cleared them out in his size. He was absolutely beside himself. He wanted to start getting the matching pants, because it was a running joke based on the truth that Kelsey could never be satisfied. He wore those shirts every day for the rest of his life. When he was in the hospital having his bypass, I came home one day and made sure I washed all of his clothes so all of his shirts would be clean when he got back. On my return home after his death, I saw those shirts in the clean laundry basket and melted all the way down. It’s not fair. He barely had time to enjoy them. He had gotten a new lounge chair for the porch, where he spent 90% of his time. He barely had time to enjoy it. We had lived in our house, for which we had so many plans, for 6 months. He didn’t even get to experience two seasons in it; he never had a fall or a winter here. We got a dog to sit on the porch with him since Lady wouldn’t. We had him for two months before Kelsey went into the hospital. Travis barely knew him. We never got to watch the final season of Game of Thrones because we had been moving. The book he was reading is still open to his place in his chair on the porch. His cigars are still in his humidor. The Patrick Rothfuss series he was after me to read will remain unfinished. He loved musicals but wouldn’t listen to the Hamilton soundtrack, since we heard it was going to be made into a movie. He wanted the whole experience at once. He will never get it. He will never see The Mandalorian or The Witcher, both of which he would have loved, or the upcoming adaptation of his beloved Wheel of Time series. He will never finish his own books; his latest project was a children’s book about unlearning racism. The world will remain deprived of these.

The world will remain deprived of the brilliant light that was Kelsey Bagwell. I didn’t just lose him. We all lost him. He was a deeply good person. His teaching career was devoted to improving students’ lives; giving them skills and knowledge to help pave their path and show them their own deep goodness, their own light to shine in the world. He was an example of wholesome masculinity, even though I’m not sure he ever heard the phrase. He was a helper. He was a light and it went out too soon. He loved deeply and actively. If he had anything to offer, it was yours. If he didn’t have anything to offer, he’d find something. He’d make something. He’d write something. He’d cook something. He’d tell or teach or sing you something. He loved laughter and color and flowers and things that smell nice. He loved me and he changed my life. He made me want to be a better person. I have to still be here because he doesn’t get to be. He fought hard to be here, in ways public and private. I violently wish he still was.

Him

I waited too long to write about this. My thoughts are all jumbled.

One of the first things that tormented me was how he wouldn’t get to enjoy things anymore. We never had much in the way of luxuries – we were always paycheck to paycheck at best with little money left over for nice things. Or even things, nice or not. And Kelsey liked things very much.

The summer before he passed, he had found these shirts he liked. Performance material, sleeveless hoodies (weird, right?) but he loved them. Being autistic, he had a lot of trouble with textures and these were silky and stretchy. He asked to buy two, and we could afford it. He wore them as often as they were clean, and I tried to keep them clean as much as possible, the laundry having fallen to me to do as his health worsened. It was a little thing, but it made him happy. He always looked to see if he could find more of them, knowing we may not be able to afford them even if he could.

Well. Soon after his birthday in July, we found the motherlode. Dozens of the shirts, on CLEARANCE! OMG what a happy Kelsey. He picked out one in every color, and two in his favorites. He had enough for a week. And then, in true Kelsey fashion, he said “now I need to find the matching pants!” He was never satisfied.

Coming home from the hospital alone was Hell. I cried when I pulled into the driveway and saw his Surburban. I sobbed when I looked inside it and saw his cane. I crumpled when I opened the door and saw his keys. And then I went into the spare bedroom and saw a basket of clean laundry with one of his prized shirts on top.

The fundamental unfairness of it struck me hard. He’s gone. He had such a short time to enjoy the simple pleasure of a comfortable shirt. He finally had enough of something he wanted – a rare happening- and he only had a few weeks in which to enjoy it.

This will never be okay.