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Anniversaries can be a reason to celebrate but they can also mean sadness. Anniversaries of a death can be particularly hard, overshadowing not just the day in question, but an entire month or season. The fall season used to be a tough time for Kate McNamee who writes about the losses she sustained below. Over time, however, she forced herself to face those losses and focus instead on the gifts she has. Now, as she writes, this time of year is a poignant period of happiness for her.
In many ways, autumn in D.C. is a cause for celebration. District residents, weary from four months hidden in air-conditioned refuge, fling themselves with delight into a city that once again is crisp and fresh. The air and the season are filled with anticipation and renewal as school and jobs and Mad Men start afresh. And, for me, those first whiffs of fall also carry remembrance. Autumn is the time when I began to learn to stay simple.
Three years ago this fall, a dear friend died.
It was not an unexpected death, nor a clean or neat one. Jen had barely scraped the edges of quarter-life, as a 24-year-old woman who bravely invested four years in an epic battle against cancer. After four surgeries and four years of chemo, though, cancer won. During her last few weeks of life, Jen was trapped in a body that no longer served her. Her parents became her caretakers, thrust into a role reversal that should have taken place decades later, with her caring for them. Instead, they wheeled her up a ramp to her room, helped count her medicines, and prepared her meals.
No, it was not clean or neat.
In the aftermath of Jen’s death, things remained a mess. It is hard to know how much is too much and how much is not enough while supporting friends and family. It is heavy to carry the memory of what we experienced. It is impossible to understand how a stunning and smart woman can just die.
My grandmother died unexpectedly six months later. She had been another parent to me, living a short walk from my childhood home and sharing with me all the warm traditions of her long life. Then, another six months later, my stepfather was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition. He was forced to leave his profession as a pediatrician and begin treatments on a still-unnamed disease. I was diagnosed with two chronic health conditions and immersed in treatments that ranged from infusions to chemotherapy. With all the personal dramas and dating disasters of my mid-20s sprinkled in between, I was left uncertain, overwhelmed, and deeply rattled.
So I decided to skedaddle. I left my job, quit my graduate program, dropped out of yoga-teacher training, and planned an escape to California.
Two days before the moving truck came, I canceled the escape route when my father sent me a book with the highlighted words “You have to be strong enough to be weak.” At first, I was furious—what the hell did he know? But with life-as-I-knew-it crumbling around me, it seemed wise to grab hold of any available support beams and words of wisdom. All these events, all these moving pieces of life—I couldn’t control their motion. I couldn’t contain them. But I could hope to stumble through them with some semblance of grace.
The hardest thing I ever learned to do was to allow myself to be vulnerable.
When I did, my comeback came to me. I got a new job—one more in line with who I really felt I was, and what I had to offer the world. I found that staying in one place and working a 9-to-5 job opened me to a greater experience of self-awareness. Eventually, I became the manager of an innovative education model that partners the non-profit community with student projects. I dedicated myself to my work, and the outcome was a job that I love and do well.
I started to see a therapist to talk about the losses—and the gifts—in my life. For the first time, it seemed, I brought honesty to my relationships and to myself. I reconnected with relationships I had severed in anger months before, with friends who I thought did not care enough. When I stopped doing all the caring, I realized that caring defies judgment, that everyone does it differently. One friend admitted, “I wanted to talk with you, but you were always OK, always could handle everything.” I changed that. I let other people do the caring, and I took what they could give.
I redesigned my masters education program to focus on community building. My coursework expanded to urban sociology, leadership, non-profit management, education reform, and policy issues. I did case studies on local nonprofits, the D.C. school system, and on my own job. I graduated in May 2009 with a fellowship and three job offers—and decided to continue work with my school.
I completed yoga training. My yoga practice, previously so intense and competitive became a simple act of love and daily practice. I moved into a beautiful studio apartment in the city, with hardwood floors, bay windows, and a front stoop. Living solo for the first time was a decided upgrade from 8 years of roommates and unwanted pets in shared basements, attics, and dens. I started walking to work, and everywhere. I surrounded myself and filled my days with good people. I ran a 10K. I started a yoga non-profit with friends. I hiked and camped. I read a lot of poetry, Joseph Campbell, chick lit and Sunday Times editions.
I started to collect the pieces. I met myself, and was interested in that introduction for the first time.
It’s still not clean and neat. But it is more simple. Three years later, at age 28, I work hard to care first for myself, and then for others. I value the people and the life I am blessed with—a strange patchwork that emboldens me to live as I do. Three years later, it isn’t about unfair or untimely deaths; it’s about memories of the life and the letters and the photos and the moments that allow us all to, as Derek Walcott wrote, “feast on life,” as we reflect on our own. Three years later, I have such gratitude for everything that life and death give me. I look to my friend’s death with sadness, appreciation, and a hope that wisdom will continue to come from our loss. This is my tribute to her. The more I live a life of simple, open honest beauty, the greater that tribute becomes.
And I take in a belly-full of that autumn air, grateful.
Kate McNamee is an educator who lives in Washington, D.C ., and can be found walking between the yoga studio, education world, nonprofits, and her front stoop most days.
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