I can't look at the stars

All those times we looked up at the sky
Looking out so far, we felt like we could fly
And now I'm all alone in the dark of night
The moon is shining, but I can't see the light

~ "Stars" by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

 * * * * *

I pray for the strength to accept
that lives most often end in tragedy,
that quests don’t always work,
that understanding is a long and lonely hunt,
that I can't reason my way to love,
eat gold,
or live forever,
And that none of this matters.

I pray to understand that I am here to find my way back to
God, whatever that takes, and all the rest save love and duty is
an illusion.

~ John Taylor Gatto, educator and author, New York
From the book, Prayers For A Thousand Years

Let me say right off the bat that this still-newish year of 2025 has been, so far, very rough for me. It has not been the fresh beginning that most of us are indoctrinated to believe, or at least to hope, nascent years should be. To the contrary, 2025 has been a continuation of the utter suckfest that was 2024. For me it has been a double whammy not of fresh beginnings but of sad endings.

First there has been my ongoing experience, shared by millions of others, of being witness to the accelerating demise of American democracy, which contrary to the Washington Post slogan is not dying in darkness, but is being hacked to death bit by bit in broad daylight. And on a much more personal level, I am dealing with the death of my soul mate, my best friend, and the love of my life, Ron Kaye.

Ron, also known as Reverend Ron, Rev Ron, or simply The Rev (on his own blog and on this one in its earlier days), passed peacefully on Monday night, February 24, 2025, a little before 11:00 PM. He and I had been together for going on 32 years.

I am, to put it mildly, devastated.

Ron had been struggling with Lewy body dementia, which while perhaps not quite as well known as Alzheimer's, is far from rare. The late actor and comedian Robin Williams was also a sufferer of LBD.

The disease was a total nightmare for both Ron and me because he suffered from hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia in addition to the cognitive and functional issues more commonly associated with dementia, such as memory loss and a significant decline in skills. The hallucinations and delusions and paranoia increasingly caused erratic behavior that at first was merely disruptive in dozens of different ways, but later became frightening, violent, and dangerous. It came to the point where it was no longer safe for him to live at home with me.

Accordingly, for the last few months of his life, Ron was in the locked memory care unit at a nursing home, through arrangements made by the VA, under whose care he had been. Despite his deteriorating cognition, he remained surprisingly healthy physically, and he was constantly trying to find ways to escape his confinement.

But in more recent weeks he developed serious medical problems that he'd not had before, and he was in and out of hospitals. Some of the problems he faced towards the end were a sudden and very puzzling loss of his ability to walk, serious heart rhythm issues, and life-threatening respiratory problems brought on by a combination of blood clots in his lungs and pneumonia.

It became more and more apparent that he was not coming back from this, so during his last hospitalization I signed him up for hospice care. That was on Saturday, February 22, and that evening he was discharged back to the nursing home, where he died two nights later.

My world will never be the same. Right now if feels as if I will never be happy again.

* * * * *

Ron was a kind and gentle and brilliant person, until the brutal disease snatched almost all of that away from him. Even towards the end, however, up until the point that he would no longer open his eyes, I could look into their depths and see that he was still in there, somewhere. But it was also painfully clear that he knew, at some deep level, how trapped he was in his dysfunctional brain and increasingly malfunctioning body.

I was in despair, knowing that he knew, and knowing also that despite his problems he could possibly linger on for years, with his brain continuing to deteriorate. What kind of existence could that possibly be? Just thinking about it was horrifying. So it was not lost on me, nor on the other people who love him the most, that the numerous medical crises that hurried his passing were in their own way a blessing.

It seems forever ago that I wrote this blog post about Ron back in 2009, in observance of Veterans Day. It barely scratched the surface of the kind and gentle and considerate and brave man he was. In due time, I will have more, much more to write about him and about this sorrowful road we stumbled down together until we reached the inevitable pass that he had to go through alone. I have plans to start a separate blog or a Substack, not only with the narrative of our own journey, but also with information and links that I hope can help others who are facing the same ordeal. I will link to it when it's launched.

For the time being, though, I am alternately numb and deeply weary and overcome with grief, which comes in waves. I let the waves wash over me as I hold on to something sturdy and then continue trudging through the hours and days, knowing that there is a way past grief, eventually, but that, like so many things in life, the only way past it is through it.

I would be remiss were I not to acknowledge the people who have helped and are continuing to help me through my grief: Ron's beautiful daughter; close friends who have been Ron's and my family of choice; and many other friends whom we only knew from social media. I love all of you.

Then of course there is the team of providers who recognized what an essentially lonely journey this is and did everything they could to make it a little easier: the kind and compassionate doctors, physician's assistants, nurses, nurse practitioners, technicians, sitters, aids, and social workers at the DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston; the staff at the nursing home; and the hospice care providers, the latter of whom I only knew for a few days but whose professionalism and kindness helped make Ron's passing easier for both him and me. These people all deal with tragic stories every day of their professional lives, and yet they act in the knowledge that every story is different, and that the individuals living through that story are more than just names and numbers in a file.

There will come a time, I know, when I will be able to walk out at night and look up at the stars again without being overcome by the vast and terrible sadness of Ron's absence, and without the inevitable flood of "where-are-you" questions. Or when I can bear to simply watch one of Ron's and my favorite movies, and there are quite a few that we viewed so many times together over the years that we practically knew the whole script by heart. And maybe there will even be a time when I can get through a whole day and night without crying. But I'm not there yet.

For now, I need rest, so much rest. There's too much to deal with in this new life without him, from emotional issues to scary financial ones. With lots of help, I think I'll be able to handle them.

But I miss you, Ronnie Kaye.

Related on this Whirled:

• For those who have served (November 11, 2009): I'm linking again here to my tribute to Ron, written on a long-ago Veterans Day. He was always a little embarrassed by this post, and it wasn't false modesty; he just didn't like people making a big fuss over him. From my perspective, however, I didn't make enough of a fuss over him.
• Veterans Day: Those who have served will be ill-served by Trump and Project 2025 (and/or Elon & Vivek's austerity cartel (November 11, 2024): Vivek is long gone, but E(vil)on is still out there running wild and slashing and burning, and Trump and the Trumpublicans are going right along with it. Ron no longer has to worry about this, but I fear for the millions of veterans whose care will either be seriously compromised, or cut altogether, if the wrecking crew has its way.
• Election Day musings: overall the US is actually better off than it was 4 years ago, but it will be much WORSE off if 45 becomes 47 (November 5, 2024): By the time I published this, I was pretty sure that 45 would indeed become 47, but I thought there still might be a smidgen of hope left. In this post, I recap a conversation I had with a small group of veterans on a VA shuttle bus. They were all in for Trump. I will probably never see these gentlemen again, and in any case I would never tell them, "I told you so," because I didn't actually tell them so (they'd already early-voted for Trump). But I fear for them now.

Before you leave...
While money cannot make some personal nightmares go away, it can make them far easier to bear. With Ron's passing, I will be facing significant income loss and am scrambling to find more work, but in an industry increasingly being taken over by AI, it has been a challenge. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is for "friends and family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.