Home » The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Miraculous Day

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Miraculous Day

By Kelly Wilk

Hi I’m Kelly! Welcome back to The High-Flying Adventures of Captain Grief. We haven’t graced the world stage for quite some time and Captain Grief was just pounding on the stage door to come in again. As she is my very strong, willful, persistent superhero alter ego we are lucky she didn’t break it down…oh spoke too late, I just heard the splintering of wood somewhere. To recap she and I started a blog in 2013 after my wife passed away.

The Captain and I are big on beginnings and endings happening on significant dates. On our circa 2013 blog it was Valentine’s Day. On point with the theme of grief for those who lost their spouse. Now we will be on point with celebration, our birthday! We have lots to say about how we have survived and thrived in spite of loss so let’s jump right in ‘cause here she comes!

Kelly: Hey Captain Grief, welcome to the reboot of The High-Flying Adventures of Captain Grief!

Captain Grief (CG): You’re welcome.

Kelly: Pardon?

CG: (Looking at me like I am a little dim) I assume you are thanking me as without me you would not be here.

Kelly: Well that’s not really a valid argument because without me you wouldn’t be here either.

CG: (CG pouts) Fine but stay out of my spandex. Hey….is that?!

#HerStoryCounts Inaugural Production 2014

Kelly: The suit fit, I wore it. Get over it. Anyway here we are on our first blog on captaingrief.com and an amazing story just smacked me in the face.

CG: Good. I mean good about the story.

Kelly: Sure, you may be new to manners but you have definitely mastered the art of the double entendre.

CG: Wait it’s not Valentine’s Day, last time we went from V-Day 2023 to 2024, what are we doing? We can’t break with tradition you traitor!!

Kelly: Relax Chicken Little the sky is not falling, and if it were you’d be the first to know.

CG: Point being?

Kelly: Remember, we talked about this. It is time for a NEW tradition starting NOW on our birthday, June 9th!

CG: Groovy. So why am I here?

Kelly: Once more with feeling, if you want to attend this.

CG: Fine, (simpering) oh gosh golly gee Kelly is it story time already? Should I find my spot on the magic carpet?

Kelly: I needed you to be enthusiastic not creepy, though your response is appropriate in some way.

CG: What?

Kelly: Well, remember when you told me your version of “The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” by Judith Viorst?

CG: Un-hu.

Kelly: Well one of those hit me dead on from out of the blue but in the end something exceptional happened.

CG: Cool, set’em up and knock’em down.

Kelly: So I know you agree when I say it’s always a bit of a tender time around my birthday, year after year thinking she should be here etc. Thinking about the time when she was so worried about my chocolate cake order “I’m going to do something but I think you’ll like it” and it ended up being my cake covered in pink coconut flakes. It was miraculous!

CG: Yup we do have an overarching theme of cake when we blog, love it….and yum.

Kelly: I know right? So I am thinking about what I want for my party but first things first. The screen on my phone is toast so I zip up to the Danforth to go to a place to get it fixed. I arrive at 10 and they don’t open until 12. So, it’s priority, I have no clients today I will wait. I find a PERFECT gift for my cohabitating/ coparenting friend, get a discount with my points at Moss and find a new tablecloth and napkins at the dollar store. Then I find a new tea kettle on sale for thirty bucks, one of the glass ones with the funky blue lights and I head back to the repair shop.

CG: This isn’t sounding so terrible….yawn.

Kelly: I slipped on a magazine and wiped out coming down a ramp and basically did the jazz splits on the sidewalk.

CG: (Laughs hysterically and then sees me point to the giant scrape on my right kneecap.) Ouch

Kelly: Yeah. I get to the shop and the effing place is closed. I call, no answer, no voice mail. I wait and wait and then swear loudly in the street.

CG: Good girl.

Kelly: I look through the cracked glass screen on my phone and find another place, get back on the subway, find it and explain the problem. Now just to backtrack Kara has just been with me all day. You know every time I see someone wearing superhero insignia. I saw The Flash, Then The Green Lantern and at a fruit market I see sunflowers, the date/wedding/funeral flower of the plant word. Now I am at iRepair I look at the gentleman there and his ring and say already knowing “did you get that in Egypt?”

CG: Oh brother.

Kelly: Wait for it. Pointing to the hieroglyphs he says, “yes my wife brought it back for me, we both have one with each other’s name on it.” Of course, Kara got one just like it when she was in Egypt, one of the few vacations she took, I gave it to Ben. Made MY trip to Egypt seem even more emotionally poignant.

CG: You broke.

Kelly: Like the MF’ing Nile bursting through the dam shooting out crocodiles. “Oh no” he said as he saw it coming. I tell him the significance and he responded, “well no wonder you had such a visceral reaction.” Of course, I was pushing down all day and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It WAS VISCERAL I could not stop if I wanted. Michael told to come back in an hour and I would get a free screen protector. He agreed it would be good for me to have some food and I left.

CG: Miraculous?

Kelly: That was the cake but the coconut was still to come! I went out needing a good cry, stopped on the street and thought I will go to the pharmacy first, but I suddenly couldn’t orient myself. I reached for my phone to see how close it was and realized I didn’t have it. I lost it in the street (emotionally) and asked for direction from two ladies who looked concerned. I went in that direction and then came right back knowing that was not the direction I needed but had to wrack my brain to figure out it out.

CG: Grief fog?

Kelly: Like the Maritimes on a crappy day. One of the women was still there with a little dog on a leash, looked like a pug or bulldog mix. She stopped me and offered to get me a glass of water, as it was that stinky hot day and my face must have looked like the side of a firetruck.

CG: Did she splash you in the face (looking hopeful)?

Kelly: No, she brought back the water and after I had a sip I told her that I recognized her from the bus this morning on my way up to the Danforth!

CG: Whaaaaaaat?

Kelly: Victoria was her name, she asked me if I needed to eat and then sat me down in a park. She hurried off to get my gluten free ass a cornmeal type sandwich with pulled pork and this delicious green sauce.

CG: She bought you lunch???

Kelly: Bought me lunch, chatted about emotional days, said she was a pusher too…

CG: Hey is this going to take a really, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad turn?

Kelly: No, she meant she too pushed emotional pain down until it just had to burst out!

CG: Fucking hallelujah chorus!

Kelly: When I told her about Kara and how she died Victoria got visibly emotional too. I went in for a hug and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. Before she departed she wouldn’t let me pay her back, she told me to pay it forward, kissed me a few more times and went off with her little dog Gigi to buy lettuce…as one does.

CG: Great, we must go buy a sandwich and kiss people in the street!

Kelly: I don’t think it has to be a literal act of paying that deed forward, though you never know.

CG: And points for being a woman who stopped a person crying on the street, lot of people might not get past the awkwardness of stopping a messy, snotty, pathetic looking….

Kelly: Enough! So, three cheers for Michael at iRepair who I had an amazing conversation with after I picked up my smashed phone which was now a work of art. You got phone issues see them! Three cheers for Victoria and Gigi and for all the kind superhero folk in Toronto that pay it forward. The High-Flying Adventures of Captain Grief salute you! Now let’s go get that melon ball salad ready to marinate in rum and chill the Prosecco so we can serve raspberry sorbet floats at the party tonight!

Photo by Kristina Paukshtite on Pexels.com

CG: Happy birthday (hiccups) Kelly!

Kelly: Happy Birthday Captain Grief!

CG: What a start! Who knows what bat-shit crazy stuff will happen next!

Kelly: Well, we shall see next week, same bat time, same bat channel.

CG: Nice.

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