Month: September 2019

When Mark died, I called very few people. Sharing the heartbreaking news with the kids was too much and I knew I wasn’t capable of doing that over and over. I called both of my sisters and asked them to tell my mom and brothers, I called Mark’s sister and she offered to tell their mom, I called my boss, and a close friend of both of ours.

The next day I asked two friends if they could let some of the rest of our friends know what had happened. In both cases they asked me what I wanted them to say to people. “The truth,” I said, “just tell them the truth.” I never considered telling anyone that Mark’s death was the result of an accident. He had been biking daily for 17 years so the idea that he accidentally rode his bike onto an oncoming train was inconceivable to anyone who knew him. He was too good at cycling for that to even be a possibility and I knew I was in no position to make up a story and keep it straight.

But being truthful about how he died has not been easy. It has opened doors to continuing questions that have gutted me. Why he ended his life, what triggered him, how could I not know how fragile he had become in such a short amount of time. In the telling of his story, there are painful parts that will never be shared. He trusted me with his anguish and I can’t imagine a reason to betray that trust.

For months after Mark died, I laid awake night after night listening to the sound of trains off in the distance and the thumping of a heart that literally felt like it was cracking. This is how everything turns to black, I thought, and I remembered I had a bottle of sleeping pills in the nightstand. Every night I thought about those sleeping pills until I got so scared that I got up and buried them in a basket on a shelf in the linen closet. If I got to the point of considering swallowing every one of them, I’d have to get out of bed, turn on the hallway light, and dig them out of the basket. By moving them I thought it would buy me enough time to reconsider what I was about to do. Months later when I told a friend she asked, “How could you possibly do that to your kids after what they’ve been through?” I wasn’t thinking of my kids. I was only thinking of being with Mark, and I became agonizingly aware that anyone can teeter on the edge of life and death.

As if I needed it, I was inundated with reminders that September is Suicide Awareness and Prevention month. After weeks of raging at this much needed public service announcement, I wondered why it was pissing me off so much. Why wouldn’t I want everyone to be aware of the aftermath of suicide? Why wouldn’t I want to know the signs to watch for? Why wouldn’t I want every family to be spared from what mine wasn’t?

Over the years if the subject of suicide ever came up, Mark would joke that he could never kill himself. “I love me too much,” he would say and we would all laugh because the thought of it was absurd. But over the course of just a few days, he would spiral into a hell of shame that led to him ending his life. I would have done anything to prevent that from happening.

Anything.

I daily ask myself what I should have done differently, for forgiveness for failing him, for the clock of September 4th to be rewound. And more recently, I have begun to ask myself if I am the only person on this earth who is more interested in having a conversation about how my husband lived rather than how he died.

In the course of his career, if Mark had a paper published in a big journal or had a cool discovery in the lab, he would hang it on the fridge with a magnet like the kids did when they aced a test. The things that he was proud of last summer are still on the fridge this summer.

Scattered around here now are many photos of Mark. The one I took of him in Portugal, the one when we went to the meteor crater in Arizona, the one Maggie took of him holding Mabel on a lunch date just a few short weeks before he died and she had to go back to her teaching job. At every turn are pieces of Mark’s life that I pass by many times a day. I have stared at these photos endlessly and always sigh and think the same thing.

Oh Mark.

When did it all go so wrong? When we had Sunday dinner with the kids did you memorize everything about them because you knew it was the last time you would share a meal with them? Or did you get on your bike to clear your head that morning and end up at the train tracks without even planning it? Did you sleep at all that night? Did you ever so quietly come into the bedroom early in the morning to get your biking clothes? When you headed down the driveway and onto the street did you take one look back at the house we loved and excitedly bought together? The house I was sleeping in?

The one year anniversary of Mark’s death was this week. I went to work the day before and was useless from start to finish. At the end of the day, I cried as soon as I walked out of my building and cried when I walked into my therapist’s office. On the drive there I thought about that awful afternoon once again and wondered how I got to the police station. I remember getting the phone call from them and I remember emailing my boss that I was leaving. I don’t remember driving there, parking the car, getting out of it, or walking inside. I remember everything after that.

How is it possible that such a life changing event is so vivid and so foggy at the same time? How is it that a year has passed since then and there are weeks on end that I have no memory of? How is it that everything feels like it happened yesterday except the last time I heard Mark’s laugh? How is it that I lived with him for 35 years but have to watch videos to remember that laugh?

One of the things Mark was most proud of was being the first lab in the world to make a 2D image of an anthrax pore. He hung the copy of it on the fridge, showed all of us the image on his computer many times, and entered it as an auction item in the Science 2 Art exhibit to raise funds for STEM programs in high school. At the art opening, they played a video of each scientist explaining what their art represented. Mark was last and when it was over I said to him, “Oh my god, Mark, you were the closer.” He looked at me and asked, “What does that even mean?” “What it means,” I said, “is that they save the strongest storyteller to be the finisher. To be the closer is a big deal.” Later when he would talk about it with other people he’d say, “Yeah, it was pretty cool. Not that big of a deal except, you know, I was the closer. You know what that means, right?”

In order to make this unbearable week less so for his two grieving PhD. students, I had the idea to have some kind of sciencey sugar cookies made for them and delivered to the med center. My daughter one-upped that and had the brilliance to ask our local bakery if they could make cookies that resemble the anthrax pore. She sent them the image and they said they could and I picked them up Thursday. When they opened the box to show me I gasped, put my hand to my heart and said, “Oh you guys, you have no idea.”

One year later, Mark’s death still continues to rock my world on such a daily basis that I am unsure of everything. For months on end it was a disappointment for the alarm clock to go off and find myself still alive. That isn’t so much the case lately, but I can’t tell if I really am content to be on this side of life or if I’ve grown accustomed to the disappointment.

Every day since then another page is torn from the calendar and flutters away. I have spent every one of those days weathering the crashing waves of grief while reminding myself that there are many people in Mark’s orbit that mourn his loss too. Their loss isn’t as devastating as mine, but regardless of that I know they look to me in hope for signs of healing. Sometimes I can rise to the occasion and sometimes I can’t. All I’m certain of now is that when the time comes for my journey to end, I’ll sigh and take a long last look at one of those photos of my husband and tell him what I tell myself every day.

Oh Mark.

We did the best we could didn’t we?