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Debate Champ

@debatechamp

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7 months without my beloved. by @debatechamp

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a year ago

Nothing about this felt adequate. But here it is. My attempt. by @debatechamp

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a year ago

Today is six months. Six months without your glorious laughter. Six months without your astounding intellect. Six months without your patient and calm presence. Six months without your excellent company. Six months without your brilliant creativity. Six months without holding your hand. Thank you John. Thank you for everything. Every. Thing. I love you. I love you. I love you. by @debatechamp

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a year ago

It was a very windy day. In Chicago. And the house alarms you installed on all our doors kept ringing. All day. Freaking my dog out and freaking me out.

Is it you ringing the bell? Have you returned to me? To share a knowing laugh. To bridge the thin veil and touch me with your prank loving heart?

But the dog is barking and my adrenaline is pumping and I’m scared and nauseous. So I check the doors.

And the basement door has somehow become loose. It wasn’t you. It was the wind. It wasn’t you it was the wind. by @debatechamp

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6 days ago

My love you’d be so proud by @debatechamp

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a month ago

Month 19
This summer, I started cloaking the whistling hole in my chest with a light linen shirt. I bought the same one in three colors.

At the dog park in the morning, new people come with their new dogs. Some days it is windy in the Windy City and my linen shirt opens a little. I am resigned to it: a benign question (sometimes an obvious trigger, sometimes a surprising watery gulp), then tears (I would prefer to control them) and a short three word sentence. Then a kind reply. The. one more person knows: I used to get to hold another human exactly the way that gave them the most pleasure. With my taut skin and bright eyes watching, not wanting to miss anything: a sound at the back of the throat, a tightening, a flutter. Now I live alone. With gratitude for the memory of that.

Month 19, my biggest wound is no longer Chapter 1 thru Epilogue. Because I’m alive, I henpeck new chapters. Because I am me, I walk into the heart of my fears, looking some days bravely, north. Because it feels correct I let new lessons land and weasel their way into my chest wound.

What is the time limit on public grieving? I don’t ask because I care about your answer. I ask because I want you to remember we’re all walking around with one whistling hole. Or two. Or three. Since you have a hole too, you know: to be alive, having experienced both aching fingertips and the deepest grief is dissonant. But, like you, I am greedy. I want another day and another day and another day and another. So we stay in these bodies as long as they will have us, containing—as somebody smarter than me said—multitudes. Taking our daily vitamin of WTF.

I’m taking most of my active grieving offline because it feels like time. John will still show up here because my heart is tied to a string that is tied to him. No mater what. But I don’t need to yell at you about that anymore. Thank you for the months of witnessing the things that couldn’t be fixed. And let me know how I can support you. Maybe a light linen shirt? #widow #grieving by @debatechamp

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2 months ago

Month 18 “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing?!” I say earnestly. So earnestly.

But the dear friend on the other end of the phone is an old friend. And she’s onto me for awhile. So she laughs out loud.

“What’s funny about that question?” I ask.

“Maggie. You’ve been asking the same exact question for twenty years. Twenty years, as long as I’ve known you. Maybe it’s time to ask a different question.”

She’s right but I don’t know my new question yet.

I realized this month I feel terrified. Terrified to live. To really live. I, a currently alive person, who has witnessed death’s quick torturous descent, choose to curl into my bed. Rewatch comfort tv. Cry at the beauty of fireflies in my yard.

Another wise friend friend suggested “Mags, maybe if you chose to feel alive its accepting his death on another level. And that’s scary.”

Ahhhh. Yes. That’s it. The act of living, not just surviving but living, requires an acceptance that a life I loved is dead. My love is dead. If I want a life? I have to make one.

It was simpler to believe I was doing okay during the first year when dear friends came to visit. They did the work to create a replica of a life. They packed bags, got on planes, cooked me food. Curled up on my couch.

But look at all the proof of life I’m showing you in two and a half minutes. What more can I ask of myself? If I were directed to answer that question with the love and care I would want a friend to show herself I would have to say: nothing. There is nothing more to ask. The point isn’t to accumulate bravery the point is just to be brave. Whenever you can. by @debatechamp

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3 months ago

Month 17. I lost your body and mind 17 months ago. But now I’ve also mostly lost your spirit. For months after his death, I told anyone who would listen how John continued to show up in the most clever, detailed ways. Through the veil.

The tarot card reader said two things this month. One: He is off looking after other people. He’s making rounds. That tracks. Two: He stopped coming because it made you so sad. You have to find a way to find joy in his visits, she said. That tracks too. John denied his own dying so those he loved would suffer less.

Even after 20 years together, John’s relentless (that is the correct word) attentiveness to detail could still shock my ‘forest thru the trees’-based system. How a thing proceeded, the thought and care that went into: a building, a cup of coffee, giving pleasure, was what mattered to his soul. I got to witness the beauty and art that can only come from using both hands.

John. One day will you tell me how you did it? Tell me how you got Chrissy’s car Spotify channel to play my favorite song, by my favorite artist, on the way home from the tarot reading.

Tell me how you timed the last 8 bars of Purple Rain to play as Chrissy and I pulled into her condo’s parking space. That’s not an easy song to do that with, in the midst of Denver traffic. You always did love details. #grief #widow by @debatechamp

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4 months ago

Month 16. There are no silver linings. John died. And I watched him do it. I stroked his back and told him how much his life mattered. How loved he was. How important he was to so many.

There are no silver linings. But I’ve found silver slivers. Tiny and sideways under the skin, not noticed at the moment it stabs. Only noticed later, a sharp shard that festers into a lesson learned.

In the months after John’s death, I understood what mattered. And—maybe more valuably—what didn’t. This clarity was like an umami base note that kept me here, a flicker of light among a dangerous play of shadows. A foul way forward.

Being humbly connected was the only thing that mattered. The lack of ego and hubris that comes with deep mourning is a silver sliver.

Being me, however, I am learning this lesson imperfectly. This month, Month 17, I heard ego and hubris kudzu creep back into my words and choices. I almost punched down (caught myself on that one). I exaggerated because I wanted the listener to feel sorry for me. I stirred up splashes in otherwise still water.

I noticed this and I hated myself for failing to hold onto my new knowing.

It’s okay. My rotted heart is a dull table knife, flailing at the world like a six-year-old who wants attention. And I love that little girl.

But Fuck ego. Fuck hubris. I want to walk in the light. To hold what I know between my thumb and index finger, a pin of shiny understanding: We are connected. And that connection is the only thing that matters.

John is still teaching me from beyond the veil. by @debatechamp

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5 months ago

The last month of the first year. by @debatechamp

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10 months ago

Month 15. ‘Try to turn today around’ my best friend says this morning. Just try. So I take my living body to the dog park and stand among the living people. I fake smile and fake laugh and pretend. I feed the dog and trudge upstairs to work out. For the endorphins. Turn it around. Try to turn it around. But there is no round. There is only flat, the flat lake surface of life without you. The flatline that you are gone from this world and I cannot conjure you with witchy magic.

Bodies don’t matter. Except when they do. Bones break. Plaque accumulates. Cancer grows. And I, an idiot, only really learned this while watching you turn to dust in 30 short days.

The body’s determined march back to ash is like blowing out a candle: simple. It’s our egos that make it into a violent spitting off the edge of the world.

Bodies don’t have inherent value. Except yours. Yours did. You were gorgeous baby. Your sinew and architecture mattered, made arches, pleasing volumes of space. Directed by a thumb and an index finger and a patient mind. by @debatechamp

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6 months ago

Thank you @kristinlandowskipottery_tam @ck01krieg_ @bobdotsalazar @drmelnd @caracfr @partyann @kimmyc79 @lisanicolestamlife2 @madmodwellness_tam @hayleyaubin @lindsaubin @ericaaubin @therealscottdisick @gippersmith @allegrasmith5 @mwertymer @lashonna1020 @susieroselle by @debatechamp

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a year ago