Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [76]
“Rachel,” I said, “I can’t accept the money. I want to give it away.”
“To who?” she asked.
I already had a couple of people in mind, I told her. And then I thought about how many more people could use some support—the support of a community as loving as the one that had erupted around me.
“Maybe we should just start a nonprofit,” I said. I was surprised by how quickly the words came from my mouth. I hadn’t even considered doing something like this. In fact, I was totally kidding when I suggested it.
Then Rachel said, “You know, I was thinking the exact same thing.”
Fuck, I thought. I guess we’re going to do this.
Chapter 20
no one to
kiss me on the cheek
while wishing me
a good day
at work.
no one to call
on the way into
the office
with whom i could share
traffic information.
no one to deliver to
me the lunch
i’ve forgotten
on the counter.
shit.
this is all
hitting me and i
haven’t even left the
house yet…
today should be a real
fucking treat.
It was time to get my life together. Realizing that I was ready to direct all of my help and support to others through some sort of organization was just the kick in the ass I needed. Well, that and HR at Yahoo! was beginning to wonder when I was coming back to work.
I could have stayed out longer with a physician’s note declaring me mentally unfit to be in an office environment; the doctor I visited said she would prescribe me antidepressants, and whether or not I chose to take them, a diagnosis would be on my record. Diagnosis? What was there to diagnose besides “dead wife”? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any sort of help, but I didn’t think I would benefit from it. Even if I did take Zoloft or Paxil or anything else, I was sure that I would still feel the grief just as keenly when I eventually went off the medication. I intended to go into therapy with Madeline when the time was right for her, but for me, right now, the best way to handle my situation was head-on. I needed to feel it.
So I admitted that I wasn’t really mentally unfit for an office environment. And frankly, I felt curious about what life as a functioning member of society would be like. After seven months with my daughter as a permanent sidekick, spending her days sitting in her pink bouncy chair near my desk while I wrote and listened to music at home, or strapped to my chest as we explored the city, I was ready to welcome responsibilities beyond feeding her and putting her down for naps. It was time for my return to the world I never expected to leave, time to make good on my promise to provide Madeline with the kind of life that Liz and I wanted her to have.
But before I left the bubble that had become mine and Madeline’s world, I realized I could no longer put off the list of to-dos that had been building up. I would have to do them; I would have to be the responsible parent. Liz’s death hadn’t just completely changed my life—it had changed my perspective on how tenuous my grasp on life was. Before, I might have driven around without a seat belt or put myself in the middle of a riot to get the perfect photo (Bangalore, 2006). But now I hesitated to even rush out of the shower, fearful that I might slip and crack my skull open, my brain spilling out onto the wet tiles. I spent a lot of time considering all the ways that I could die and leave Maddy completely parentless: a heart attack brought on by years of unhealthy eating; getting crushed by an avalanche of records; tripping into and drowning in the pond in our backyard.
While Liz had a certain amount of life insurance provided to her as part of her employment at Disney, we hadn’t taken out an additional policy—early death hadn’t really been an option for us. We assumed it would come at the end, only after we had finished with