#54: Making life out of death.

Anniversary(s).

Special anniversary newsletter coming at you today, dear reader! Thank you so much for celebrating both The Luminist and Mike Deagle with us…

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One year ago today…

I was standing amidst my hanging suit blazers and crumpled-on-the-floor workout gear in my hotel room closet at the Kuwait Hilton, recording the very first Luminist post.

Seven years ago today, I was in my pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, holding the still-warm hand of my husband as he lay on a gurney in the Fairfax County hospital emergency room, watching a priest deliver last rites.

Amidst the marking of the worst day of my life, I am now marking one of the best. 

Beginning on the sixth anniversary of Mike’s death, week after week, without interruption or intermission, we’ve delivered a Luminist post.

The good and the bad now live together in one day for me — November 15th. 

Both/and, baby.

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My favorite photo of Mike and I from 1996! We were in the early days of our relationship, dressed up for our grad school graduation.

I am roiling with emotion as I draft this anniversary post. 

Death anniversaries are a smothering, soul-draining affair. The kids and I agreed after year one that we’d cancel all future occurrences. Nice idea in theory, impossible in practice. 

For the past few days I’ve had that familiar moist pressure in the space behind my eyes, generating occasional breakthrough tears at random songs, sights, thoughts. Sometimes just a breeze or a bird chirping will do it.

In response, I’ve been practicing my subconscious distraction techniques: loading items in myriad online shopping carts and never buying. Watching esoteric train-wreck shows on Netflix that leave me more depleted than when I began (Robbie Williams anyone?). Mindless eating of every representative in the cheese family. 

Even before beginning this post, I was feeling wrung out like a dirty dishrag. 

Now that I’ve started in earnest, I’m typing with tears dripping down my cheeks and sliding under my chin. Tears of still-immense sorrow for what I’ve lost. Tears of longing for Mike. 

But there’s something different this year. Intermingling with my sorrow-filled tears are also tears of overwhelming gratitude at what The Luminist has brought to my life — the kind of gratitude that wrecks you because what you have received is so great that you can never repay it. All you can do is cry about it.

So my emotions oscillate like a child on a swing. Back and forth in giant swooping arcs. Screams of glee and of terror. I’m just never sure which is which.

Yep. It’s A LOT. 

I have to stop, pull my glasses up onto my head and wipe my damp face. I have to rest my head back against my pillow and pause. I have to breathe slowly, in and out.

Then I begin again, clicky-clacking away on my iPad keyboard. Because my pain has meaning now. It’s not the end of a story, it’s part of something bigger.

I don’t have to ignore my grief to get on with my life. It’s all woven together.

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The last seven years have flown by…

So much has unfolded. The 11- and 13-year-olds sitting beside me, holding each hand at Mike’s funeral, have blossomed into crazy-amazing, following-their-dreams, out-of-the-nest young adults. I’ve grown into a senior leader who has the incomprehensible luck of creating deep connections with the humans around the globe who are my corporation’s lifeblood, learning from them, and then literally implementing the changes that make their lives better. I’ve dug into and fortified my existing relationships while also forging new ones — so My Person has been effectively replaced by dozens of special people. I’ve built a sanctuary for my family. 

I’ve read a few hundred books, hugged a few hundred trees, cried a few hundred (thousand) tears, laughed a few hundred belly laughs. 

And I’ve excavated me. Every day I understand myself a tiny bit better, plumbing my depths for answers to the questions that have come to define my life:

• How can we learn to accept that life inevitably includes loss?

• How does surviving loss empower us?

• How can we realize that we are never alone in our experiences?

• How can we integrate rather than fight against the human condition?

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I am drafting this post in the early hours of the morning on a visit to Colgate. 

I’m tucked up in my warm little cottage bed as the light turns from blue black to a filmy gray. I just turned my head to the stand of pines outside my window to see… SNOW. 

“Oh my god, it’s fucking snowing!” I shout out loud with the mouth of a sailor and the enthusiasm of a kid. I hop out of bed, feet touching the icy cold floor as I scurry to the window to take a quick video. 

“Good morning! Just a little snow today!” I say in a silly, sing-song voice while recording, then send it to my brother-in-law and BFF Richie who is camping two states away with my sister. 

“Now that is something!” he replies. “The Colgate brochure did say bring lots of winter clothes!”

A glorious snow shower amidst my tears. A dash of human connection with someone I love. A new day with my beloved son. A life ahead of me writing, speaking, teaching, preaching about the aliveness all of us can find both before and after loss.

My tears of sorrow oscillate once again to tears of awe with a dash of overwhelm and off-the-hook gratefulness.

Having run through a series of emotions like the musical scales Connor will sing while warming up for his a capella concert tonight, I return to a state of equilibrium. No feeling is final.

Connor is sixth from the left!

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Grant me one last moment to be unapologetically sappy (for today).

Some of you knew Mike — knew how spectacular he was and how much he loved us. Some of you didn’t have the pleasure. 

But whether you think of him as the squeegee-wielding perfectionist, the loving dad with the kids snuggled on his lap, or the mystical, future-seeing husband who wrote a letter long before his death telling me to live my life fully and happily if anything ever happened to him… he lives on in every story I tell here at TL, every post you read, every moment that any of us live a little differently because of it. 

You’d think he was gone with the wind, but he’s here, gifting us all over and over again. His ripples are just getting wider. Thank you, dear reader, for helping me exponentialize the love my husband left on this planet.

Rest in peace, Mike Deagle. Thank you for all of it. 

In memoriam,

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Considering upgrading to help myself and my editor Leona dedicate more time to The Luminist and support our current non-profit of choice: Experience Camps for grieving kids.

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If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:

• #2: Why I wouldn’t trade away the grief. While I would give anything to have my late husband back, my life is more vibrant, more meaningful, more miraculous thanks to the lessons of grief and loss.

• #25: Embracing my humanity (in the WSJ). Reclaiming the “unspeakable” aspects of existence.

• #28: Love is legacy enough. It’s never too late to live a life worth remembering.

• #36: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Harnessing the power of shared purpose to ignite your projects and passions.

• #46: It’s all possible now. Awakening to freedom at the top of the world.