Grief's Vanity

I posted this video of Ken walking with his prosthetic the other day. I was really proud of it—really proud of him, actually. I remember leaving work at noon twice a week to meet him at the prosthetist’s office to watch him learn to walk with a computerized leg. It was a miracle to behold after the previous year of cancer diagnosis, radical hemipelvectomy, chemo, and radiation. Warm summer days spent on the grounds of UIC while Ken walked, while his prosthetist Dave watched and made intermittent adjustments, were part of what I thought of at the time as our “Summer of Redemption.”

I drove us home after those appointments with Ken exhausted and glistening with sweat from the hard work of relearning his own body with the help of a space-age leg. But he glowed with pride and excitement that cancer had taken his leg—but not his mobility. Not his determination. Not his spark. His fire.

When I woke up a couple of days after posting the video feeling “off,” I figured I was getting sick—my Oura ring confirmed something was straining my body. But it wasn’t the whole picture. And this happens just infrequently enough for me to forget that it happens at all. I get taken down by grief. Fifteen years later. It doesn’t flatten me like it used to. It serves as more of an emotional speed bump, reminding me of something I never need to be reminded of. Because it’s always there.

The video I posted of Ken got a lot more views than I normally get, which made me ecstatic. Not only were people getting a tiny glimpse of the magic that was Ken, but even more, it felt like he was helping me. We were partners again. And therein lies the rub. The unfairness. The reckoning. The truth. It’s so easy for me to feel connected to Ken and know that he’d be so proud of me, but it’s another thing altogether to remember I’m doing this mostly because he isn’t here anymore. He’s the reason. His absence. And even after fifteen years, that well-known fact can sucker punch me like I’m a rookie.

I had to spend some time journaling to fully understand why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I’ve been calling my journal “the therapist” since his diagnosis because that’s exactly what it is. While my feelings spilled out onto the page in steel blue ink from my Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pen, the pieces began to self-assemble into an image I recognized: me, tinted in grief. And once I realized, I remembered all the other times this has happened.

Then, my mood pivots.

It's the realization of what this is that loosens its grip. And frees me from it. It's almost like grief has such incredible vanity; it needs to be acknowledged before it releases you. I used to think it wanted to destroy me. Now I don't think it wants much at all except to be seen. It's not cruel—it's vain. And there's a real difference between the two. It just took me the better part of fifteen years to find it.

After going through the exhausting excavation of writing my book, I’ve come to an even deeper understanding of grief. Knowing it’s tied directly—proportionally—to my love for Ken makes it easier to understand—easier to metabolize—once I’ve spilled it onto the page and arranged the image into something familiar.

Grief is love. I once wrote that I didn't want to wear grief as a badge. Fifteen years in, I've changed my mind—or maybe I've just stopped arguing with it.

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Ron Stempkowski is the author of The Luck We Carry: Love, Loss, and the Stories That Shape Us, a memoir-in-essays about learning to move with grief instead of moving on. If this story resonated, you can grab a signed copy—complete with a handwritten note—at ronstempkowski.com, or get your copy wherever books are sold.

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