Unexpected Emotional Toll, Grief and Angels

3 Months Since Losing Lucy, New Podcasts and the Pillars

Alyssa and I sat down and recorded our story from May 14th, 2023 to today and released them as a two part series that you can find on your platform of choice. It was emotional. Today’s newsletter details an aspect of Lucy’s story that wasn’t covered in the podcast. I still can’t get through the telling of this aspect of Lucy’s story without being overwhelmed by grief and awe.

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Lucy was born on December 20th, 2023. She passed away peacefully between Alyssa and I late in the evening on December 27th, 2023. As we have navigated through the past week and a half living through the three month timeframe since her life and death moments I have found myself overcome with much more emotion than I ever anticipated.

There’s something about three months. It’s not even so much about the missing of what we could have had, it’s remembering the moments that we did have with Lucy on each passing day. Her life was so brief, yet packed with experience and love, that each day between the 20th and 27th was flooded with memories.

On the 26th of December, Lucy had a new nurse come on shift. Her name was Rose. We knew what measures were there to show us that Lucy’s body was stepping up and developing. By the 26th we were not seeing those measures trend in the right direction. I had a feeling deep in my gut the morning of the 26th, and then I met Rose that morning and suddenly realized that God was starting the process of bringing our little girl back to him.

You see, Rose was the name of my paternal grandmother. I know Rose only through stories from my father, grandfather and other aunts and uncles. She is someone that causes the person who is talking about her to get a sparkle in their eyes. I love when my Grandpa talks about my Grandma and there’s an extra softness and gentleness in his voice as he remembers her.

Rose died far too young and never got to meet a living grandchild. Today, she has 13 grandchildren and well over a dozen and a half great-grandchildren, yet she never had the experience to be an earthly grandmother to do all those grandmotherly things that grandchildren so often have to cherish as memories throughout their lives.

Our nurse Rose had a softness, gentleness and caringness about her character and behavior. She was so sweet to Lucy. I realized at one point that Rose was milling around in the room working on something during a time period when she normally could have been out at the computer charting. She then went to Lucy’s bedside and started talking to her softly and doing something with Lucy. She stepped back and said to us, “Lucy just needed a cute girly bow” and showed us our little dolled up girl. Lucy with her bow is one of our favorite images and ways to remember Lucy.

Rose stayed on with Lucy through the end of the day shift of the 27th. A few hours after shift change, Lucy gave us the sign that her time on earth was complete. As difficult as those next few hours were, there was such beauty and peace in our time that we had with our nurse Rose the previous two days. I genuinely believe that God was showing us that Lucy has loved ones waiting for her on the other side, and I just imagine my Grandma Rose chomping at the bit to play a part in sending us that sign. She got to start her role as grandmother with Lucy.

Alyssa and I sat down to record a podcast detailing my time in active recovery. We wound up splitting it into two parts with one part leading up to the discovery of Lucy’s condition and the second being more focused on Lucy’s story. The part of Lucy’s story I detailed with my Grandma Rose is not in the podcast because I still struggle emotionally with certain aspects of Lucy’s story, this being one of them, and can’t even finish a sentence without breaking down.

That will change and that will pass, I am sure. That’s part of learning to live with the loss of our little girl. As you will hear in the podcast, I depend a lot on Alyssa to carry the conversation when I break down. Cramming 12 years of emotional neglect into these last few months, plus working through everything with Lucy’s life has created quite the emotional backlog for me. I am slowly working through it and processing it.

I know people on the outside might look at this situation that I am in and go, ‘dang Kyle, aren’t you at a super high risk of relapse?’. And they would be right to question it without understanding a key concept that I have been working out ever since I stepped into rehab.

I do feel like I have unlocked something with this mental model. I’m calling it the Pillars of Recovery, but really it’s Pillars of Well-Being and Meaning. I just don’t want to bite off more than I can chew by being too grandiose with the idea.

I have to leave you with a teaser at this point as the newsletter has run long at this concept and the next month or so of content will be focused on expanding on this idea. Overall, I feel like we talk about well-being in a very ineffective manner. The term “mental health” is nearly impossible to measure, check progress against or identify a root cause issue so that one can improve their well-being.

Instead, I feel like we need to talk about fitness across three pillars of our life - Physical, Emotional and Spiritual. I like the fitness language here because it implies adaptability and a demand to change and improve. The beautiful thing about these pillars in the world of recovery is that relapse occurs across all three pillars. Alcoholism is a spiritual malady, and therefore a spiritual relapse will occur, followed by an emotional relapse and finally a physical relapse will happen. The time between can be anywhere from seconds to months, or even YEARS!!!

I can also measure how I am doing across all three pillars. These last 8 days where we were living through the 3 month memorial of all of Lucy’s life I was being significantly challenged in the Emotional pillar. My bar was low during this time, yet I maintained my Spiritual and Physical fitness practices and I was able to work through that challenging emotional period.

I’ll cut myself off here. This model has me extremely excited because as I think on it deeper, challenge its assumptions and overlay it onto the world, I am finding it maps incredibly well to our shared experience as human beings.

Love to you all and thank God for the suffering and challenges that he places in your life.

Kyle