It’s taken me almost a year to finish writing this blog post. There’s a lot of different variables packed into the box of reasons for the long delay in finishing it.
There was a whole lot of reconciling of things that had to be worked through for me to get to this point. Spare time to devote in finishing writing this post hasn’t always been plentiful as life has been a blur more often than not. It’s been hard to find time to sit alone in the silence that’s necessary to put the feelings about this day into the words I’m typing on the computer. I used to sit in the corner of Panera and do most of my writing, but I haven’t done that in a long time. Though it was a noisy place bustling with constant activity, I was somehow able to shut it all out to write. I find now that I need to be in my own solitude to write the words that need to come out.
Procrastination has also played a part in this as well because it means it’s finally shutting the door behind me to this part of my past life that included Kenny in it.
I had to take time to mentally and emotionally unpack the events of this day and how it went nothing like I had planned for it to. I had to come to terms with this fact and accept that life just does not go according to our best laid plans like we want them to. I had no control over how the day went which caused me a lot of stress, both that day and for way too many months afterwards. There’s so much to reflect on and roll over in my head as I look back at everything that’s happened since Kenny died and it’s still overwhelming to think about sometimes.
Today is the third anniversary of Kenny’s death and I am making myself finish this post to publish it. Our daughter wrote on Facebook today that though your mind may not remember the date your body does. That’s a very accurate statement as the physical, mental, and emotional heaviness I’ve felt yesterday and today has been overwhelming. Kenny knew I was feeling it and he delivered this message to me last night—
“Stop walking in the shadow of my death”
So, this post has to be finished, and it has to be done today. Kenny’s right, it’s time to stop walking in those shadows and start to walk in the light again.
That being said, grief doesn’t ever go away after your loved one dies; it just takes on a different form where it hurts less as the time goes by. The pain isn’t bleeding all over everything now like it once did, and I am so very thankful for that. So, maybe the delay in finishing this post was just exactly what I needed…..
We finally had Kenny’s memorial service on September 30, 2023, nine days before the two year anniversary of his passing. I know that two years after the fact is a long time to wait to hold a service and some people probably were silently shaking their heads at me for it, but I just wasn’t able to do it till now. How long to wait to hold his service wasn’t anyone’s decision to make except mine and our children’s.
The reasoning for the long delay was because of two different things. First, we had to wait until it was a time when our son could get back here from Colorado when the weather was still warm enough to have it on the beach. Second, I could not have the service until I felt like I was mentally and emotionally ready to do so. I truly do not understand how people can have a funeral right after their loved one dies. I just could not do it.
I addressed the two year delay in having Kenny’s service in the first few sentences of the eulogy I wrote for him. I told the people that were there that it took time for me to make peace with the brutal monster that is grief and that this peace sometimes takes longer to reach than people might expect it to. There isn’t any timeline or expiration for grief. Everyone works through it in their own time, so, two years is what it took for me to get to that day and that is absolutely okay.
In the days leading up to the service, I had an epiphany of sorts. It occurred to me that Kenny’s memorial service had been hanging over my head like a guillotine. I realized that I had been energetically holding my breath for nearly two years as I waited to have his service. At this revelation, I became aware of a tightness in my body that I hadn’t even realized was there and it surprised me. It was so subtle that I hadn’t even noticed it was there all this time, or, maybe I had just gotten so used to it that it didn’t register with me anymore.
That tightness feels like the breath holding you do when you know something is getting ready to happen that you don’t want to occur. You hold your breath waiting for what’s to come, thinking if you stop breathing it won’t happen. Your stomach is tight and your jaw is clenched. Time stands completely still in those seemingly endless seconds of holding your breath. When you finally exhale, time starts moving forward again. Sometimes it seems like the exhale takes an eternity to get to and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to breath again.
As it got closer to the day of the service I became even more tense because I realized I just wanted it to be done and over with. I wanted it behind me. I needed to close the chapter of my life that included the living, breathing, in the flesh Kenny in it and move on to the next chapter, whatever that may be. I needed to exhale all the pain and grief from his sudden and unexpected death and breath in life again. I needed to breathe in real happiness and joy again. I needed to breathe in comfort and peace again. I needed to breathe in hope and love again. I needed to let that life giving breath fill every fiber of my being because it had been missing in action for nearly two years.
When I finally attained that energetic exhale after the service, I was surprised at how much lighter I felt. I felt a release throughout my body and soul that I wasn’t aware I needed and it felt so very good. I breathed in all the light that I hadn’t breathed in nearly two years and it felt like a jolt of electricity running through my veins. It was kind of like being born again after you’ve been emotionally and spiritually dead. It felt like what I imagine taking that first breath of life feels like the moment you’re born into this world.
I had been planning Kenny’s service in my head and on paper since right after he died. I wrote his eulogy which took quite a long time. It was written in spurts, mostly in the back corner of Panera where no one would see the tears streaming down my face as I typed out the words on my computer, often having to wipe them up as they spilled onto the keyboard. I picked out music to play during the service, songs that Kenny himself loved and ones that were meaningful to Kaitlin, Gage, Emory and I.
I mailed invitations to his service to lots of people who would come and pay their final respects to this man who was loved by so many.
We cut out little surfboards from water soluble paper for people to write messages to Kenny on and put into the ocean. Emory and I made a paper-mache surfboard with a little bit of Kenny’s ashes inside for Gage to release into the ocean. We all decorated it with messages and artwork.
I had this perfect image in my head of how the service would be; Kenny’s loved ones would all gather together on a beautiful sunny day on the beach to listen to everyone speak about how loved he was and how much we all miss him. Afterwards, Gage and Kenny’s many friends who had surfed with him over the years would paddle out into the water to honor him. We’d stand at the edge of the water as we all watched Gage and the others head out into the water to release Kenny. Kaitlin, Emory and I would stand at the water’s edge and hold each other’s hands tightly as we watched the surfer’s ceremony in honor of their fallen brother.
We’d play the music we picked out as they paddled out into smooth, glassy waves and Gage would place the paper-mache surfboard with a little bit of his dad into the ocean that he loved so much since he was a child as the other surfers surrounded him in a circle. Kenny’s soul would be set free in the most beautiful way ever and it would be the most amazing farewell for a man who deserved nothing but the best.
Afterwards, we’d play two final songs that Kenny and I loved when we met in the spring of 1986……”Your Love” by The Outfield and “And We Danced” by The Hooters. Those two songs were in heavy rotation then and we wore the cassette tapes out playing them in Kenny’s ’82 Toyota 4×4 truck. Every time I hear those songs I’m instantly transported back to March of 1986 and the beginning of our relationship, and I savor a few minutes of reliving those early days with a smile on my face. I’d then tell everyone that Kenny wouldn’t want any of us to be sad, but happy instead, and to dance like they were 19 and 22, which is how old we both were when we met.
I expected that image to come into fruition and every single detail to be perfect. But, the Creator had other plans for this day than I did, much like most of mine and Kenny’s life together. That day couldn’t have been much further than the one I had so meticulously been planning for nearly two years.
The sky was very grey without the sun ever making any appearance. The clouds were not white and fluffy liked I’d hoped they’d be, but dark and ominous. Instead of a gentle breeze, the wind was strong and quite fierce at times. There was no calm ocean but a turbulent one full of white-capped rough waves rolling in. It was within an inch of raining the entire time.
Many of the people that I thought would be and should have been there weren’t. We never even heard from them. Truthfully, that was something that really bothered me and for a long time afterwards. It still bothers me to this day because Kenny would have showed up for them. But, more than one person said to me that day—
“Those that were meant to be here ARE here”
And you know, they were right. It taught me that the people who show up to ride out your storms with you are the ones who are meant to be in your life.
We had to have the eulogy under the park shelter and it was really hard for people to hear it over the wind whipping all around us. Our friend Chuck started the service with a short sermon followed by stories of some of the times he and Kenny spent together. He read the letter his son Cole wrote about Kenny since he couldn’t come to the service in person. Hearing the things they both said made me cry and laugh through my tears. I couldn’t have asked for better things to be said about Kenny and I am deeply grateful to both Chuck and Cole for their time and words.
Chuck wrapped up his eulogy with the following words—
“There are people in my life that I want to be like……and I want to be like Kenny. Humble, generous, kind, giving. He was a good man. We can all take something from his life and apply it to ourselves”
And, Chuck was not wrong. That really is who Kenny was, and to be that kind of person would mean that you had succeeded in being the type of human being that everyone hopes to be during their lifetime. I hope Kenny knows now that he did succeed in this, even though he would have argued differently when he was here.
I read my eulogy after Chuck spoke and the wind was blowing so hard it made it difficult to hear. I worked so hard on that eulogy for nearly two years, pouring the words out about how deeply I loved Kenny and what he meant to me, our family, friends and loved ones, and barely anyone could hear it. I’m a nervous speaker in front of people and I stumble over my words as they spill from my mouth much too quickly. I fidgeted and squirmed as it was hard to speak aloud to everyone just how much I loved Kenny and will love and miss him for the rest of my days.
When I was done, I invited anyone who wanted to speak to do so. A few people stood up and shared their memories of Kenny. We’re grateful to the ones who did so and we enjoyed hearing them as they gave us a little glimpse of Kenny from another person’s perspective. Hearing these people speak from their hearts showed us just how much his life reached out and touched the lives of so many others.
After the eulogy, we headed down to the beach. The ocean was so rough and my heart sank when I saw just how rough it really was. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, not on this day of all days. I worried that my hopes of Gage being able to get out into the water on the surfboard wouldn’t happen. The people that were there wouldn’t be able to hear the special music we picked out because the wind was whipping so hard. I walked to the beach full of emotions I didn’t want to be feeling.
As we got down to the beach the wind was even worse. Gage and Kenny’s customer Russell who was going to paddle out too looked at the water to access things. I thought they were going to say it was too rough to go out, but they didn’t. Some people walked down to the water and threw in their paper surfboards with the messages they wrote to Kenny. Some of those people stood or kneeled down and stayed there in quiet reflection of their friend who was now gone. I wondered what they were were saying in their head or feeling in their heart. They were grieving the loss of this great man, too.
Kim, an old friend of ours, had gifted us a drone recording of Gage going out into the water. I went over to talk to the people doing the recording and they said they’d do their best to capture everything despite the wind blowing so hard. I hoped for the best while being grateful to Kim for this very meaningful gift she gave us.
When it was time, Gage and Russell put their wetsuit shirts on and walked down to the water with their surfboards. I turned on the speaker with the music as we watched them walk into the ocean and throw their boards down on top of the rough water. They laid down on their boards and started to paddle out against the rough surf with the wind pushing them back. I thought they’d turn back and say they just couldn’t make it out but they didn’t; they kept going, paddling harder and harder till they made it out past the breaking waves.
The wind was blowing so hard that it pushed them down the beach, further and further away from us. I walked on the sand, staying right with them. I think most of that was my mama bear heart watching over her child to make sure he was safe. I could hear the high pitched whine of the drone flying overhead and saw that the wind was pushing it around, too.
When they finally made it out to a little more calmer water, Gage pulled the plastic bag with the paper-mache surfboard out from the inside of his shirt and laid it in the water. When we watched the drone video later we could see that it sank in the water immediately, and the ashes swirled up to the surface. A little bit of Kenny was returned to the ocean that he loved so much which would have made him very happy.
The drone rose up higher in the sky and gave us a wider view of what was happening below. We could see the pieces of the paper-mache surfboard float from under Gage’s board and move slowly away from him in the water. I wondered what was going through Gage’s mind as he watched that little part of his dad float away in the turbulent ocean. I wished this was something he hadn’t had to do until many, many years later.
There was a pelican that had flown above them and then landed in the water a little way from them. My friend Juliet noticed that the pelican stayed with them in the water the whole time. Pelicans normally travel in flocks so this was a little unusual to see one by itself. I looked up the spiritual symbolism of a pelican later and the meaning of it was very relevant. In ancient Egypt, pelicans had ties to death and the afterlife. Egyptians believed that the pelican could provide safe passage through the underworld. In other folklore, pelicans make great sacrifices for their children, making sure they are properly cared for and protected.
I’d like to think that both of these things are true and that the pelican floating solo in the water was the embodiment of Kenny, letting everyone know that he made sure his children were always cared for and protected (and they were) and that he was finally making his journey to where his soul needed to go after being energetically tethered here with us.
After Gage released the ashes into the water, he and Russell started to make their way back to the shore. It didn’t seem to take them as long to come back in as it did for them to paddle out. I imagined that they were both exhausted from paddling their boards through such rough water. It’s not as easy to do as some people would think.
I hadn’t paid much attention to where everyone was as I was walking down the beach. I was more focused on making sure Gage and Russell were okay in the water. I turned and looked back up the beach and saw most everyone walking towards me…..our daughter, our grandson, Kenny’s brother, his nieces, his nephew, and his friends, all of whom put aside the uncomfortable weather to gather on this beach and pay their last respects to him. That was a surreal moment for me as I saw this group of people who loved Kenny take a walk of remembrance in his honor. That feeling grew as I later watched this on the drone video.
Gage and Russell finally made it back to the water’s edge and carried their boards back up on the beach. I stood there looking at the strong man our son had grown into and knew that Kenny was up there on the edge of his cloud beaming ear to ear. He had taught his son to surf in this same ocean, many years ago. Now, his son, a grown man, had laid his father to rest in the same waters where they surfed together so long ago.
I thanked Gage and Russell for paddling out in such rough water. I hope each of them know how much it meant, not just to me, but to Kenny, too.
I looked around and saw that some people had already left before I got the chance to thank them again for coming, especially on such a day as this one was. One by one, the others made their way back to the park shelter so we could wrap things up. We talked to a few of the people that were left, sharing more stories of Kenny. Russell’s wife Paula had made a batch of chocolate chips cookies for us, which she used to make for Kenny when he did work at their house. Kenny loved her cookies and she wanted to share them with us. We shared those cookies with the people who were still there.
We said our goodbyes to those still left, packed everything up in the car and we all left the beach. It was finally over, two years after the events that made this day happen. On the drive home is when I felt the energetic exhale. I cried, but they were tears of release, not extreme grief and despair like the ones I had cried two years before and many times after Kenny’s death.
I went home and sat down in the mental and emotional exhaustion of the last 721 days. That exhaustion was so heavy and suffocating and at times felt like it would kill me. It took a long time to work through it, and while I did work through most of it, there’s still more work to do going forward. Some days are good, while others just suck. As I sat there, I went over in my head how the day went. I was still upset over how it was nothing like I had planned for it to be but I was glad it was finally behind me. I decided it was now time to start moving in a forward direction in all areas of my life after living in a state of limbo for two years.
In the days and weeks following Kenny’s service I had many people tell me how nice it was. I’m glad so many liked it, but I was still disappointed at the bad weather and how it had ruined the perfect plans I had made. It wasn’t until months later when talking to Teresa, my god sister and one of my best friends, about how that day went nothing like I had planned when she said to me, “Didn’t Kenny like to go out surfing in the water when there was a big storm?” I paused for a second and then said, “Yes, he did. He said that storms always brought really good surf and he loved going out in the water then”
Teresa said that she thought the stormy weather was fitting for Kenny’s service. It took me a minute to digest that comment and when I had I agreed with Teresa that yes, the weather that day would not have bothered Kenny. He would have embraced it, just like he did when heading out into the water on his surfboard during a storm.
As more time has gone by, I agree even more with Teresa’s thoughts about the weather that day. Sometimes we have to have another person point out to us what we can’t see ourselves because we are so attached to how we wanted things to be. Those who aren’t right in the middle of the storm can see much more clearly than those who are wandering blindly through the center of it.
As for me, I’ve made forward progress in this journey of grief I never expected to take so soon in life. I’ve moved from a place of perpetual grief that was my constant companion for so long to a place of mostly quiet grief. That grief doesn’t hurt as bad as it did before, and God, am I ever so thankful for that. It was an ugly, devastating journey that forced me to crawl up a mountain where I couldn’t see anything in front of me while on my hands and knees that bled all over everything. I slid back down that mountain so many times and just wanted to die right where I laid because I just didn’t feel I could go on any longer. When I was finally able to start crawling forward again and stand up at the top of that mountain I could see the deep scars left from all the crawling I had done. Those scars will always be there to remind me of what I lived through, which felt like crawling through broken glass. I never, ever, ever want to feel that kind of pain again.
I’ve had a lot of time to look back and reflect on things since Kenny’s death and I can see much more clearly now than I did before. In retrospect, I did live a very happy life with Kenny for almost 36 years and I’m grateful for every second of it. Like so often happens in life, I didn’t fully appreciate him until he was gone but you better believe I know now just what a rare gem I had. They broke the mold when they made Kenny and I was one hell of a lucky woman to have him by my side. I just wish it could have been for at least another 30 or more years.
One day I’ll find someone else to share the rest of my life with and when I do, that man will embody the same characteristics that Kenny did. He’ll be faithful and loyal. He’ll love my children and grandson like his own. He’ll be laid back and down to earth. He’ll have a great sense of humor and make me laugh till I cry just like Kenny did. He’ll tell great stories and act silly and just be an all around good person. Who knows? Maybe Kenny himself will hand pick this person and send him my way, whispering in his ear, “Love her and my family just like I did while I was there”.
Our family would like to thank Chuck Cassidy, Kim Edwards, Russell & Paula Shiflett, Rob Saxton, and Judy Bonaventura for helping make this day possible. Also, thank you to every single person who came and stood on the beach with us on a terribly windy and nearly stormy Saturday afternoon to help us celebrate Kenny’s life. We are deeply grateful to each and every one of you for showing up to help us weather our storm.
We would also like to thank Gibson’s Aerial Photography for the drone video.