Month: November 2021

Thanksgiving was Mark’s favorite holiday, and as it rolls around again next week, the clouds have moved in and stayed to blanket his absence. I try to focus on the dinner, what to make and how to make it special so it will be a good memory for all of us, but in the weeks prior to that it always feels like a daunting homework assignment. The kids and I were recently talking about the first Thanksgiving without Mark here, how people stopped by in the days ahead, called or sent flowers, and how it was so appreciated. But we cried a lot that day and many, many days since as we all ache with the loneliness of life without him.

Have the ones after that been better? I don’t know. I only know that somehow we make it through and that we will again this year.

Mark was an avid birder, and if you were to ask me what the one thing he spent the most money on it would be a toss up between biking gear and bird feeders, suet, and bird seed. He found delight in many things but the constant presence of birds were his favorite. One morning he walked me out to the car as I was headed to work, and as we were talking in the driveway the birds were screeching. “They’re so loud this morning,” Mark said. “That’s because it stormed last night,” I said. “They’re checking in on each other, yelling to their next door neighbors to see if the wife and kids are okay, if the walls of the nest held up, or if they need help finding Junior who got blown out of his bed during the night.” Mark thought that was so funny that from then on he’d make up his own bird conversations.

Then he died and it seemed as though the birds left en masse out of their own confusion over the absence of the guy who whistled while he worked and took care of them for years. At first I didn’t notice because there were so many other things going on, but then my daughter got me a new feeder and filled it and it sat untouched for months. I’d sit in neighbor’s yards that looked like a wildlife sanctuary with birds flying about and covet what they had. My yard looked like the barren and lifeless turf of an old lady who screams at every kid passing by to stop stepping on her perfectly lush lawn. I decided that the feeder must have gotten wet and the seed was stuck so I brought it in the house. It wasn’t wet and it wasn’t stuck, but I dumped it out and rinsed it like I’d seen Mark do many times. I dried every bit of it and filled it with seed, hung it in the backyard and forgot about it.

People assume that the holidays are especially hard after a loss and that is true, but there are many gut wrenching moments in the every day. Having to order checks with only one name on it, finding a forgotten pair of his reading glasses tucked alongside the gas meter near the grill. The pens in the junk drawer with the names of pharmaceutical companies that were freebies at a conference, unridden bikes that you see every time you open the garage door but cannot get rid of, the traces of a life that suddenly disappeared. There is no sadder, daily reminder for me than seeing the pathetic pot of coffee every morning. The full pot when there used to be two coffee lovers here, that had some heft to it when you picked it up, has been replaced by four measly cups that sit in wait for me before the sun rises. I don’t know how it’s possible for a coffee pot to piss me off every single day but it does.

On my day off a few weeks ago I decided that I needed to do something physical and exhausting for my mental health. I spent hours outside cleaning things up and mulching the grass, then worked on cutting down the Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate. I bought this plant years ago and Mark hijacked it from me to conceal the compost pile. It grows tall, about eight feet, and every year Mark would cup one of the pink blooms in his hand and point out to me how delicate they were, how even in the worst storms they held fast. There are a lot of them in the furthest corner of the backyard and it took me awhile to cut and bag them, but that’s the kind of work I like to do -clearing the yard while clearing my head.

When I was almost done I looked up and noticed the bird feeder I had filled a few weeks prior. Alone in the backyard I screamed, I jumped up and down, I cried. The bird feeder was empty.

The next morning my sad pot of hot coffee was waiting for me when I came downstairs, but now something new had been tucked into the satin lining of the suitcase of death wisdom that I carry everywhere. Those delicate pink blooms hanging on for dear life and the familiar memory of a husband cupping me and them in his hands.

Blessed be the mourners on the big days and the ordinary ones for they shall be comforted when and where they least expect it.

In the weeks prior to Mark’s death, we were figuring out the logistics of going to Denver for my nephew’s wedding. Because it was on a Sunday, Mark kept going back and forth on whether or not he was going to go because he had a class to teach that Monday morning. He would have to leave the reception early to get to the airport and with luck arrive home about midnight. Due to those obstacles he decided not to go, to ride the MS150 that weekend like he’d done for years, and to teach his class on Monday.

This seemed like the most logical solution until September 4th happened, and the best laid plans for the weekend of the wedding and the rest of our lives were thrown into chaos.

I planned a funeral, wrote a eulogy, talked extensively with the human resources department at the med center about Mark’s benefits and barely retained anything of what was being said to me, I kept my physical therapy appointments because my sciatica was off the charts, and moved robotically through my life doing what needed to be done. In the background of this painful reality was my nephew’s wedding, my nephew and his soon-to-be wife whom we all loved. I think everyone assumed the kids and I wouldn’t go, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted us to go. Some of it was practical. All this money on this celebration was being spent and canceling so close to the date didn’t seem fair to them, we were going to be with my family who were as shocked and heartbroken as we were, and I desperately needed out of our house where the trappings of Mark’s life before that day were everywhere.

The kids went in my daughter’s car, I rode with my sister and brother-in-law. I don’t remember much of the ride except stopping for lunch. The rest is a blank of me staring out the window for hours on end. We booked an AirBnd that we all agreed upon arrival was very weird which seemed appropriate for our circumstances. A few blocks away was a creek where people were swimming and tubing and I thought that if Mark were there he’d run down the stairs to check out the fish. I leaned over the railing, looked down at it all, and wanted to scream until there was nothing left in me. Instead I ended up at a boutique to buy a new dress because the one I brought with me was the same one I wore to the funeral and it was too much to put that on again.

We went to the wedding and were given so much grace it fills me with tears at the memory. My brother made a toast and said his extended family had recently taken some brutal losses, and in the midst of those events along with our celebrations, we should vow to make time to really check in with each other. When the bride danced with her father, the girlfriend of my nephew’s twin brother sobbed as her father had suddenly died that summer. The kids and I sobbed because their father had died twelve days earlier. Then the music came on and we all danced with our very broken selves and all the way home said we said we couldn’t believe we did it.

A few weeks ago, that nephew’s twin brother got married, and with the exception of my oldest daughter who opted not to go so as not to risk exposing her kids to Covid, we arrived back in Denver three years later for another wedding. This time was easier and I got to see most of my siblings who I have not seen under joyful circumstances for too long. The groom and his wife were adorable, the setting was gorgeous. When the bride danced with her brother in place of her deceased father, we all cried. We toasted, we ate, we danced, we roasted marshmallows on the wrap-around porch, we waved them off on their new life with glowsticks.

When I was recently looking through my phone, I came across the picture that was taken of us three years ago. It’s heartbreaking for me to look at it. We look as if we were trying so hard not to look broken yet we were exhausted and there was no escaping what was in our eyes. At the time I think everybody thought I was crazy for putting my foot down and insisting we go to that wedding. I wouldn’t argue with the crazy part as I certainly felt that way, but in hindsight it was a silent declaration that we still had to live our lives and that all along Mark wanted us to be there even if he couldn’t.

In the span of these three years, we have painfully moved forward with the grief and sorrow that will remain with us always. We have also made space for the beauty and joy that life delivers. Neither has been easy, but there could be no sadder fate for me than to see Mark on the other side and say to him that our lives stopped when his did. He was the most vibrant person I’d ever known and it is our job to carry that forward for him.

We have, we do, and I am so very proud of us.