Month: August 2023

Earlier this month over the course of eight days, I attended two funerals and a wedding. The first funeral was on a Friday morning for the husband of a friend’s friend whom I have gotten to know over the years. When Mark died she gave me a pen with a note telling me to keep writing. It’s still in the box and every so often I get it out and hold it in my hand before putting it away again, so afraid that I might misplace such a beautiful thing. I went to the funeral home, hugged the widow, and sat with some neighbors during the service. I was mostly fine but when it was over I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I sat in my car for a bit and watched as friends and family poured out of the funeral home. I don’t think there is anything sadder or more beautiful than seeing an army of people stopping their life to remember and pay respect to one.

The next day I went to the funeral for a friend’s son. He was young, successful, and married with two small children until it abruptly ended. Hundreds of people poured into that church – many I knew along with a host of his young friends and colleagues. For some of us this was a repeat of returning to this church after ten years earlier when a beloved husband and dad died. Over the years I observed this friend with her grace in loss and thought, “That’s how I want to be if Mark dies,” never hearing the loudly ticking count-down clock. So there we were again watching this graceful mom and widow, her daugher-in-law newly christened with that awful title, his brother and wife, and so many family members filling the front pews. Within those walls the utter unfairness of this death was as palpable as the shock.

The following Friday the kids and I headed off for the wedding of Mark’s niece. When she got engaged and we received the save-the-date card, I told the kids that they should all plan on being there. Like them my niece has lost a parent, the sister my kids’ dad loved dearly, and if life had played out differently Vicki would have been front and center and Mark would have been beaming from the sidelines. But the certainty I had about being there waned as the wedding got closer as this would be the first time I would see any of Mark’s family since his funeral. For many months after Mark’s death I tried to stay in touch but every phone call would send me spiraling with sadness and anger. I was already so far down that I was terrified of what would happen if I went any further and so I stopped most contact.

We flew into Detroit and the next morning piled into an Uber to spend some time in Ann Arbor before we had to head back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. Mallory was sitting next to me in the car and asked if I was doing okay. I was not. My anxiety was through the roof so I surprised myself when I said, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep holding all of this against Grandma when I don’t know her whole story. I have to let this go.” Over the years of our marriage, my mother-in-law would frequently tell me that there was nobody more perfect for Mark than me. “You have always let him be exactly who he is,” she would say to me and those words were such a gift then and even more so after he died.

We went to the wedding and sat towards the back. When it started and Mark’s mom was walking up the center aisle my eyes immediately filled with tears. She looked older, thinner, needing an arm to steady herself, and so beautiful. Then the bridal party walked up, Lou with his parents, Ashley with her dad, and in the first row on the aisle seat was a bouquet of flowers for Vicki who was very much included in the ceremony she didn’t live to see. The vows were recited, a beaming bride and groom were pronounced husband and wife, and in that joyful wedding way they hand-in-hand practically skipped down the aisle. The kids and I waited for some of the crowd to disperse and when I saw Mark’s mom off to the side we headed over to her. I hugged her tight as she sobbed in my arms. “This is so hard,” she said and I told her, yes, this day was as brutal as it was lovely. The kids all enveloped her in hugs and she introduced us to everyone around her.

When Mark died, people had all kinds of ideas as to what happened that day that caused him to end his life. Sometimes they felt the need to share their theories with me and I have been asked several times if he was cheating on me. He was not and never had. Because I still fiercely love him I protect him in death as I would in life. It is also because I know what he told me and I know what I saw but there are huge gaps of time that are blank. I was so hurt when people filled in the blanks to come up with a story to try to make sense of a senseless act. Somewhere along the way I did that exact thing to my mother-in-law which I hadn’t realized until I was sitting in the back of an Uber.

The rest of the night was perfect. My kids have never been to a single wedding reception that they haven’t danced for hours. I was on the dance floor with them and grabbed my mother-in-law to join us. “This isn’t like the old days when we did the polka,” she said with those same beautiful eyes Mark had which were a slice of heaven to see again.

At the second funeral the minister said, “Love is notoriously bad at letting go,” and oh dear god I thought, how have I only thought of that as a negative thing? In a world that encourages moving on from our losses as quickly as an expiring lease, grievers prefer to share our stories and our tears and remind everyone that this beautiful and gutting thing stays forever.

As it should.

From the moment I met Mark I was wowed by his intellect. He took deep dives into subjects that interested him and I often wondered if he had a photographic memory. He could recite facts easily about a variety of subjects and I’d always ask, “How do you know all this stuff?” “I read it,” he said, and I read too but I never could come close to retaining the volume of information that he could.

For as smart as Mark was, he was also very gullible. I’d be reading the paper and gasp out loud. He’d come running in from another room and say, “What’s wrong, what happened!!!,” I’d say, “Oh my god, your horoscope is only one star today. Don’t even go to work. Your moon is twisted in knots and HR is probably going to fire you for showing up in that spandex every day.” He’d get so mad at me and storm out of the room mumbling, “For chrissakes, you and your damn horoscope…..”

Over the years I did that to him many, many times and every single time he fell for it.

One time a group of women I know were getting together and invited me. I thought it was with spouses/significant others, but it turned out that Mark was the only guy there. He didn’t mind and they made him feel so welcome that after that he was always trying to invite himself to my girl’s night. We drank our wine and ate our soup, and when the table was cleared someone said, “Time for the Tarot cards?” and inside I was like yesssssssss while Mark exhaled a big ol’ sigh like you’d expect from a guy in his career. I ignored him. I can’t remember what my cards said but afterwards I said, “Now do Mark,” which he vehemently protested but he was surrounded by a bunch of women who weren’t going to let that happen. His cards said that his financial outlook was going to look very good in the near future and I squealed. He was waiting on a grant and I was like, “Welp, Fisher, I guess we know how that’s going to go down because the cards don’t lie,” and I think he wanted to declare it all hogwash, but that grant was stressing him out.

Will texted me a few weeks ago to see if I wanted to go see a psychic to which I immediately responded OF COURSE I DO. A flooring rep he knew from coming into the design studio where he worked was hosting it and told him he should bring me along. As soon as I agreed I got cold feet. I knew it would be emotional and I didn’t want to hear things John Edwards style with random thoughts being shouted out before a live audience. He texted the host who assured him that anyone who wanted privacy would get it. The day before I still was backtracking and wanting to bail but a storm barreled into our area knocking out power. With trees down everywhere this wasn’t going to be a quick fix so on day two of no power with temps climbing to the nineties and a phone that needed to be charged I decided to go meet a psychic.

It took a long while after arriving for me to wander over to this woman. I was curious and terrified. We had a bit of chit-chat before I blurted out, “Okay, let’s get into this,” and what unfolded over the next thirty minutes was incredible, interesting, gut wrenching. “First of all,” she said, “he wants you to know that he was not in his body the day of his death. It’s important to him that you know that. He was not in his body.” She elaborated and I felt instant relief. I have recreated his last moments on earth over and over until the point of agony. She told me that he wanted me to know that he loved his life but that he is now free, that something short-circuited in his brain in adolescence and from that point on he was never free.” Five minutes in and I was sobbing.

From that powerful opening she said that he will always love me, that whenever we are all together he is with us, that he could not have survived without me and that Will knew that. Will who was sitting next to me nodded. All of the kids have said the same thing but Will told me several times that if I had been the one to have gone first that he would have moved back home to take care of his dad. She asked me about his ADD and my mouth dropped open. It has only been in the last few months that it occurred to me that maybe Mark had ADD. He could come up with a hundred ideas and get them in motion, but once the grand plan was executed he lost interest, got overwhelmed, or moved on. I am sure that every student who ever worked for him would say, “OF COURSE HE HAD ADD,” but for me he was just Mark, and though he often drove me nuts with his ideas, it never occured to me he was wired differently. I have been mulling it over for months and told nobody, not even my therapist.

At one point she asked me if Mark was a class clown. Mark was very funny but in the typical terms of being a class clown that seemed like a stretch. I did say that he was excellent at dropping a one-liner to reduce the tension in a room or situation. “He wants you to know that even though he could do that he never took his eyes off the room,” and a chill went through me. She then asked me if I had been sick because Mark was worried about my health. After months (or maybe years) of feeling utterly exhausted all the time I went to the doctor. I didn’t know if it was grief, depression, regular life or all three, but I knew something was wrong. My bloodwork came back with a too low B-12 count that was causing all kinds of vague issues including my hands often feeling numb.

In our years together Mark and I traveled very different avenues to get to the same place. “The pulse of life is all around us,” he used to say, and he saw and understood that at a molecular level while I saw and understood it differently. In his last few days what I most wanted for Mark was for him to be free of the things that had been wreaking havoc on his mental health for a very long time. I got my wish in a way I could have never predicted, a way that will always be painful for me, our kids, and everyone who knew and loved him. But there he is, a million starlights away and right here, and sitting on a couch across from a woman named Susan who was trusted to deliver messages from the dead, I swear that for the briefest moment the drumbeat of his pulse and mine were back in sync.

***Caveat: I know this sort of thing is not for everyone. This experience was so raw and tender to me (and Will who was there the entire time) that I am requesting if you have any doubt about the validity of it that you not share that with me. I lived with a doubtful scientist for 35 years and have heard all the arguments as to why this makes no sense. I also know that if that doubtful scientist wanted me to know something he’d do it in a way that would bring me some peace and hand me a story that you’d have to have witnessed to believe.***