Month: October 2019

When our oldest daughter was in third grade and her teacher knew her dad was a scientist, she asked Maggie to find out from him what the definition of matter was and report back to the class. That night after dinner with pencil and paper in hand she posed the question. Mark lived for this kind of stuff and launched into a science lesson that went far over the head of a nine year old. Maggie, in utter frustration, laid her head on the table and said, “Why couldn’t I have a dad that painted houses for a living?”

When Mark and I went house shopping for the one and only home we’d ever have, we were all over the map on what we wanted and where. He loved a house we looked at that was far south of Kansas City, a house that had a kitchen on the second floor overlooking the living room. I said that the idea of hauling groceries up to a second floor kitchen seemed stupid, let alone keeping a toddler from tumbling down the stairs while I was making dinner. Mark said I was being negative. We looked at another house that had gold flocked wallpaper everywhere. I said that stripping all that wallpaper sounded like a nightmare. Mark said he’d help. I said no thanks. He said I wasn’t seeing the possibilities, and when we went in the backyard and saw an above ground pool covered in green algae he said I might be right about that one.

Every Sunday I’d get the newspaper and look at the open houses. I found a four bedroom house in an area we hadn’t looked at before, and we put the two kids we had at the time into their car seats and drove over to have a look. It was a cape cod built in the 1940s, and the street was lined with trees in their fall glory. From the outside the house had its issues. It was painted an unflattering pale pink and had a deck on the front of the house that made no sense. Inside, though, it was well maintained, and as we made our way through the first floor I was deciding bedrooms in my head. In the hallway of the 2nd floor, I turned to Mark and said, “I love this house. This is the house. This is the one I think we should buy.” He loved it, too, and by December we were moving our family in.

The house had an old-fashioned charm about it that I felt in my bones. It had a lilac bush like my grandma had, a forsythia that bloomed every April, and peonies that burst open every May. We would meet a previous owner who lived in the house for many years with their three kids, and were so happy to know that a family of five occupied the house once again. One Saturday when I was in the middle of having the kitchen torn apart because I was painting the cabinets, a guy stopped by and asked if he could take some pictures. He had lived in the house years before and so I brought him through the inside and peppered him with questions about some odd things I couldn’t figure out. I always felt honored to be an occupant of this house and the keeper of new memories. If these walls could talk, I’d often think, what stories would they tell?

Since Mark died, these walls hold a flood of tears that if unleashed would seep through the drywall and spill onto the floor. Did another spouse lose the most important person in their life and then wander around this house as if a stranger? Did they look at the pumpkins on the front porch and a carpet of orange in the yard and have the most bittersweet memories of their husband burying their kids in the leaves and all of them howling with laughter? Did the clock stop for them one day and after that nothing seemed to mean very much?

In Maggie’s homework assignment, Mark simplified matter and told her it is the stuff that makes up the universe – atoms, protons, molecules. “The stuff all around us,” he said, “most of it you can see but some of it you can’t like the air we breathe.”

When I think about these decades old conversations, I wonder why they bubble to the top of so many entangled memories and emotions in this last year. It’s as if they are fighting for space in my head to be remembered so they can teach me an old lesson in a new way. All those years ago when I sat at the dining room table and listened as Mark was describing matter, maybe he was telling me that one day when I am alone in this house that we loved and raised our family in, that he will be close by. That with every breath I take and every one I exhale he won’t be as far away as I sometimes think.

That he will still be here.

Alive in the unseen.

Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance, said he, and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

For as long as Mark and I were together, dancing was a part of our lives. Neither of us were very good at it but it didn’t stop us. We’d slow dance as best we could, and lamely move our clumsy feet to the faster stuff, never really caring how dorky we looked. Years ago when we were at one of Mark’s department Christmas parties and were on the dance floor, his boss danced over to us with his wife and said, “You need to do the prom shuffle.” We looked at him oddly not knowing what that was and he said, “Didn’t you learn that at your high school prom? That’s when you grab each other’s ass and go around in a circle.” Mark thought that was so hilarious that he would use that line over and over.

When the kids were growing up we danced with them too. One night when we were coming home from Costco, we could hear the thump of music from down the street. When we got home, Maggie and a friend had pushed all of the furniture against the wall so they could dance. At a wedding I asked Will where he learned his impressive dance moves because it was apparent they didn’t come from his parents. “In the dorms at college,” he said, and I didn’t know that the housing fee came with an added bonus. Mallory started taking dance when she was in 2nd grade and she would blow us all out of the water with her dancing. We all went to her recitals because watching our own Tiny Dancer representing the Fishers made us proud.

I was pregnant with Maggie while Mark was finishing up grad school when we went to the wedding of his advisor. Out on the dance floor, I vividly remember the conversation. “Mark,” I said, “we’re going to have such a beautiful life. You’re going to be a hotshot professor and babies are coming into our life and I’m so happy right now.” He was too. It was the start of his career, and though filled with uncertainty about where and how it would lead our young family, we were excited for it to begin.

It would lead us out of Illinois and into Maryland where Mark got a post-doctoral position at the National Institutes of Health. Five years later, Mark’s career would bring us to Kansas where he was one of hundreds of applicants for an assistant professor position. During the interview process which lasted two days, his future boss brought him to his house for dinner. His wife owned a catering business and Mark devoured everything she made. “He loves food,” she told her husband. “That’s all you need to know. Hire him.” There were other factors that were considered besides that but he landed the job, we jumped for joy, and danced in the kitchen. Then we moved a U-Haul, two kids, and a turtle across the country. Our time in Kansas was supposed to be a stopping off point to other things. Mark felt that a job on either coast would be far better for his research and he was probably right, but it was where we stayed and made our life.

Four days after Mark’s funeral, was the wedding of my nephew, Doug, and his fiancee in Colorado. In the midst of the tragic end to Mark’s life was this commitment we had made to attend the wedding. Though Mark initially planned on going with us, he had an early class to teach the following day. He would have to leave the wedding early that Sunday night and get to the airport in order to be home in time to teach, so his plan had been to stay back in Kansas while the rest of us went.

There were many discussions about whether the kids and I should go or not. I think everyone assumed we wouldn’t. I thought otherwise. We piled into two cars and drove to Colorado, shaky and shocked to start our very different lives – lives we could not fathom less than two weeks before. It was hard, incredibly hard. There was a river near where we were staying that Mark would have loved, and we were surrounded by nature. It was beautiful and peaceful and stinging with loss all at the same time. If the wedding had been even a month after Mark’s death I’m not sure I could have gone. By then the passing days of regular life had become awful, as night after night he didn’t come home even though I kept waiting for him.

Thirteen months later I am still stunned by Mark’s death. It is an odd thing to be living in a real and surreal environment simultaneously. His bike never has coasted around the corner again, but the black dress pants that he last wore are folded in his closet with the belt still threaded through the loops and his gardening shoes are on the back porch.

At the wedding reception, the kids and I sat together and watched the best man and maid of honor give their speeches, we watched my brother and the bride’s mother give speeches. We watched my nephew dance with his mom, and his beautiful Helen dance with her father. Sometimes we had to look away because it was too painful to witness, but in the end we did what we have always known to do when presented with the chance to celebrate life and love.

We danced.

For all of my life, I have been directionally challenged. When I was a kid, my dad would take me on the front porch and turn my shoulders this way and that to point out north, south, east, and west. When he was finished he’d turn my shoulders again and say, “Okay, which way are you facing?” Despite all his efforts, I would fail miserably at the quiz. The office I worked at in Chicago was on Michigan Avenue, so when I got lost on my lunch break I knew to head towards the lake and I’d be able to figure it out. I haven’t been able to figure out how to exit the doctor’s office I’ve been going to for ten years. I make the wrong turn every single time, bypassing the lab, and ending up in the day surgery section by mistake.

Thankfully, I married Mark who could read a map, a compass, the sky, and the sun to figure his way over the river and through the woods. He loved looking at an atlas, and many years ago when I got him a new one for his birthday, he spent hours with it on the kitchen table. He’d look at states he’d been to and states he hadn’t, he looked at mountain elevations, big cities, small towns. He counted the lakes in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He studied the atlas.

On our many road trips, he’d pass the atlas to me to figure out where we should go. This was a ridiculous act of faith, but he had the false confidence to believe that I could pull us through. He would tell me when he was about to come to a *panic point*, where a decision had to be made on which way to go. This made me panic and I’d get nervous and flustered. When we drove to Florida and were crossing Missouri into Arkansas, he had one of his Driving Panic Point Attacks and was yelling at me to “TELL ME WHERE THE FUCK I AM SUPPOSED TO GO!!!” I shouted back THAT I WAS TRYING and he looked over at me and said, “You aren’t even on the right state. You’re in Alabama. Give. Me. The. Atlas.” Then he propped it on the steering wheel while driving 80 mph and I said, “You’re going to kill all of us with your multitasking,” and he looked at me and said, “If you could not talk right now that would be really helpful.”

Fun times.

Last summer we were supporting a candidate for the U.S. House in our district. At one of our neighborhood gatherings after Trump had won, I pulled out my liberal soapbox and said that we all had to do more than just vote when it came to democracy. “We’ve got to work for a candidate,” I said, “really work.” The candidate we were backing was in our neighborhood twice, and on the second visit someone working on his campaign asked me if I would want to canvas for him. I didn’t even know what canvassing meant but I knew I wanted nothing to do with it. But all the neighbors were there and I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to work for democracy with their judgey ears listening in.

“It’s no big deal,” she said, “We have targeted homes where both spouses voted democrat so those are the ones where we want to leave information. We give you an app to download and all the addresses and a map are on it. You leave the info, check off the house, and go to the next.”

Easy peasey.

And a week went by and another, and then another and I did nothing. Finally, I asked Mark if he could help me, because whenever I got in over my head I’d drag him into my cesspool of things-I-shouldn’t-have-said-yes-to-but-did-so-now-you-need-to-help-me-figure-this-out. He agreed thinking this was a necessary civic duty as a voter and we started on a Thursday night. Before long it got dark and I couldn’t see anything as we went up and down unlit street after unlit street. “It’s a good thing we’re not an ambulance saving somebody from a heart attack,” I said, “because not only has America lost its mind it no longer believes in putting addresses on its houses.” Mark ignored me, would shout with gusto when he found a house on our list, and run the information onto their doorstep. “Good way to get your steps in,” he said while he whistled from stop to stop.

On Saturday afternoon we started up again. I was wearing some skinny jeans, a cute top, and a Maybelline lipstick called Rebel, which in my mind was the perfect outfit for candidate canvassing. We were one town over from ours and it didn’t take long for things to go due south. I was in charge of reading the map on the phone which wasn’t working out so well, my Rebel was smearing, and Mark suddenly got dyslexia. I would say, “Next stop 9419 Aberdeen,” and he would say “Got it. 9491 Aberdeen” and I’d have to check the app again. Was it 9419 or 9491? I’d get so confused and he’d be driving and saying, “9407, 9411, 9415, 9419, 9423….” I’d screech back, “9419, MARK!! It’s 9419!! You passed it.” It went on like this for three hours. It was so hot and humid and we were in and out of the car so much that I could never cool off. My skinny jeans were plastered to my sweaty thighs, I hated this democracy work, and Mark was whistling and getting his steps in and life was just so grand for him. I’d comment on people’s landscaping and front door colors and ask the philosophical question of our times. “Why do you think people need such big houses? Like what do they do in those houses that they need them so big? Do you think a big house makes you happier than a small house? Mark, look but don’t look at that guy mowing his lawn. You can tell he’s got a media room, can’t you? Everything about him says media room. He probably goes to work on Monday and when somebody asks him how his weekend was he says, “Great, me and the wife stayed in and watched movies in our media room.” He probably calls her the wife all the time instead of her name, don’t you think? I bet she’s got a craft room. Have ever seen those, Mark? People build houses that have rooms FOR THEIR CRAFTS.”

Finally Mark said, “What in the hell is wrong with you?” I said everything.

At our halfway point we entered a neighborhood that was nothing but one cul de sac after another. We were in and out of those things forever, dropping off information at one, driving to the next, maybe dropping off two in that one. Our pile of pamphlets never went down. “I have to go home,” I said to Mark. “I cannot do this for another minute.” “Yes you can,” he said, “you’re just bored.” This was true. I had found myself in a suburban tour of half circles of hell with no way out and making up stories about people I had never seen before.

I was slipping away.

The day only got hotter and muggier, and when we’d done nearly all of our houses and I’d told Mark my delicate Irish skin could not take one more minute of this heat, he finally agreed we should call it a day. When we got home I took a shower and then took to my bed with the vapors while Mark mowed the grass. Our candidate didn’t win which I took as a crushing defeat FOR ALL OF MY HARD HALF ASS WORK. Mark said that’s how things go sometimes and he moved on. It took me longer than him to come to terms with it but that day was the perfect example of nearly our entire marriage. A memorable shitstorm that we would tell the kids about, and Mark would imitate me until we were all laughing so hard we were crying.