“It’s because people are so perishable. That’s the thing. Because for everyone you meet there is a last moment when your hand slips from theirs, and everything ripples outwards from that, the last firmness of a hand in yours that every moment after becomes a little less firm until you look down at your own hand and try to imagine just what it felt like before their hand slipped away. And you cannot. You cannot feel them.”
History of the Rain, Niall Williams
Susan Posted this quote in her blog titled, “Ah Well”
https://susanmdougherty.me/page/4/

I know that Susan would write this blog post much more eloquently than I am able to and I keep waiting for an alert to let me know that Susan has written about her death on her blog, but she can’t because she is gone. I know what it is like to lose a parent at a young age and it feels like death has surrounded me for a lot of my life, as I have lost many people I have cared about. The difference between Susan’s death and others is that she suddenly passed away while in Spain on vacation (while I was housesitting for her and taking care of her new dog). Most people in my life have died long and slow deaths from dementia and heart disease. I know how to deal with death when it happens slowly over time, but sudden death feels so very different.
There was not any time to prepare or to tell myself that this could be the last time I would see her. I find that I get a lot of closure from telling myself things like, “this is the last time we are going to have a sleepover” or “this could be the last hug I give her.”

It’s still hard to fathom that our evening marathons of Pitbulls and Parolees will never happen again and that I won’t really be going back to the house that felt like my 2nd home. I know that these things sound silly, but so many of these thoughts keep going through my mind. I found myself thinking that I was so happy we finished watching the entire series of Longmire not too long ago. This was a show we started watching with her husband, Patrick, (I was his caregiver for the last 1.5 years of his life) who had Lewy Body Dementia. In a way watching Longmire made us feel close to Patrick and remember the days we all spent together.

My heart feels so achy and burny everyday and I miss her terribly. There are so many moments throughout each day where I go to text her and then remember that I can’t. I had no idea how often we communicated until now. Not only was she my wife’s boss, my former boss, a former classmate, but also one of my closest and dearest friends. I had no idea when I started caregiving for Patrick, that we would become so close. It all still feels like a very bad nightmare.

Susan was the kind of person who put thought into everything she did. She would surprise me with gifts that I had saved on my Pinterest boards for Christmas or my birthday. Her cards were meaningful and beautifully written and she made me feel special. There are not many people that I allow through my walls into my heart and I realize now that is because I have been hurt very deeply in the past and it hurts so much when I do- and something like this happens. This is when I hear Susan’s voice in my head telling me, “it is better to have loved and been hurt than never to have loved at all.” And I know she is right, I just feel like I can’t stand how much it hurts right now. I have been hearing her voice lately (no one needs to worry!) in similar situations. It’s pretty comforting that I knew her well enough to know what she would be saying to me now.

Memories of her consume me in the strangest places. The other day I was in the grocery store and it was like everywhere I turned she was there. I knew her in such an intimate way from working in her home that I am quite familiar with what she ate and how some of these items changed with the seasons. I am reminded of her with the Boar’s Head honey turkey in the deli, the peanut butter and chocolate Cheerios in the cereal aisle, the tiny potato rolls that she used for sandwiches, the pumpkin english muffins that she would eat for breakfast with cinnamon butter in the fall, and Nutella that she would ALWAYS have in the pantry that she liked to spread over Nabisco nilla wafers when she wanted a sweet treat. I also am reminded of Patrick with the chili Fritos, egg malt balls at Easter, and the pudding we fed him at the end of his life.

I am also reminded of Susan on a daily basis, by our new dog, Casey Joy (named by Susan)- who was supposed to be Susan’s new dog when she got home from Spain. I had picked her up from Lifeline after she got spayed and was staying with her at Susan’s house until she was supposed to return home. Leah and I keep joking about how of course Susan would die and leave us with another dog. When Casey acts up, we look at the ceiling and tell Susan to make her dog behave! Having Casey is a nice reminder, especially when she is cuddly and gives me hugs. I know that Susan is watching, loving that Penny and Casey are starting to settle into each other and laughing when we yell at her to control her dog.

I find myself looking at pictures of us over and over and re-reading all the emails she ever sent me. I have screenshot so many Facebook posts and texts that she has sent me over the years because I don’t want to forget her kind words and feel this need to fill this heartbreak somehow. I have been wearing the jewelry she gave me everyday and I freaked out today when I realized my necklace had fallen off until I found it in my car. It’s like I am scrambling to find anything that will make the ache go away and make me feel closer to her.

Something that no one knew, including my wife Leah, was that Susan was the person listed on my safety plan with my therapist. What is a safety plan? It’s an agreement I have with my therapist in writing about what I should do is I start to have suicidal thoughts and want to hurt myself. Thankfully, I only had to call or talk to Susan about 4-5 times over the course of about 2.5 years. She was amazing and so helpful when I would get in this head space. She treated me with love instead of fear and seemed to know when I was struggling even before I said anything. She often told me that she would be so mad at me if I ever hurt myself and I took that to heart. It’s really painful to know that I no longer have her as my person and changing that paperwork breaks my heart. I will be forever grateful to her for showing me unconditional love and being there for me in ways that a lot of people are not able to.

I am afraid that over time I will start to forget her voice or what it was like to be around her. She was also the only person who really understood what it was like caring for Patrick and she often told me that I was the only person who truly knew the ins and outs of his disease because we were both in the thick of caring for him on such intimate levels. It hurts that out of what felt like a trio of friends, I am the only one left.
I know that Susan would not want her death to derail the progress I have made with my depression and I keep trying to remember that as I feel like I am swimming upstream through a fog. I am extremely grateful and thankful that I have had the opportunity for the Dougherty’s, Patrick, and Susan to be a part of my life even though I would have liked to be able to have spent more time with them both. A lot more time.

It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it-
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it,
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.
Mary Oliver