Month: May 2020

I got interested in gardening when a friend, who had for years been trying to talk me into it, finally said, “Just try it. You’ll love it, it’s very creative.” I guess those were the magic words because that’s when I fell hard and fast. Since that first tiny garden that Mark dug for me for Mother’s Day years ago, I have made many mistakes and still do. I fall in love with things that won’t work in our zone, that need too much attention, that are planted in the wrong spot, that wither and die in the summer heat. Every year is a new experiment.

This same friend took me out to a place in the boonies called The Flower Farm. It was a real working farm and the husband and wife who owned it knew everything. The husband was always working on the flowers and the wife worked with the customers. You could pick her brain about something and she’d have dozens of ideas to consider. The creative energy of the two of them was inspiring, and every time I came home from there I wanted to be a flower farmer in the worst way.

One time I bought a plant from them called Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate. It is one of those old-fashioned flowers that reseeded everywhere – eventually from the front yard to the back and Mark never cared that it ended up among his tomatoes and peppers. He loved the tall, wispy pink flowers that would bloom at the top. Every year he’d forget what they were called and when I’d tell him he’d say, “Oh yeah, what a great name for a plant.” I also bought an oregano plant from her that was invasive so I pulled it out, but to this day (twenty years later) it keeps coming back and coming back.

After a few years of going to the Flower Farm every spring, they abruptly closed when the husband ended his life. It was a shock to everyone who went there, and his wife could not manage those acres of flowers and herbs on her own so the business was shut down. Or maybe she just didn’t want to do it without him. It felt like undone sympathy to me. I wanted to say goodbye and to thank her for introducing me to so many flowers from a different time, to say I was so sorry about her husband. Her husband’s suicide was only the second time in my life that I knew of that kind of death. The first was the father of one of my classmates in grade school. He owned a pizza place, and because they were Catholic it was the only place my parents ever ordered from on the rare occasions when my mom didn’t cook. After it happened, I overheard my mom say to my dad, “That selfish man,” and that was not what I expected to hear about someone my parents knew well. At twelve years old it was so sad to me that John’s dad was dead, but it was eclipsed by the nature of his death which seemed to me to make everyone mad.

From a distance that kind of death is awful and always should be. From up close it is horrific and I am stunned multiple times a day that Mark died the way he did. I have never been more confused about anything in my life. Some things I have figured out, some I never will. Grief, uncertainty, and regret have become demanding bedfellows. I want to kick them out every night, and sometimes I am successful, but they come back for another round the next night and the next.

I don’t know how the guy who owned the flower farm died. It doesn’t matter. He and his wife created something beautiful and shared it with everyone. All these years later I can close my eyes and see that place, and it makes me long for the time in my life when the sadness will be overshadowed by all that was before the end.

Mark was a summer kind of guy and in my second year without him I endure these long, lonely days by going outside to dig, split, plant, weed, and water. And every day I look for what’s invasive so it doesn’t take over what is trying to grow and haunt my nights.

One of the funnest days I ever had with Mark was when I strong-armed him into going on a garden tour with me. It wasn’t his jam but we had free tickets and it seemed like a great way to spend a few hours on a beautiful Saturday afternoon even if he didn’t think so. House #1 with a huge vegetable garden and wandering chickens reeled Mark in, and I threw up my hands and said, “Do I have the best ideas or what?” We drove all over Kansas City to see the houses, talked to the owners, wandered the property, took a million photos, tried to figure out how we could make some of those ideas work in our yard (and how to win the lottery to pay for it), and filled our creative tanks to full.

We would go on the same garden tour again two years later. It was lovely and fun to look at so many great gardens but it did not compare to the magic of that first year. Maybe it was because our interests were so varied and did not often intersect, but on that day our gardening stars aligned, we were on the same page, and that kind of thing can’t be replicated.

This yard of ours is big and has been hard for me to manage on my own since Mark died. The spring days are labor intensive when everything is choked with weeds and leaves. Last week I spent hours cleaning out a bed in the backyard, then it rained and two days later it looked like I hadn’t done a thing. I think about hiring somebody to do some of this stuff but then change my mind. Isn’t this how you stay healthy? Isn’t this good for your physical and emotional well-being to be outside and moving? I get frustrated and think about dousing the weeds with chemicals because that would be so much easier but Mark was adamantly opposed to that because of runoff. Instead he would spend hours digging up weeds by hand. I don’t know how he did that year after year but I do know that I care about not poisoning what’s beneath my feet.

Last month I had the porch rescreened. The job cost double what I thought and took twice as long because so much rotting wood had to be replaced, but it was Mark’s favorite place to be on a Saturday afternoon so I took a deep breath and wrote the check. He would go out there and bring a paper that needed to be reviewed or tests to grade, and the combination of hot summer air and exhaustion from early morning biking and mowing the lawn would usually result in him falling asleep. I’d look at him and think, “Why do you work so hard all the time? Why do you only stop when you are so exhausted you cannot move another step?” Then he died and I found out you can’t outrun demons if you dare to slow down.

When the porch was getting a rehab and I would stand outside talking to the repair guy about another problem he found, we were always stepping around the mud that was behind the porch. Two downspouts dumped into that area, the sod that was laid wouldn’t grow and reseeding it a year later didn’t help either. Every night I’d go look at it and then walk around the yard to see what I could move or split to fill it in. Finally, I grabbed a shovel and edged out a bed. It was so easy it fooled me into thinking the rest would be a piece of cake. It wasn’t. Every time I dug I’d hit rock and then have to stop and try to pry it out of the mud. It was hard, it pissed me off, it made me want to cry, it made me want to give up. Some days I’d be out there for fifteen minutes and other days for hours. It was an ugly, futile mess that no longer became a bed but an example of my life which made me even more determined to turn it into something better.

After a lot of work I did end up doing that and since it’s been done I like to go out there and admire my work. Is this my rebirth, I wonder. Healing from Mark’s death has required digging so deep I think it will break me at best or kill me at worst, so that seems like a stretch for a small garden bed. Instead I say to myself, “You know what you are, Kathy Fisher? You are a badass,” and some days that seems like the best plan for moving forward.

When Mark was alive we had a pretty active social life. We both had our own jobs and relationships there, we had combined friends as a couple, and individual friends through our own interests. We also liked to go out often, just the two of us, for dinner or a movie. Many of those friends have stayed around since Mark’s death and included me in their gatherings. In the beginning, it felt like people needed to see me, to see that I was okay. I was so numb at the time that going to those events was easier than the ones that came later when the shock had worn off. For those I would make an appearance but before long could feel the wheels coming off, and so I’d say quick goodbyes and then sprint to the car afterwards where I could sob without dozens of pitying eyes looking at me.

How different from our before life when we would walk into a party and be greeted with, “The Fishers are here!!” Mark was far more comfortable in those social situations than I ever was. I’d always want him to walk in first and he’d say something funny and everyone would laugh and I preferred at parties to stick pretty close to him. Sometimes I’d even say on the way there, “Please don’t abandon me,” which now sounds like foreshadowing.

The best part of any party, wedding, work event…. we went to was the ride home where we would gossip about everything. The food, the couples, who showed up, the ones who didn’t, who clearly looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. Nothing and nobody was off limits as we dragged on it all. One time we went to the summer party of a guy Mark knew via his career and couldn’t stand. I asked him why we were going, if it was something he felt he had to go to for appearance sake and he said, “No, he makes $300K a year and does nothing. Totally worthless, can’t believe he keeps his job. I just want to go to his house and eat as much food as possible until I leave there looking like Jabba the Hutt.” “Oh,” I said, “so we’re going as revenge guests. Got it.” It did not disappoint. The host had a high opinion of himself with a devoted herd of groupies that followed him from room to room. When we wandered into his office where he was holding a presser about the Green Bay Packers, Mark said, “I hate the Packers,” and walked out. I told Mark that was a little over the top and he said, “I said nothing untrue. I hate the Packers.” All the way home he railed about “that son of a bitch.” Not to be left out, I said, “Did you notice all those rabbits around the house? They were everywhere. Who does a whole house in rabbit?”

When the med center was rolling in money, there were parties all the time. Big, expensive parties with hundreds of people at hotels all dressed up, speeches and bands and plenty of food and drinks. There was also his annual department party that included the whole family. We never missed a single year of that party, dragging the kids to it every December where they’d be told how much they had grown and asked the same questions as the year before and the year before that. As they got older they hated it, and one by one they peeled off from their Dad’s work commitment until it was just Mark and I going by ourselves. The department provided food and drinks and then everyone signed up for an appetizer, a side dish, or dessert. The same people bitched every year about how other departments had far nicer parties than the lame Biochemistry Department did, so some of those dishes were heavily seasoned with bitter.

After an extended happy hour the jockeying for a table would begin. There was a distinct pecking order to that. Students in the back, faculty with big egos in the front, the rest of you losers fend for yourself. Mark and I always sat in the back with one of his colleagues and his wife where we could watch the show.

It was at one of those parties a few years ago that I got up to check out the dessert table. Before long one of the professors in the department stood beside me and asked me what I thought looked good. “That cake looks pretty fantastic,” I said, “but nobody has cut into it yet so maybe I’ll pass on that.” He put his hand on my lower back, bent down, and in his very heavy accent said, “Shall we deflower this cake together, Mrs. Fisher?” And I could feel my head nod up and down while my eyes screamed, “Holy shit.”

I went back to the table with a piece of the Non-Virgin Cake and told those guys what had happened. Mark and Joe were laughing so hard they were crying and decided they needed a piece of that deflowered cake too. As they walked away from the table, Joe’s wife leaned over to me and said, “I’ve heard he’s so virile you can get pregnant just standing next to him so you might want to get yourself a pregnancy test in a few weeks,” and there was never another ride home from a party that ever compared to that one.