Page 5 of Swimming in Grief (Monster Match season two)

Reuben

The day after the funeral, I had a pounding headache from crying and not hydrating enough. Kyle would always scold me for being a camel and not drinking enough water. I took a long, hot shower, ate some food, took something for my head, and then sat down at Kyle’s laptop on the folding table in the living room. I had decided to take the rest of the week off to try to sort through Kyle’s affairs, a task that I knew I’d have to face sooner rather than later.

Sorting through Kyle’s personal email was interesting. Years and years of purchases were reflected back at me from the massive number of assorted companies and products that emailed him. There were a few emails recently from people he knew, sending their condolences, though why they sent them to Kyle’s personal email, I had no idea. I deleted most of the junk, and I responded to a few of the well-wishers and those who didn’t seem to know that Kyle had passed away. Former students, parents of students, old friends he hadn’t talked to in years. It was all sort of a jumbled mess. I wondered if after this I could just never open his email again and let all of the junk go into some sort of nebulous spam graveyard.

And then I saw an email notification from Monster Match, stating that he had received a new message in his chat with someone named SeaKing Swimmer . My mind drifted back to the conversations Kyle and I had had months before.

“What do you want to do for your birthday?” Kyle asked me as we ate dinner. We had celebrated my 50th birthday last year with a big party with our friends and family at a local event space, and we would probably do the same when Kyle turned 50 later this year. But for 51, I didn’t plan to do a large party again, or any sort of gathering. I was perfectly happy to spend the time with Kyle, doing something fun together.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“You mentioned a few years ago that you had never been fishing before,” Kyle said. “Would you maybe want to do that? Rent one of those fancy boat things, go out on the ocean for a few days, do some deep-sea fishing?”

“Sure!” I replied. Despite living so close to both a lake and an ocean, I had never gone fishing before. The closest thing I had gotten to either of them was swim lessons as a kid at the local community center, and an occasional jaunt in a swimming pool. But even recently, that had been few and far between; adults just generally didn’t go swimming that often, it seemed. But fishing could be fun, even if we didn’t catch anything. Being able to sit on the ocean, surrounded by nothing but water for miles, just Kyle and I, side by side, talking and laughing, sounded like a little slice of Heaven.

We had encountered many monsters in our town of Gilmer Rock over the recent years. The school Kyle worked at offered tutoring and lectures on various subjects throughout the year, aimed at helping educate the new monster visitors, though human community members often joined as well. Many of the monsters were strange, colorful creatures of all shapes and sizes, some more humanoid than others.

Kyle and I weren’t unfamiliar with swinger parties and other events in the LGBTQ community, and we had gone to a few of them in our younger years. After we got legally married, we settled into comfortable monogamy. But seeing the monsters show up in our world had been interesting to both of us. It felt a bit like a fantasy movie come to life. And many of the monsters seemed just as fascinated by humans as we were with them. One evening, I made a comment that I don’t even fully remember about how I wondered if the monsters could have sex with humans. Kyle had looked at me much more seriously than I had figured he would and said, “Would you want to have sex with a monster?”

The question had surprised me and also had made me think. I had never considered myself one of those “monster fucker” type people who read monster romance novels or watched movies and thought about banging the creature. I had always been happy and content with Kyle. But, I realized, the idea was a little intriguing. “Maybe,” I had said. “Would you?”

Kyle nodded. “I think it could be fun and interesting.”

I knew he didn’t mean it as any sort of slight against me; we had always been very open and honest with one another about our likes, dislikes, and the frequency of our sex life. But now I was strangely curious too. “I’d be game if you are,” I said, surprising myself more than a little. “But only if it’s both of us together.”

“Oh, a monster threesome?” Kyle asked in a sing-song tone that made me blush. I was a little more private about my sexuality than many others in our community. Plus, a threesome sounded like something for our 20’s, not for our late 40’s or early 50’s. But Kyle laughed and squeezed my hand. “Why don’t I do some digging and see what I can find, all right? You can always change your mind.”

Kyle looked into it, and one of his students, who knew far too much about monsters than any middle schooler should, told him about the Monster Match dating app out there. Curious as always, Kyle dug further and found one of the monsters on the app owned a deep-sea fishing excursion boat for rent. And, as if the universe had decided to give us a special gift for my birthday, this blue creature with a long snout and kind-looking eyes had listed that he was interested in having a good time without a committed relationship. “Should we ask him if he’d be interested in a threesome?” Kyle said as he showed me the pictures on the app of the strange, blue creature that I had never seen before.

I had never been confident in approaching people for things like sexual encounters; Kyle was much more outgoing than I was. This sea creature was certainly interesting, the bright blue of his skin different than anything I had seen before. I supposed if we were going to go all-in on fucking a monster, why not go with one who didn’t look remotely human? “You ask him,” I said, giving Kyle my patented shy-guy smile.

“I will!” Kyle declared.

And he had. He had told me about Glauruss and the plan to rent his boat and go fishing for my birthday, and the threesome that the monster had agreed to. And then, he died. The swim trunks we had ordered still sat in their plastic wrap in the delivery box, our new sandals on top of them. The last plans we had made together for the future. The future that we had not been able to have.

I clicked on the ‘Respond to message’ button in the email notification, not really sure what else to do. Kyle hadn’t put any money down for the trip yet, as far as I knew. But we had definitely ghosted the monster we had asked to have a threesome with, and that didn’t sit right with me. Even if we hadn’t met him in person, I still thought it would at least be polite to let him know what happened.

The app opened up to the chat, and I could see the messages between Kyle and Glauruss, going back and forth, discussing what we were looking for and making plans for my birthday that was still a few weeks away. Kyle had sounded so excited about it all, and that brought a little smile to my lips. I began to type.

FabTeacher: Hi Glauruss. This is Reuben, Kyle’s husband. I’m sorry to tell you this but Kyle died. I just logged into his email to find this account.

I went back to looking through Kyle’s email, but after only a few minutes, a chat notification popped up, and I opened the Monster Match app to see what it said.

SeaKing Swimmer: omg, I’m so sorry! What happened?

For some reason, I hadn’t really been expecting to hear back from the sea dragon, and especially not so quickly. But here he was, online, wanting information. I opened the app again.

FabTeacher: An accident.

He began to type back almost instantly, so I sat and stared at the screen until four little words popped up.

SeaKing Swimmer: How are you doing?

Four little words from someone I had never talked to before, words that could be flippantly tossed around but, right now, meant the world to me for reasons I didn’t understand. My social human brain wanted to type back Good , or As well as can be expected , or something equally reassuring to not make him feel uncomfortable. But I couldn’t. I had been putting on a brave face as well as I could, but I was exhausted and overwhelmed and lost. And I didn’t have to speak to Glauruss again if I didn’t want to. So, I responded honestly.

FabTeacher: Not well. It’s been really rough and I’m so tired.

I wondered if my words would turn him off, and he would just come back with some sort of apology and then an excuse to not speak to me again. But the little dots formed, and, a moment later, his response came through.

SeaKing Swimmer: I know how that feels. I’m sure you have a lot going on but if youd like to talk to someone we could get together.

That stopped my mind-spiral in its tracks. That wasn’t just a generic nicety. I was feeling alone and abandoned in many ways, and maybe this monster knew how that felt. And, as strange as it was, going to the beach to meet Glauruss like Kyle had planned for us to do actually sounded kind of nice. So, I typed out a message back.

FabTeacher: I think I’d like that. When?

SeaKing Swimmer: I’m free this Sunday.

FabTeacher: That works. When and where?

SeaKing Swimmer: 1pm? There’s a stand on the boardwalk called Bayside Breeze.

FabTeacher: Sounds good, I’ll see you then

SeaKing Swimmer: Great!

Had I really just done that? Set up a meeting with a monster to commiserate about my dead husband? A monster that he and I had been planning to have sex with? For some reason, that thought made my ears burn. But what really got under my skin was me realizing that that would be what Kyle would want. He loved meeting new people and being social; while I was more of a homebody, he was always interested in making new friends and having new experiences. I thought he would be proud of me taking the steps to meet someone on my own, and a monster, no less.

And then my mind turned back to the task at hand. I had to reach out to so many places and let them know Kyle was dead. Some of our joint accounts probably wouldn’t matter as much, would they? I didn’t even know. And how was I supposed to figure it out? There was so much paper. A lifetime spread out before me as numbers and dates and dollar signs. Things as simple as a receipt for the lunch we had out a few days before Kyle died. The warranty for our new water heater after our old one stopped working. Paystubs, tax forms, flyers, computer printouts, bank statements, correspondence from former students, and receipts, so many fucking receipts. There was enough paper that I thought I could be crushed under its weight. Buried alive in a coffin of grocery store coupons and mortgage statements.

I didn’t even know where to start. My job was numbers and paperwork, yet I sat in front of the computer like I had never seen one before. I clicked the mouse to open an internet browser. The address bar cursor blinked at me, waiting for me to tell it where to go. Where was I supposed to go? What did I need to do?

My lungs suddenly felt like they had shrunk inside of me. My next breath was a struggle. Sweat broke out across my skin, almost instantly soaking my shirt at the neck and back. I felt the thump-thump of my heart in my chest, getting stronger and stronger like it was trying to break its way free from my ribcage. A heart attack! I was having a fucking heart attack!

For one tense moment, I debated just letting it take me. Let someone find me in the house, surrounded by memories of Kyle, alone and lost. If I just let go, I’d die, and then this pain would be over. The loss, the sorrow, the desperate longing. If there was an afterlife, maybe I’d even see Kyle again. Even just seeing him long enough to tell him I loved him one more time would be enough.

Heat blossomed in my face, and I realized with startling clarity that I didn’t want to die. Kyle wouldn’t want that for me. He would want me to live and take care of myself, since he wasn’t there to do it. And, as much as I hated to admit it, I was scared. Death was final, and there was so much to live for. I wanted to finish the new season of the fantasy TV show that Kyle and I had been watching together so I could know how it ended and tell him. I wanted to eat Chinese food again, even without him there to tease me for my spice aversion. I wanted to go deep-sea fishing like we had been planning for my birthday. I wanted to meet Glauruss on Sunday. I couldn’t do any of those things if I was dead.

My hand shook so badly, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to even dial my phone. I swiped up, but my eyes were blurry as I stared at the number keys for my passcode that suddenly seemed hopelessly too small for me. I knew there were a few ways to activate an emergency call on my phone, but damned if I could think of any of them right now as my brain seemed to freeze inside my head. Sweat poured down my face and dripped onto my phone screen. I was going to die because I couldn’t remember how to call for help on my stupid phone.

Somehow, I think I was able to hit the emergency button, because I heard a very faint voice come from my phone that sounded authoritative. My mouth had suddenly gone extremely dry, despite the fact that I was soaked in sweat, my eyes stinging from the fat droplets running down my forehead into them. “H… help… Heart attack,” I said, hoping that the person on the other end of the line could hear me, because I could not figure out how to put the phone on speaker. I heard a tinny response, but I couldn’t make out the words. I think I mumbled my address as I clutched my chest, struggling to breathe, to make my eyes focus, to make my limbs cooperate with me. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, each agonizing second made longer by the inability to breathe or control my own body.

I heard sirens approaching, so far away that it sounded like I was under water. I tried to get out of my chair to open the door, but my body still was not listening to me, and I found myself stuck in my chair like a sea turtle wedged in a crevice. The front door was locked, but thankfully, I had left the front window open to catch the breeze, so the smaller of the two paramedics pushed out the screen and climbed inside. He let his partner in, and then both of them were at my side, checking my vitals, putting an oxygen mask over my face, lifting me onto a gurney as they asked questions that I could not process for the life of me.

They took me to Gilmer Hospital in an ambulance. A lot of that day was a blur. I remember being in the hospital room. I was aware that they took blood for tests, and I had an IV attached to my hand. I was put into multiple scanning machines with various electrodes hooked up to my body. Machines beeped at every imaginable pitch and speed until I was hearing phantom beeps even when there were none. I was given a meal at some point, though what it was or how much I ate, I still can’t remember. I also wondered if I was hallucinating at one point, because I saw what looked like a purple demon with curving horns walk down the hallway past my room before remembering that monsters were a thing. The purple creature gave me a beaming smile, much brighter than I had received from anyone recently. It made me feel warmer and more relaxed as I waited in the white room with the beeping machines.

Finally, Dr. Ross came to talk to me. I had not had a heart attack, as I had initially thought, she informed me. I had had a panic attack, which could be mistaken for a heart attack because of the similar symptoms and stressful situations. I had never had a panic attack before.

“Are you under a lot of stress right now?” Dr. Ross asked. “Any major life changes?”

The questions were so absurd, I nearly laughed. Only the tightness in my chest kept me from a rude-sounding guffaw. “My… my husband just died,” I said, pressing a hand to my chest as it twinged with the effort of breathing.

“Ah. Yes, that would do it,” Dr. Ross said, giving me that small, sympathetic smile I had grown so used to recently. “It’s a lot to process all at once.” Oh, how right she was about that. “Is this the first panic attack you’ve had since your husband died?”

I nodded slowly. Was this going to happen again? I really didn’t need the added stress of anticipating a random feeling like I was suffocating on top of everything else right now.

“I don’t think we would want to put you on medication unless panic attacks become a regular occurrence,” Dr. Ross told me. “We can recommend therapy, especially grief counseling.”

I didn’t know how effective grief counseling might actually be. If it wasn’t one on one, I wasn’t necessarily interested either. The idea of being in a group with a bunch of people who had also faced a traumatic loss sounded both depressing and nerve-wracking to me. But, either way, I had to get out of the hospital and take care of myself. I couldn’t do anything from my hospital bed except feel bad, and I had had enough of that to last me a lifetime.

I was released later that evening. I took a car home, glad to see that no one had broken into my house while I had been at the hospital. I had to find a video online to figure out how to fix the screen the paramedic had pushed out on the window. I had never been the handiest person, but I thought Kyle would be proud of me.

Thursday, the day after my panic attack, I gave myself permission to do nothing. I only did things that I felt I was able to. I ordered in food, I looked through the cards from the funeral again, I watched TV. I knew I had things I needed to do, but they could wait a day for me to feel like myself again.

“How do you eat an elephant?” Kyle used to ask. “One bite at a time.”

Teaching middle school English, Kyle had been a fountain of dad jokes, silly words of wisdom, and educational anecdotes. That was what I needed right now. I had a whole elephant to eat, and I would just have to take it one bite at a time. One phone call, one email, one mailed envelope, until it was done. So, Friday and Saturday, I sat down at the computer with my phone and started the tedious process of closing down Kyle’s affairs.

Despite our tech-savvy world, we lived in a country and a time when handling someone’s affairs after death was surprisingly difficult. Maybe it was just that no one really liked to think about death, but it was much harder to close out someone’s life than it seemed like it should have been. I repeated, “My name is Reuben Thompson. My husband, Kyle Thompson, had an account with you. He recently passed away,” so many times that it became almost automatic when I spoke to someone new on the phone. And then there would be the awkward pause as the person on the other end processed this information and then usually responded with an attempted sympathetic, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Um, hold on, let me find out how to handle this.”

Some of it was easy enough to manage; our shared bank accounts were also in my name, so I was able to transfer some payments and bills over to my account instead. I cancelled several of his subscriptions to various magazines and educational courses. It felt so strange to do that. Kyle had spent his life teaching children and serving others, and now that life was suddenly gone. Everything that he had been doing or that he had been involved in continued on without him. It was a strange dichotomy. The world kept moving, plunging heartlessly ahead, not stopping to let me get my bearings or catch my breath, like waves crashing onto a beach. But, at the same time, my own little world had stopped. I was drifting on the waves, lost at sea, with nothing to anchor me in place and no idea how to signal for help or communicate my distress.

I answered my phone every time it rang, since I was not sure what might be relevant to Kyle or not. That meant I got a lot of spam calls, which only added to my mental exhaustion. I wished there was a ‘going through some shit, do not call me right now’ option. When I heard the telltale click of a machine picking up or the familiar recorded messages about car warranties, loans, and other junk calls, I hung up as quickly as I could. I was half worried that if I actually spoke to a person, I might break down and start screaming, and that was not something I wanted to do. Those two days passed in a sort of fog. I ate, I slept, I somehow kept myself alive without being entirely aware of it. It was a relief when Sunday finally came.