by James Kanady
Pissed Off Again
On the evening of Oct. 20, 2017, I was cooking supper awaiting the arrival of for my wife of 29 years, Julie.
A nurse practitioner in Women’s Health, she’d spent years at the Reno County Health Department. A true healer, her patients loved her. She took the same job at Heartland Clinic in Great Bend in 2014, meaning she had to drive 50 minutes to and 50 minutes back home.
I decided she would never have to make supper after those long days. Period. I’d create a meal plan every Saturday and then go shopping. Julie would snoop around, trying to find out what meals I was planning, but “You don’t need to know,” I’d say. “But you’ll find out when you are served!”
I’d always call to get her ETA so if I were, say, cooking pasta, I wouldn’t overcook it.
I repeatedly called and reached her voicemail, thinking she must have had a difficult day. When she was getting ready for work that morning, she was smiling, thinking of what she and our daughter, Julia, had in mind for my birthday the next day. Julia would be driving over the next morning. She had been living in Wichita since August. As part of the Sonogram Program at Ft. Hays State University, she spent her last year doing clinical work at Wesley Hospital. The program is intense, but Julia loved it.
It got dark. She still wasn’t answering her phone. What is going on? I looked out the window and saw somebody walking up our driveway with a halogen flashlight. A Reno County Sheriff’s Deputy walked to the front porch. I opened the door and read his name plate: Shelby Shule.
“Are you James Kanady?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a wife named Julie?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s been in a car accident.”
“Where is she?” (Thinking she’d be in the Great Bend hospital next to her office.)
“She didn’t make it.”
In that instant, I learned “life ain’t fair” isn’t just an empty saying. I wish I could tell you that it won’t happen to you, but that is impossible. The most unfair aspect of this is that humans are the only creatures that know: my time here is finite. So, everybody goes on in their lives, ignoring the fact that a black sword hangs over every one of us, just waiting to drop and sever what we were to our new reality, which is: dead.
It was inconceivable to me that I had to call Julia and tell her that her mother went to work that morning and never came home. The most gut-wrenching call I ever made. The next time I saw Julie was on a slab in Tom Elliot’s mortuary, looking like a wax dummy.
We’d have celebrated our 30th anniversary on Aug. 3, 2018.
The world felt over, but the world is the world, and it blissfully goes on without us. Julia graduated from Fort Hays University the next spring; Julie would have been overjoyed. Like her mother, Julia is a healer, too.
In November of 2018, the great Juan Gonzales (husband of my longtime boss at New Beginnings, Shara Gonzales) died. Then the list of death grew: the Wade brothers from Pratt (John and Greg), Willard “Bill” Ropp, Adrik Ropp, Jerry Josephson, Tony Flores, Gabe Tash (Ridghaus), Gary Adams, Shara’s son Donnie Baringer, Brad Lee, Max Moss, Amos Nisly, Minor Seymour, Marilyn Foster, Alexander Dennis & Tegan Lomax, Sydnee Shea Hines…tremendous lives, all of them.
I’m reminded of the repeated line when death happened in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, “Slaughterhouse Five”: “So it goes.”
The world continued after Julie’s death (how is that possible?): COVID happened, and I know if Julie was alive, she’d be helping. When Trump was elected the first time, Julie and Julia were shattered; then the myopic populace elected him again. I’m writing this in 2026. Seeing what he’s wrought in just two years would be unimaginable to my father, Virgil, and the World War II generation. They fought and died to save the world from fascism, but the American populace willingly voted in a lying criminal, a toxic narcissist and fascist.
Thinking of the trauma, grief and pain he and his sycophants have caused is completely inhumane. More death, trauma and grief are on the way. Not just the U.S., but all over the world, people are suffering because our “leaders” have no respect for life. They bow at the altar of power, privilege, greed and lies.
Reflecting on Julie and all those wonderful lives lost only confirms the fact life—all life—is a moment-by-moment miracle.
Loss has been in my heart for a few weeks while I’ve been digging through photographs stored in plastic tubs and put them in scrapbook after scrapbook. I started taking them in 1975 with a classic Canon F-1 camera and never stopped. The Springsteen song “One Minute You’re Here (The Next Minute You’re Gone)” has played through my mind like a mantra.
This pain is caused by love, for if we did not love, there’d be no pain. So, do we stop loving? Nope. Expand that love for everyone and everything, like ripples in a pond. Our survival and the survival of the world depends on it.
This process is like living my life all over again. All those memories. In so many of the pictures, Julie is smiling that radiant smile of hers that I’ll never see in real life again. It hurts and only widens the void inside me.
If any of you are suffering from trauma, grief, depression, isolation, addiction and mental illness, consider attending FEEL FEST on Oct. 9 and 10 in downtown Hutchinson, a creation from an excellent grief counselor, Samantha Canales, and an excellent group of volunteers. Here’s the website: www.feelfest.org.
Check it out and see where you join in. Finally, a kind event that will focus on our shared humanity. I think these two days in October will be an antidote to despair. Lord knows we need it.
While writing this, I thought of a quote from William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
On Oct. 20, it’ll be nine years since she was killed. Thinking of Faulkner’s quote, he’s right: it feels like it happened nine minutes ago.
James Kanady is the resource/program development advisor and creator of special projects for New Beginnings in Hutchinson. He is a published author and avid reader.