Author: Kelly Wolf

Nadie Sale Vivo, Part II

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 1 Comment

I have no idea what triggered this conversation 10ish years ago, but the memory will crack me up forever:

[Setting ~ Dad, JR and I watch TV in my parents’ family room]

Dad: “Kelly will be a cougar someday.”

JR & me in unison: “What?!”

Dad: “What?” (pause) “Why, what’s a cougar?”

Me: “A cougar is an older woman who sexually preys on young men.”

Dad: “Oh! Shit. Never mind. I thought it was just a good-looking older woman. Sorry, JR.”

Yup, that’s right. “Sorry, JR.” 🙄 😂

I love this memory of Dad. Simple and lighthearted. Perfect. As the months pass, I find myself treasuring these types of memories the most.

Earlier this week, a group of family and friends traveled to the Marquesas Keys to honor Dad’s life and release his ashes into the waves, per his oft-repeated request. In the photo above, I hold his ashes in one hand and a journal in which I’d written a brief tribute to him in the other. By some miracle, I managed to say the words out loud with a minimum of tearful pauses.

I realize now that I left something out: “Thank you for changing your mind about my future cougar status after you found out what a cougar is.”

It’s interesting to see photos of myself at Dad’s memorial, my arm bearing the words Nadie sale vivo. While people continue to misinterpret the tattoo’s meaning (no, it doesn’t mean I want to kill everyone), for me, it continues to be a helpful reminder to honor each moment of life – each breath, each heartbeat, each moment. It prompts me to hold my loved ones close and leave no kind word unspoken. No one lives forever, not even the dearest dads, and we never know which hug or “I love you” will be the last.

Big Little Things

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 4 Comments

It’s little things. The dog door breaks. There’s a trail of ants in the kitchen. I find a snakeskin in the backyard. Titus steps on my foot. I knock a bottle of wine off the counter, and it upends into the dishwasher.

Intellectually, I realize they’re little things, but my inner self still curls into a fetal position with each adverse event. I become breathless. Paralyzed. I can’t think. Tears spring to my eyes.

I know what’s going on. For the past several months, my foggy, anxious, grief-ridden state has matched perfectly with that of a populace in the throes of a global pandemic. But as we move out of quarantine, moods brighten, and optimism sparks, my emotions are no longer validated by the population at large. I look around at all the shiny, happy people and think, Well, shit.

But here’s what I’ve decided: It’s fine. I accept it. I’m not going to try to do better, fold in more coping skills, or chastise myself for not feeling hopeful and happy during what, for many, is a hopeful, happy time. My recovery process isn’t attached to the COVID timeline. It’s its own unique beast and will run its own course.

Periodically, I go back in my journals to read entries from past years, and whenever I revisit hard times, I find the written reminders: I won’t always feel this way. And I know that’s true.

For now, though, I’m gonna hide out in trees.

My Dog Ate My Grief Homework

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 4 Comments

Between grief counseling sessions, I’m given homework assignments. The most recent was to create my “loss history graph” – a detailed report of each significant loss in my life, when it happened, and how intensely it affected me at the time. Needless to say, that wasn’t so fun to do, and once I completed the arduous task, I folded the page and tucked it inside a book for safe keeping.

A few days later, I noticed my dog Daisy munching away on a piece of paper. I sometimes give the dogs junk mail to tear apart, so I assumed that’s what it was, but closer inspection revealed the truth. She was eating my loss history graph. After pulling the soggy, tattered page from her mouth, I assessed the damage, which turned out to be minimal. While she’d chewed the edges and blurred much of the writing with drool, the only segment she’d removed entirely were the words: Dad died.

Later that week, my grief counselor and I both had a good laugh as I held up the pitiful remains of my loss history graph and explained what had happened. I mentioned how strange it was that Daisy had gone so far as to pull the page out of a book, which she’d never done before. My counselor, also a dog lover, spoke of dogs’ intuitive nature and suggested (somewhat tongue in cheek) that Daisy might have sensed that particular piece of paper made me sad and figured she could help me out by eating it.

Her nod to dogs’ intuitive and protective tendencies reminded me of an incident not long after Dad’s death. I’d left Titus asleep on the couch and gone into the bedroom to cry. Soon after I left the room, I heard Titus plop onto the floor and prepared to be tackled by a giant, exuberant puppy, as was his norm. But the wild assault never came. Instead, Titus crept onto the bed, crawled up to my head, sniffed at my face, and gently licked the tears from my cheeks.

“Hello, human. We are here to consume your sadness.”

In light of these two events, I’ve concluded my dogs are super heroes. “Doodlebug” is my usual nickname for Daisy, but in light of her new hero status, she may need an upgrade. I’m thinking: Daisy the Grief Gobbler.

And Titus can be: Titus the Tear Terminator.

I’ve said it countless times over the past year of fear and misery, and I know I’ll say it again.

Thank God for dogs.

Post-Pandemic Plans

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 2 Comments

In no particular order…

  • Book a massage
  • Hug my friends
  • Go out for breakfast
  • Write OPEN IN CASE OF PLAGUE on the top of a shoebox, toss all my face masks inside, and stick it in the back of a closet
  • See a movie in a theater
  • Go out dancing
  • Take my laptop to a brewery/cidery/coffee shop, sit by a window, and write for as long as I want
  • Stroll casually through a library
  • Walk by other people without trying to measure 6 feet with my eyes
  • Plan a trip that requires air travel
  • When visiting friends, ask to use their bathroom without fearing I’ve condemned them to death
  • Ride a rollercoaster and scream my head off
  • Take a class – any subject will do, as long as it’s not on Zoom
  • Meditate because I want to, not because I have to to keep from losing my mind

Death Is

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 1 Comment

The Tao Te Ching was the first religious text I ever read that made real sense to me. It hit home so hard, in fact, that I cried the first time I read it, which was a particularly huge feat at the time (~20 years ago), when I tended to cry on an annual basis.

One theme that runs throughout the Tao is that people erroneously judge and weigh the realities of life. What should be perceived as simple, we complicate. What is truly complicated, we consider simple. And therefore, as we attempt to navigate existence, we spend much of our time completely off course.

In the counseling, reading, and thinking I’ve done on grief over the past six months, I’ve realized my conception of death, and how to respond to it, have been filtered through the very lens described in the Tao. I always viewed death as complicated, but it’s not. Death is simple – neither malevolent nor kind, as plain as it is absolute. There’s no point railing against its wrath, injustice, or unseemly coldness. Death doesn’t answer for itself. It just is.

Many years ago, a friend of mine lost both parents within months of each other, and because I had no idea what to say in the wake of such tragedy, I didn’t say anything. I avoided her, and we drifted apart. I now realize I needlessly complicated the situation. All my friend needed at that time was a benevolent witness – someone to acknowledge the raw pain of her loss. Death is simple, and so is the most meaningful response to it:

“I’m so sorry. I know you’re hurting. I’m here.”

And that’s all. It’s not complicated. I suppose that’s the good news. When faced with another’s suffering, we don’t need to offer advice, redirection, cheer, or distraction, conjure up magical words or devise brilliant strategies to try and salve their pain. All they really want to hear is:

“I’m so sorry. I know you’re hurting. I’m here.”

Simple.

That’s What Happens on Monkey Island

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 7 Comments

At this time twenty years ago, I was just getting to know JR, my new housemate. We’d come to live together via a mutual friend, Kyoko, who had lived with JR previously and assured me, when proposing the three of us share a home, that not only would I love JR, but he would prove to be entirely unlike anyone I’d ever met.

A few weeks after we moved into our new house, I told Kyoko the story of Coconut Harry, a Golden Retriever in the Florida Keys who’d been swept off a sailboat and lost at sea, only to turn up over a week later on a remote island inhabited only by monkeys. At some point in the telling (I can’t remember the context) I said, “That’s what happens when you put a bunch of monkeys on an island!”

After a momentary, thoughtful pause, Kyoko said, “The next time we’re with JR, one of us should randomly drop that sentence into the conversation. Whatever we’re talking about, whenever there’s a pause, just drop it in. No explanation. I’m telling you, he’ll go with it like it’s totally normal.”

We got our chance that night, while chatting in the front room after dinner. Out of absolutely nowhere, Kyoko turned to JR and declared, “That’s what happens when you put a bunch of monkeys on an island!”

“I know!” JR enthusiastically replied.

Kyoko stared at him, her look incredulous. I sat on the couch, watching like a spectator at a tennis match.

Kyoko: “Wait. What? What do you know?”

JR: “That that’s what happens.”

Kyoko: “What’s what happens?”

JR: “That’s what happens when you put a bunch of monkeys on an island!”

Kyoko: “But what are you talking about?”

JR: “I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

It was perfect.

I’ve recalled that exchange a lot over the past ten months, as I’ve tried to channel JR’s bottomless ability to shift gears and adapt. These days, I consider “monkeys on an island” as a battle cry of sorts. New COVID variants? Monkeys on an island! Insurrection at the Capitol? Monkeys on an island! Jewish space laser conspiracies? Monkeys on an island! Yet another month of quarantine? Monkeys on an island!

This all-purpose declaration serves me in the same way “It is what it is” served my dad during times of unwelcome, jarring change. However, it’s much more fun to say. Also, it really takes the sting out of stressful events to picture a Golden Retriever, having just escaped the jaws of a watery death, joyously bounding around an island full of monkeys.

Oh, Coconut Harry. You must’ve thought you’d died and gone to Dog Heaven.

A Year of Challenge

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 3 Comments

Back in January, I wrote about the 52-week gratitude challenge my mom, sister and I had embarked on three months earlier. Last week, we arrived at our final topic: Lessons Learned/Did this challenge change you? Though we should’ve finished back in October, we had to hit pause on a few occasions, namely:

  • My sister’s hospitalization, cancer diagnosis, and beginning of treatment (March-April)
  • Dad’s sudden death (September)
  • My sister’s stem cell transplant and recovery process (October-November)

Quite a year. I think there might’ve been a plague, as well. And a bunch of other gruesome shit.

🤬

As it turns out, choosing that particular challenge was eerily timely. Given all the trauma and tragedy of the past year, it was a true blessing to have a designated time each week to focus exclusively on gratitude.

Here are the final emails we sent each other:

My Response:

To be perfectly honest, when I look at this week’s subject, part of me is like: Barf! Screw you, Gratitude Challenge, my lesson learned is that everything sucks! 

😭
👿

Ahem.

Okay, so really what I learned over the course of this challenge is that it is always an option to be grateful, rather than focusing on struggles and suffering. Concentrating on points of gratitude is best for my mental health, physical health, and general state of well being.  

The past year has certainly provided its share of challenges, and having this weekly exercise has provided a consistent reminder to shine the light on gratitude. Choosing to prioritize gratitude is the wisest choice. It feels better and is more beneficial, so why not do it?

I am grateful to both of you for hanging on over the last year+ to complete the challenge. It hurts my heart to think back on the breaks we’ve had to take over the past year, but I am grateful we’ve come through it together, and I am grateful for the honor of having you both in my life.

Love, Kelly

Mom’s Reply:

So beautifully stated, Kel…. particularly the disclaimer at the beginning!  

😄

But I think that that is what we’ve all learned in a nutshell: Even though everything sucks, there’s always something to be grateful for, and looking for those things helps to keep us calm(er), happier and sane. It’s quite remarkable that we chose to do a gratitude challenge during what turned out to be the worst year of our lives; and it certainly turned out to be a timely and beneficial choice.

Katy’s little sign in her kitchen says it so well: “Every day is not good, but there’s something good in every day.”  Another expression I love is: “Keep your head where your feet are”. Focus on where  you are, not where you’ve been or where you might go. My tendency has always been to spend a lot of time ruminating ….regretting things that did or didn’t happen in the past; worrying about things that may or may not happen in the future. But this challenge has helped me to stay focused on today and what is good about today. And there’s always so much to be grateful for.

I’m grateful for having made this journey with you, and for all I learned about you. Something I didn’t learn because I already knew: There’s nothing in this world I’m more grateful for than both of you.

Love,
Mom

My Sister’s Conclusion:

I’ve taken so long to respond because I don’t really have much to add to all the beautiful things you both wrote! 

☺

It really has helped me get through this godforsaken year having these weekly emails to look forward to and to keep my focus on what is good and positive in our worlds. I learned that gratitude really is a mindset that can be cultivated.

I’m grateful to the children’s book club meeting I went to where I learned about this challenge, and I’m grateful that you both were willing to take on the challenge with me!

I’m grateful that we didn’t let misfortune and long breaks derail us and that we persevered together.

Now, what’s next?

Love you both so much!

💕

And…scene. Challenge completed. As my sister said, it’s time to pick the next one. I’ve done a little online digging and haven’t been inspired thus far, having found mostly kill-joy self-improvement projects focused on crap like budgeting strategies and home organization. Snore. I did see one about sending a personal piece of mail each week and may try that. I mean, who doesn’t love getting mail?

I know we’re all anxiously awaiting the end of 2020 while faced with the reality that nothing will be different as of 1/1/2021. That being said, I encourage everyone to try the gratitude challenge. I truly believe it saved Mom, my sister and me over the past year. Despite everything that happened, we were still inspired to send each other Bitmojis like this:

And who knows, maybe when you reach the final topic 52 weeks from now, life will be a little more normal. Maybe we’ll even get to see the bottom half of people’s faces again! Can you imagine?

Dichotomous Heart

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 3 Comments

When Dad saw the photos from my 2018 falconry adventure, he asked if I’d ever heard about the little owl he found, back in his sailing days. I hadn’t, and given my newfound interest in birds of prey, I eagerly listened while he shared the tale.

Dad was Chief Mate on the container ship SS Detroit as it sailed from New Jersey to Puerto Rico. One morning, he discovered a tiny owl with its talons entangled in the ship’s rigging. The poor thing had been blown out to sea in a big storm the night before and was well and truly stuck. After freeing the terrified owl, Dad prevailed upon the ship’s cook to provide him with hamburger to feed his new charge. Trust-building was a challenge, and Dad described his huge sense of relief the first time the owl accepted food from his hand. When the ship docked in San Juan, he transferred the little survivor to the Audubon Society.

On November 1st, my mom, husband and I set up an altar to honor our departed loved ones. Mom thought it would be a good time to sift through piles of family photos she’d been given over the years, and in the process, we discovered this:

What a gift to find an image of Dad with his tiny rescued owl. Seeing him here reminds me of the countless times he offered care and comfort with sincerity and love, and without question.

My dad was a man of two hearts. The physical heart, with its valves, ventricles, aorta and atriums, was weak and fragile. It failed and took him from the world. But the heart he shared with others was fierce and mighty, radiating kindness, protection and generosity. That’s the heart he gave to those who crossed his path. That’s the heart that remains with us.

Inappropriate Joke Time

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 4 Comments

A dear friend told me this joke many years ago. I usually forget jokes, but this one has stuck in my head for decades, likely due to its stellar first line.

[Disclaimer: This joke is downright inappropriate. Over its relatively brief span, it manages to cover child molestation, infidelity, and the intentional spreading of infectious diseases. Is it gross? Yes. Does it make light of truly heinous acts? Absolutely. But I don’t care. I still like it. Are you easily offended? Then don’t read this. Click away and save yourself.]

Okay, here it is:

A little boy walks into a whorehouse with a dead frog on a leash.

“Hello, little boy,” the madam says. “May I help you?”

“Yes,” the little boy replies. “I want an hour with your dirtiest whore.”

The madam gives him a strange look. “All right,” she says, “but we do have clean whores here. May I ask why you want a dirty one?”

With a nod, the little boy replies, “From what I’ve heard, dirty whores have lots of diseases. If I have sex with one, then I’ll get all the diseases, and when I go home and have sex with the babysitter, I’ll give her all the diseases. The next time the babysitter has sex with my dad, she’ll give him all the diseases. Then Dad will have sex with Mom and give her all the diseases, and the next time Mom has sex with the postman, she’ll give him all the diseases. AND HE’S THE ONE WHO RAN OVER MY FROG!!”

😁

Back in March, when my sister was in the hospital and the country was shutting down in response to the plague, my parents and I congregated at my sister’s house, fretting about her health, her two little sons, COVID, and the general state of the world. To break the tension, we decided to share jokes, and this one really cracked my parents up. In the face of despair, brash inappropriateness can work wonders. And now that Dad has departed the world, I think back with a smile at how much he appreciated the dead frog joke. The night after he heard it, Mom told him something funny had just happened, and he asked, “Is it as funny as a little boy walking into a whorehouse with a dead frog on a leash?”

[P.S.: If you have a joke of your own that you’d like to share to cut the tension of our current times, please do. It doesn’t even have to be grossly offensive. Also, if you’re a fan of the dead frog theme, here’s an unfortunately true story that you’ll probably like.]

Memory Stream

~ Kelly Wolf ~ 6 Comments

~ How my thoughts are running these days ~

Dad’s explosive sneezes would scare the shit out of all of us. They came out of nowhere and were unspeakably loud. Even the pets would jump.

When I was little, he called me Tiger Lily. As I grew up, he switched to Kelly-My-Darlin’. He’d wanted to name me Sioux, but my maternal grandfather put the kibash on that.

Years ago, on what was meant to be a catch-and-release fishing excursion, dozens of enormous barracuda surrounded Dad’s boat as soon as we anchored. Each time I hooked a fish, a barracuda struck. After I pulled in my third or fourth fish head, Dad – who knew how horrified I was to be an accomplice to this slaughter – glanced at me with a mischievous half-smile and grumbled, “Kelly, stop getting blood in my boat.”

His oft-repeated lessons:

  • Do your best at all times in all things.
  • If you say you’re going to do something, do it. You’re only as good as your word.
  • Don’t hate. It takes too much energy.

He would calm fussy babies by placing them on his chest. We have so many photos of him like that – on the couch, eyes closed, with a tiny, sleeping bundle nestled right below his chin.

During a family road trip, after my sister, mom and I had played the alphabet game, I Packed My Grandmother’s Trunk, and who knows what else to pass the time, Dad suggested, “How about we play a game that’s absolutely silent?”

Last fall, he asked my husband and me to grab buckets and get in the car. Mom gave us a wide-eyed look like: Oh, just you wait and see! He drove us to the lot where his boat and trailer were parked. The boat cover had been weighted down by a recent rainstorm, and in the resultant pool were thousands of tiny tadpoles. Dad explained that he’d come by earlier to dump out the water, but when he saw the tadpoles, he had to change plans. Mom, Dad, JR and I spent the next half hour gathering tadpoles in buckets and relocating them to a nearby lake. Our little field trip didn’t surprise me at all. There’s no way in hell Dad would’ve dumped all those tadpoles onto the asphalt to die. He never would’ve even considered such a thing.

Dad once told me, “Life may be shit, but death is nothing.” I’m usually grateful to have been raised without religion or afterlife ideas, but not now. I wish I could believe we’d be reunited one day. Sometimes, when I remember he’s dead, it’s hard to breathe. I have to sit down. The pain roars through me like my blood is on fire.

He loved to dance. He used to take me to the father-daughter square dances when I was in Brownies. I adored those events. He loved Elvis, oldies, jukeboxes, and sharing the story of my grandfather telling him, after they’d traveled together in the car for a few hours, “Your music makes me puke.”

He was a brutal editor of my first book. “Why is everyone in this book always grinning and exiting? Why can’t they just smile and leave?” I was appreciative for the candid critique, but not so much for all the times he’d describe a critically-acclaimed book he’d disliked, proclaiming, “It was even worse than yours.” Each time, Mom would implore him to stop saying that, and he’d reply, “What? I’m saying this guy’s published and got all these great reviews, and his book is even worse than hers. So there’s hope!”

When I was in high school, he’d leave work early to come watch my tennis matches. There were all these people around the court in athletic clothing and this one tall, intimidating guy in a suit. His presence made me feel nervous and important at the same time.

On my dresser, there’s a photo of him from his Merchant Marine days. Hanging off the side of the frame is a slingshot he made when he was a boy. When I first set that up, I realized it would be a memorial someday. Now it is. I hate that.

He got to teach his grandson to ride a bike last summer. He was so thrilled. Mom has a video of him whooping with excitement as the new bicyclist goes whizzing by.

I hear his voice. I see his shimmering fingers as he explains something he’s excited about. I feel his hand holding mine. As a child, I would lay on his chest and listen to his heart – that stupid, broken heart that quit and stole my father from me. From all of us.

Sometimes I think I might get through a whole day without crying, then I cry at the very thought. It would’ve hurt Dad so much to see me this way. He wanted his loved ones to be happy. He would want us to be laughing.

Years ago, I told my sister that when our parents died, I would never get over it. I know that’s true. Losing Dad will be a lifelong sorrow. Still, I look forward to a time when memories of him bring comfort rather than pain. That’s what people say, right? Find comfort in your memories. So I have to believe that time will come. For now, though, I just remember, and cry, and remember, and cry, and remember.

[While I still can’t believe the words “obituary” or “funeral home” have anything to do with my father, Mom did write a beautiful obituary for him that is now posted on the funeral home’s website. You can find it here.]