Month: May 2021

Months after Mark died, I was having a glass of wine with a friend and said to her, “I don’t know when the last time we had sex was. I can’t remember.” Her eyes teared up and she said, “Did you guys stop doing it? You know a lot of couples our age stop for all kinds of reasons.” “No,” I said, “it’s because I had no reason to believe it was going to be the last time and all I want is to be able to remember every detail and I can’t. So many other stupid things I don’t care about bubble to the top except that,” and then we both cried for another tally mark in the loss column.

I don’t think I realized how affectionate Mark was until after he died and was looking at photos. Always next to me, always with his arm around me. Sometimes I think he thought I was going to drift away from him and he needed to keep a tight hold on me, but then it turned out to be the reverse. He was the one who needed to hang on. His open love of the whole package of me – the wild hair, the clothes, and the creative vibe that spilled over onto the edges of everything was apparent to everyone around us. I didn’t know couples functioned without that because I never knew any different.

There is so much to miss about Mark but the biggest hole to fill is the intimacy of being connected to him. The quiet conversations in the dark where it was okay for me to say that I was scared or worried and he would pull me closer so I could fall asleep while he kept watch in the dark. The getting the results from a mammogram and saying I was okay for another year and him saying, “I knew it would turn out fine,” but seeing the relief in his eyes. The talking about life and science and writing and the kids and the little cottage by a lake that we always dreamed of buying. Where he could fish and I would watch from the porch with a book in my hand, and the sun would set on the day and all would be fine in the world.

It is okay for me to want all of those things again for myself, and I have never asked anyone for permission for that, but for reasons I will never understand not everyone in my life wants that for me. I’d like to say that after everything I’ve been through that I don’t care and that is usually true. As Brene Brown says, “Unless you’re in the arena also getting your ass kicked I’m not interested in your feedback.” But I often do get unsolicited feedback that starts out as “If it were me….” and oh to be on the receiving end of that. What I write is a screenshot of my life, a glimpse into the window of suicide and grief, what I allow to be known. There is so much more of this that is private and sacred to me that I will never share. Things that haunt me, that trigger me, that still can make me sob in an instant, things that keep me awake more nights than not. Sometimes I think I should take this whole collection of vulnerability offline and go live in a cave where there isn’t anyone with the audacity to tell me what they would do if they were me.

But the other day I was at work and a customer asked me if I was Will’s mom. I said I was and she said she was a rep and knew him from the interior design world and loved him. I don’t even know how she made the connection but then she told me that her father died unexpectedly and she found so much truth in what I write. “You get it,” she said and we had the most genuine conversation about life and loss. The real stuff that people feel comfortable talking to me about now because they know I won’t pass judgement on them for how they live with their pain.

A few weeks ago when I saw my mom at her care facility, I knew it was the last time I would see her alive. My daughter and her husband got devastating news last month that nobody saw coming and their pain is so difficult to witness. Not a day goes by that I don’t desperately wish Mark were here to share this with so it didn’t always feel so heavy. That laying in bed next to him I could say, “Does it feel like life is taking so much more than it is giving or is it just me,” and he would pull me closer and keep watch in the dark.

That is intimacy. If you have it, I hope you cherish it. I did and then suddenly didn’t, and nobody knows better than me the risk in loving again. But it’s what I some day see for myself, along with my name as the author of a book, even the little cottage by the lake, our grandkids with their first fishing pole and a styrofoam cup of worms. It’s a choice I have made to stay true to who I am by not settling for a life of complacency, to not let loss define me, to still let my creativity spill over onto the edges of everything, to have faith that life can be full and rich and good again.

Maybe none of those things will ever happen, but in my younger years I dreamed a handsome, smart guy would come into my life and we would live happily ever after. On a hot August night he pulled up in a Chevy Nova and knocked on my door. My first thought when I saw those eyes of his was “Holy shit, this is way better than I imagined.” Now the dreams have changed because my life changed, and the only people allowed into this new arena of mine are the ones who steadfastly believe in the possibility of the unknown.

The kind like the last guy who threw caution to the wind, called a girl he’d never even seen, and then abracadabra’d his way into my life.

Mark’s closest friend at work was Joe. When he interviewed for an associate professor position in the department, Mark thought he was by far the best candidate and likely lobbied hard for him to be hired. Their friendship was signed, sealed and delivered a few years later when Joe put up posters around the med center on April Fool’s Day saying that Mark was retiring and the contents of his lab was up for grabs. Colleagues showed up saying they were surprised to hear “the news” and then kicked the tires of Mark’s equipment like it was a used car lot. It took hours for Mark to realize he’d been set up and he loved it.

After that he and Joe were joined at the hip. Whenever there was anything happening, course content, office gossip or otherwise, Mark and Joe discussed it. They talked every day, they’d grab lunch together, and as a couple we often went out to dinner with Joe and his wife. When it was announced that their department chair was retiring, the place was rife with all kinds of speculation and jockeying for the position. During that time Mark would come home and talk about it and say to me, “Well, Joe said…..” and I came to learn that whatever Joe said Mark took as gospel.

Because Joe is Joe and he loved Mark, he checks in on me and before Covid I went out to dinner a few times with he and his wife. At one point we talked about my dating and Joe said, “Whenever you decide to go for it you’ll be swept up in a minute. You’re a hot tamale,” which made me burst out laughing. But after that on the many days when nothing seemed to being going right and I needed a daily affirmation, I’d look in the mirror and say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it Joe says I’m a hot tamale.”

This spring with a wee bit of confidence and lots of encouragement, I decided to dip my scared and shaky toe into the waters of online dating. It didn’t take long for the messages to start rolling into my inbox which seemed flattering until I read them.

*I work out six days a week because I’m ugly. Why would you….what???
*My favorite thing to do for date night is to play Scrabble. Only request is that you wear a short skirt and stilettos. Here’s my number. I’m ready, willing, and able to love you. Look at you bringing sexy back to board games.
*If you’re a cheater, scammer, or game player don’t bother me. What about Scrabble?
*Interested but not if you are clingy, vegetarian, bitchy, confrontational, drama queen, self-absorbed twatwaffle, introvert, alpha female, lunatic liberal. You seem nice.
*Covid dating is challenging with the six foot distance thing. Yet to figure out how oral sex works with a mask but willing to try with you. I…..you…..what????
*Sweetie, cutie, honey, babe….let’s get together. You look Italian. I’m neither Italian or your babe.
*Where do you work? I can come by this afternoon. No you can’t. Ever.
*I like to handle disagreements by making sweet, passionate love all night long until we both forget what we were arguing about. True story. The first year I was married I got in an argument with my husband, threw a frozen pot roast at him, and stormed out of the house. We made sweet, passionate love a thousand times after that but I never forgot the details of that day and that was 38 years ago.

I have talked with my therapist so many times about dating, that even when I was MUCH younger it was hard and how am I supposed to do this in my 60s. “Have you every entertained the thought,” she asked, “that maybe there’s men out there that feel the same way as you? That they don’t know what they’re doing either.” “No, never,” I said and she looked at me and said maybe I could try and I looked back and said my plate is full with too many trying things.

But because Joe is Joe and he loved Mark his words still resonate with me.

You’re a hot tamale.

Too bad he didn’t give me a heads up that it’s a Taco Bell world out there.

Mark and I always kept a long wish list of things we wanted to do in the house. We both hated the thought of using a chunk of our savings that we had worked so hard to accumulate, and so we would put off improvements year after year, instead counting on a money tree to show up in the backyard. The number-one-and-never-changing item on the list was renovating the kitchen. The layout never functioned well, none of the drawers closed, it was a total gut job. A gut job we dreamed about for years. A year after Mark died, the kids suggested that maybe it was time to get this done. I loved them for that because I think they desperately wanted me to get excited about something. My son, who is an interior designer, came up with a design, we started looking at cabinets and I was immediately overwhelmed. They all looked fine, they were infinitely better than what I was used to, and I hated them.

I hated that I was doing this with my son and not my husband (although Mark would have gladly opted out of the whole thing and said whatever I wanted was fine) and felt like a deer in headlights. I couldn’t make a decision on anything and early in the process I bailed. Everyone told me I deserved a new kitchen and that was true. I cooked a lot of good meals over many years for the five of us in something that never worked well, and yet I wasn’t capable of changing any of it. What I felt most deserving of was to have my husband back and that I couldn’t have.

In the meantime, I was making small changes around the house. Painting rooms, refinishing dressers, changing up bedrooms, and all of that helped my mental health when little else did. Those were things I always did anyhow, and Mark never cared that this house and yard were my creative outlet. He knew I needed that to be me, and he’d show it off and say, “This is all Kath,” but the Kath Show was so much better and happier when Mark’s light filled up the spaces.

After the new year, and I’m sure with a strong suggestion from an older sister to her designer brother, the renovation of the kitchen was brought up again. This time it felt right and so Will and I started over. The cabinets have been decided, the appliances have been picked out and paid for, the countertop and tile have been chosen, the contractor has been secured. It’s probably the worst time to do all of this as so many things aren’t available or delayed due to Covid, but I’ve grown accustomed to operating in less than ideal circumstances.

In the time Mark has been gone, I have looked a thousand times from the dining room into the kitchen and pictured him at the counter making salsa with his homegrown tomatoes. He cooked very differently than I did. He usually had everything everywhere and by the end it looked like tomatoes had barfed on every inch of the kitchen. It made me so crazy that I usually left the house until it was done and cleaned up.

So what’s changed since the first time I attempted this reno?

The sadness within the walls of this house looks different from where it was nearly three years ago when every inch was coated in loss. The one place where it has remained firmly planted, though, is in the kitchen. In order for me to keep moving forward I have had to slowly let go of the things that keep me cemented in the before. I am a reluctant student of that lesson, but I have kept showing up for class even when I prefer to sit in the back row and pretend I’m not listening. If I could put something in the universe’s suggestion box, though, it would be that there should be an award for calmly picking out a new refrigerator and faucet and not taking it out on anyone around me for the unimaginable way my life turned out.

Last week my mom fell at her care facility which has been a regular occurrence lately. It was balance problems and falls two years ago that were the reason she couldn’t live alone anymore, as well as age related dementia which has progressed. This latest fall was more serious with other issues as well, and so she was admitted to the hospital. After a couple of days of her sleeping most of the time and not eating or drinking, I decided that I needed to go home before it was too late. An hour before I was supposed to leave for the airport, my brother called to say that she was being released and returned to the care facility, the care facility that was still closed to visitors due to active Covid cases. I was too far along in the process of getting there to cancel and so I got on a plane to Chicago.

My nephew picked me up at the airport and took me to her facility where I could not see her. My brother and sister were finishing up paperwork and meeting with hospice and the best I could do was look in her window where she was sleeping.

The next day my sister and I went to see Mom for a window visit where she was up and looking like she’d been on the losing end of a boxing match. “Oh,” she said smiling as she looked through the glass, “you brought Kathleen with you.” My mom has never called me Kathleen and I didn’t quite know what to make of that, but we chatted for a few minutes then went inside for a scheduled meeting with the staff regarding her care. After the meeting, I was able to gown and mask up and see her in her room where she was laying down. I laid down next to her and held her hand. She was really worried about “the merchandise” and kept saying her sister needed to take care of it. Her one and only sister who is no longer alive. “Mom,” I said, “Let me handle it. I’ll call her and tell her she needs to get that done. Will that work?” “Oh yes,” my mom said, “you need to call her,” and then her dark brown eyes intently stared at me for the longest time as if she’d never seen me before. She started dozing off and I told her I’d let her sleep and then it was me who intently stared at her before I left.

Two days later my sister and I went to the cemetery where our dad is buried. We got way off course trying to find his marker, there were fifty mile per hour wind gusts, and we were freezing. We gave up and went into the office to get more information and trekked back out there. After more wandering around I said, “Dad, it’s your daughters. One of us couldn’t find her way out of her underwear and I think you know which one it is so help me out because I’m not made for this Chicago weather anymore.” A few minutes later we found his final resting place under a tree where Mom wanted to be buried because she hated being in the sun. We told him he needed to come and get his wife, that she’s been ready for awhile but her body hasn’t given up the fight, and that he needed to intervene in this for his favorite girl.

A stone’s throw from where Dad is buried, and where one day soon Mom will be next to him, is the children’s cemetery. When picking out their grave sites, my parents wanted to be in close proximity to the children they lost, three girls who lived nine months inside my mom and not a single day outside. I share something in common with the oldest of the three, in block #31 grave #12 and born two years before me.

We are both Kathleen Ann.