A Speckled Trout

Last week I celebrated my birthday for the 67th time. It is a weird thing to be this age as underneath the senior discount, the wrinkles, and tired eyes is an undersized ten year old girl with a face full of freckles, an overbite, and hair her mother couldn’t get to lay down without a generous helping of Dippety Doo.

The day before my birthday, after cleaning and organizing the pantry after work, all I wanted to do was to take a hot bath with a glass of wine. That got put on hold after my daughter called to tell me her youngest was in the ER after days of throwing up. She wanted to join her husband and said, “It’s okay if you don’t want to, you can say no.” I have not forgotten how scary it is to have to take a sick baby to the hospital so I got in the car and drove over to watch the big kids. She got back after eleven, her husband still with the baby who was getting an IV, my sedate evening plans dashed.

The next day I ran errands, and as I was leaving the house, heard the sirens of a fire truck that sounded like it was getting closer and closer. I stood by my car door to see where it was going and watched as it turned down my street. We have a neighbor who has MS that we all look out for so when it didn’t stop at her house I let out a breath. Mary was okay. The truck instead stopped at the house of a man who has been rather reclusive. His parents lived in the house for decades and when they died he moved in. He’d wave on the rare occasions when he’d drive by in his truck but other than that he was rarely seen. The fire department didn’t act like it was an emergency and I assumed it was for a furnace check or something related.

I went about my day checking things off my list. I swung by my daughter’s house with lunch for me and her husband and rocked their sick bambino to sleep so his dad could take a work call. He fell fast asleep, and I gently lowered him into his crib and drove home. The police were at the house the fire department had been at earlier and the next-door neighbor was outside. I walked over to ask him what happened, and he told me that when he hadn’t seen Steve’s truck move for a few days he got worried. He checked his front door camera to verify and sure enough he was correct – the truck had not left the driveway for three days. He went in the unlocked front door and found Steve dead on the floor upstairs. “I called 9-1-1,” he said, “and they told me they’d send someone right over but, in the meantime, said to roll him on his back.” I told them, “He’s dead. There’s no point in doing that.” This was not the story I imagined and as we were talking my neighbor said, “Looks like they’re taking him out now,” as a stretcher went down the stairs, the reclusive neighbor covered with a sheet and headed to the morgue.

Late that afternoon I got a text from my son offering me dinner. I declined and texted DO NOT FEEL GUILTY. I took my delayed hot bath with a glass of wine and was in bed by 9:30 with a book and my emotional support heating pad. The next day I woke to my chirping alarm, rolled on to my back, and took the first breath of the day. My immediate thought was what a gift the days before had been – to watch big kids and rock sick ones, to clean a pantry and run errands, to love and be loved by your people. There have been many recent years when I wished for none of it, when I was engulfed by loneliness and sadness, but that little girl with the freckles, overbite, and wild hair always had to chime in with her ever optimistic, “Happy birthday to us!!! This is the day Mom makes us our favorite dinner and bakes us a cake.”

I am thankful that little girl still weighs in. As for her mom, she would spend another day in memory care not knowing she had a daughter who had a birthday or that she had two other daughters and three sons. But none of us have forgotten how much she loved the little and grown up versions of us extra special on our birthdays.

Somewhere I think there’s a signed agreement that says we aren’t allowed to waste that.

If you walked through the door of my house, I could easily count for you the number of pieces bought new on the first floor. The total is five. Everything else has come to me through the divine intervention of antique stores, thrift stores, estate sales, the curb, friends wanting to unload something, or Craigslist.

Though he would brag to others about my ability to pull things together in the house, my scavenging made Mark crazy. The minute I would tell him that I saw something on Craigslist that I thought we should look at, he’d get really excited and say something supportive like, “Oh for fuck’s sake.” I ignored his lack of enthusiasm, and for the most part tried to keep him out of the loop for the sake of staying married. One time I went to look at something an older man was selling and he asked if I wanted to take a look at the stuff in his garage so I did. Then he asked me if I wanted to see his vintage pieces in the basement and I did that too. When I told Mark he couldn’t believe I would do that. While not one of my brighter ideas, Craig Lister was at least thirty years older than me with a gimpy leg so I figured I had a better than average chance of outrunning him if he tried to kill me. But after that I kept my shopping within a five mile area thinking that the further from home I wandered the less chance my husband had of finding me in the kind of dumpster I shopped from.

Life in the secondhand lane was cheap and abundant until estate sales and thrift stores got wind of the profits that could be made from reselling. Prices went up, sales became competitive, the fun was being drained. Since I didn’t need anything I took a sabbatical until along came Facebook Marketplace and it was everything a girl like me needed. I was like a an old lady sipping on her rum and Coke, her oxygen tank parked behind her, and pulling the lever on a slot machine. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled hoping to score and I did – an antique dining room table, a vintage wicker table, an iron table with a marble top, an old green, wicker planter. I was hooked and would brag about my finds like they were gold. Inevitably, some Nervous Nelly would ask if it was smart to go into a stranger’s house to buy something. Most of the transactions were done in a public space or bought sight unseen, money sent via Venmo, and picked up at your convenience, so, no, I was never scared off from buying something I didn’t need.

But I ran out of things to buy so I’d listen to friends tell me what they were looking for and I appointed myself as their personal shopper. Did they ask me for this service? No. Did they want someone else’s castoff? Probably not. Did it stop me? Duh. I’d peruse the Marketplace over and over every day. I’d screenshot sofas, drapes, plants, chairs. I sent my daughter a screenshot of a dresser for her baby boy’s room and the next day it was in his room. Sometimes I’d get feeback. It’s good but I don’t think that leather is decent. This from my interior designer son. So picky. Good thing I knew all about a good, used sofa. After a long time of being a picker and sending screenshots without my advice being heeded it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t being helpful at all. Maybe people didn’t want secondhand crap and if they did maybe they were capable of shopping for it themselves. Like a mother sending her last off to college, I realized I was no longer needed on a daily basis.

It. Was. Gut. Wrenching.

I filled my time with stupid stuff like going to my job and working on my personal growth. I arranged the shoes in my closet in color order, organized my junk drawer, got a carousel for my makeup and separated the eye liners from the lip liners then spun it over and over out of boredom. I had lost my purpose. On a whim one day after work, a Tuesday when seniors get 30% and where they say to me, “You can’t possibly be a senior,” which I totally bought into until I heard the same thing said to someone pushing a walker, I went shopping. For what I do not know. Like Target, the thrift store tells you why you’re there when it’s below zero and snowing. And like the Road To Oz, I followed the yellow brick road to the back of the store where there was the sweetest old chair – high backed, apple green with olive edging, a pleated skirt around her. I died. The color, the detail. Then I looked at the price tag – $18.99 and I hefted that baby atop a cart, wheeled her to the front, and loaded her up.

I drove around with it a few days until I called my friend and said I had a present for her. We unloaded it from my car and took it inside her house. Her vacuum was out and she gave it a quick cleaning and we put it in place. “I love it,” she said and I dabbed my watery, proud eyes.

I was back and better than ever.

The other day on the way to work a dead bird was on the side of the road. It looked like a baby owl but as I had never seen that before I wasn’t entirely sure. It was at the corner of a well-traveled road where, at least in the morning, many cars run the red light – not exactly a good place to slow down for a better look. The next day I was stopped at the light and saw for myself that it was indeed a baby owl. My stomach flipped as those kinds of things remind me too much of Mark’s death and people driving to work – unbeknownst to them that day that someone ended their life a few feet from the road they were traveling.

At the same time as this was unfolding on my morning drive, my brother was helping our uncle who he has cared for in innumerable ways over the last few years. His health has been declining and he needed to go into assisted living. My brother was at his apartment trying to figure out what to move to his new place while my uncle was at church. There was a commotion in the parking lot and it turned out that on his return my uncle fell backwards going into the building and his head hit the pavement. He was taken by ambulance to the local hospital and then transported to another hospital in Chicago that could better manage the severity of his head injury after having a seizure at the first one.

There was talk of DNR orders and next of kin and my brother handling all of it in the middle of the night from one hospital to the next. Days later my uncle was taken off life support and died shortly after. While we all knew this was coming the wave of sadness I felt hearing the news surprised me. If ever there was a person who deserved far more in life than he ever got it was my dad’s youngest brother. Whenever he saw me he always said, “How are you, honey?”, kissed my cheek, and bear-hugged me. My sisters, sister-in-laws, and kids would say the same thing. When Mark died he called me and said, “I sure loved the two of you together,” and it was the most simple and beautiful expression of loss that anyone said to me.

A few days later a friend texted me that her dad died. When my own dad died we were young mothers living a few doors down from each other in Maryland. She never met my dad and yet listened to my heartbreak over and over, from his cancer reoccurance, to my long stays in Illinois to help out, to his death three weeks before Will was born. I have always felt indebted to her for that, then our husbands died within two weeks of each other and the bond that formed so many years earlier became even stronger.

Last week a dear friend notified our close-knit group that her husband had died and, me, who has lived this, was at a loss for words. Death comes in threes they always say, and this third one was especially painful. I don’t want any of my friends to outlive their husbands and yet that has happened again and again. And this husband? He was kind and good, a joy to interact with every single time we’d all be together and the pain of his loss cuts deep.

When Mark died what I needed most was someone to listen to my pain and disbelief but everyone around me wanted to fix the unfixable. I understand that, I understand the anger at the unfairness, I understand that you have to get comfortable sitting in the dark before you can look for the light. My friend and I used to shake our fists and broken hearts at the universe and demand an end date to the mourning when our lives disintegrated before our very eyes. How naive that seems now, to think that missing someone you loved has a best buy date.

A few days after I had first seen the dead owl it was gone. Thank god, I thought, someone took care of it and put him back upon the earth to which he will return. I wondered if the mother owl screamed when it happened, if she felt better that her baby was off the road where it’s spotted dead feathers wouldn’t ruffle with every passing car, if she stared into the blackness of a cold, winter night and wondered what comes next when death comes sweeping in for one of your own.

Mark’s favorite holiday was Thanksgiving – the bigger the table the better. For all of us, the last one he was alive was our most memorable. It would be the first one we would be celebrating without Mallory who had moved to California and had to work that day. At my sister’s house the night before in walked Mal who had bartered with someone to take her shifts after my younger sister arranged and paid for her to fly home. We jumped up and screamed when they came in the door, Mark’s eyes filled with tears. That was also the year my mom was not yet in the abyss of dementia and my brother and his wife flew in from Las Vegas. We were so happy that weekend, never knowing it would be drastically different the following year.

In these last few months there has been a young mom I’ve gotten to know whose story of loss is so similar to mine it catches my breath. I want to scoop her up and cradle her like the broken bird she is and I was five years ago. I want to promise her that one day things will get better, but if someone had said that to me in the early months following Mark’s death I never would have believed them. She will have to lead herself and her young daughters to light, the steps forward so incremental they can’t even be measured. On the day of the year designated for family and thankfulness that feels like an impossible task.

This year our table will look a bit different. I’m not sure what healed is and whether I will ever be completely there, but I am happy which for so long I wanted to believe was possible while never actually buying into it. One day I will write about how that came about, how the stars aligned in the most incredible way, and you will think I made the whole thing up. Like other times over these past few years, I keep asking myself, “Is this real?”

I think the most grateful people in life are the ones who have suffered tremendous loss. They are the ones at the Thanksgiving table who know there is no guarantee that the same people will be there next year. They act accordingly, taking in every detail and putting it in the bank, on-their-knees thankful for every life preserver that was thrown their way when the dinner in front of them on Thanksgiving Day looked like a heaping plate of loss.

When I talked to some writer friends about turning this into a book one day, one of them said, “It needs to have a happy ending.” There was some disagreement about that, about why things only feel complete when there’s a happy ending. I might have been the one pushing back the most on that idea. It has been hard to allow new things to come into my life when both of my hands were tightly clutching what used to be. But I never let go of hope and one day it said to me, “You can unclench your fingers and set those things down now. I am here. You are going to be okay,” and I grabbed the ring and allowed myself to drift towards something new.

When I was a little girl, a cat gave birth to kittens underneath the shed at the back of the yard where my siblings and I grew up. Our mom discovered the litter and let us bring them into the garage. We were obsessed with these newborn cats, held them, chased them, squeezed them until our arms were covered in scratches, and then go crying to Mom with our bloody forearms. After a thousand times of her telling us to leave them alone, she’d had enough and told us that all the cats were going to a shelter. We begged her to let us keep them but she was sick of nursing our scratches and said that we were not a cat family.

Mark, on the other hand, was from a cat family and it wasn’t long into our marriage that we went to the shelter and adopted one, followed by a dog for me. After that there was a parade of animals that came into our home. When two of our cats died fairly close to one another, we got another cat from the shelter – a tabby that we instantly fell in love with. On a Sunday morning while walking her dog, our neighbor found him on the side of the road across the street from our house. He likely had been hit by a car and we were heartsick he was gone from our lives so soon.

As Mark had an accomplice in Mallory, they were in cahoots to get another cat right away. We had a wedding coming up and I was adamant that there would be no new pets until the wedding was over. Maggie and Nate tied the knot on a Saturday, we had family over for breakfast on Sunday morning, and when everyone headed out of town Mark said, “Okay, we ready to go to the shelter now?” I thought he had to be kidding – we were exhausted – but Mal got her shoes and said, “I’m ready!” and I went to keep some control over the situation.

On the way there I said, “You know this is only a looking expedition to see what’s available, right? We don’t have to actually get a cat today,” and they nodded and I already knew the odds were stacked against me. We went in, signed some paperwork to look around, and went cat shopping. “Remember,” I said, “ONLY ONE!! WE ARE ONLY GETTING ONE CAT,” and I don’t even know why I bothered because nobody was listening to me.

One by one we looked at the cats, those two ten steps ahead of me, and they came across a gray and white one named Pip. Mal loved him, Mark said, “Pip, pip, hooray.” They gave me a hard sell and I asked if maybe we should look around some more but they had made their decision. We were about to take home our one new cat when Mark and Mal found out that the cat next to Pip was his brother, Francis. Mark pulled me aside and said, “I don’t think we can leave a brother behind,” and I said, “Oh my god, will you stop? This isn’t the History Channel and he isn’t in the infantry. We’re talking about a cat.” He sighed and said to Mal, “Mom says no to two cats, we gotta leave the brother behind.” I told him I knew exactly what he was doing and said, “We had an agreement.” “Well, actually,” Mark said, “we didn’t agree to anything,” and then he said, “We’ll call him Frank. Anybody calls him Francis and we’ll kill them,” and pretty soon I’m giggling over my funny husband and he’s motioning to the shelter employees that we’ll take the brothers and all of a sudden I’m realizing I’ve been played.

We brought them home and while Pip was needy and in your face all the time, Frank hung out all over the neighborhood. He could get into our neighbor’s screened porch through their dog door and in the summer went over there most afternoons for a nap. One time they found him napping in their bathtub. Sometimes he’d be gone for days and we found out that on the other side of the creek was a house that fed him so if he didn’t like the choices here he’d head over to their place.

When Mark died, Frank started following me around the neighborhood. If my neighbors were sitting outside and I decided to join them, Frank followed me the whole way. I’d tell him I WAS FINE and he needed to go home because while he patrolled my end of the street, Bootsy owned the middle and wasn’t fond of this gang banger showing up on his turf. The two of them would hiss at each other, Bootsy livid at the audacity, but Frank never left. He’d sit in the driveway waiting for me and when I headed back home he’d be ahead of me, looking over his shoulder to make sure I was still following him.

Last month, I picked Frank up to put some flea medicine on him and could feel every vertebrae in his back when I ran my hand down him. He was always a big cat and by appearances he still looked big but something was going on. The next day I couldn’t find him and Maggie came by and helped me look for him. A little while later I spotted him on the patio laying in the shade. I brought him some water and he lifted his head and drank a bit. When the kids came over for dinner I told them I thought Frank was dying and that I wanted him inside. There were other cats that came around, along with the occasional possum and raccoon. Frank had no fight in him and I didn’t want him outside where he might get hurt. He let me pick him up and bring him onto the screened porch where we petted him and cried at the thought of our big, bad Frank weak and struggling.

If you want to know if I ever get mad at Mark, this would be one of those times. All of our cats died at home and Mark nursed them to the end. He always seemed to know what to do, I had no idea. The next day I put Frank in a box with the intent of going to the vet hospital. I didn’t even make it a block. For a cat that was very sick and weak he had plenty of energy left to go absolutely nuts in the car. I came home and brought him upstairs. During the night I checked on him. He was under the bed so I grabbed a pillow and laid on the floor with him. When I woke up in the morning I was shocked that he was still alive. Will brought over a pet carrier, I arrived at the vet first thing in the morning and cried the minute we walked in the door. “He’s probably got twisted intestines,” they said to me but I knew our Frankie Boy was on his way out.

He went fast after that – so fast that the original plan to bring him to a little room for me to hold while they administered the meds had to be changed. They led me back to their ICU where he was barely alive. “He wasn’t exactly affectionate,” I told the vet, “so when he jumped on you and started purring it was really a big deal.” This poor vet who probably sees this too many times a day waited for me to give the okay. I petted Frank on the head, scratched behind his ears, told him he was the best mouser we ever had, and then it was over. I cried during all of it, on the way home, most of that day. Then I had to call Mallory and tell her and we both cried.

The house has become eerily quiet for a cat who preferred roaming the neighborhood to being inside. Pip is still here and still like the Real Housewives of Felines, drunk with neediness. I miss our Frankie Boy and his non-chalant bad assery in my life more than I ever thought possible.

Isn’t it funny how if you let your guard down, people can teach you how to cast a wider net and love the unexpected?

If there was ever a week that checked every box of emotions, the most recent one would have been it. Highs, lows, disappointment, and the finale on Saturday a car that decided to join me in the lane I was driving in and then get mad at me for not getting out of his way.

Midweek I met a friend for happy hour. I should have cancelled but I’d already cancelled once so I met her at a packed restaurant where everything felt like too much. I told her how my week started by seeing Beyonce with my kids on Sunday night only to get a text before the concert started that made me want to go home and cry. She listened and we drank wine until I had to cut our visit short because I told another friend I would take a breathwork class with her. I didn’t want to go to that either but she has been my hairdresser and dear friend for nearly twenty years. This spring she got a virus which led to a diagnosis of Guillian Barre Syndrome and has been unable to feel her hands or feet since. There went her career, her confidence, and her stability until her nerves repair themselves which could take 1-2 years. We have told each other the most intimate details of our lives, so when Amy told me she thought a Breathwork class might be good for me I listened even though I didn’t have a clue what it was about.

We met at the yoga studio she is working at now because her friend who owns it needed someone to work the front desk and Amy is able to use a computer. She was so happy I actually showed up for the class as did her son who I have heard about for years. The three of us settled on mats in the front row which I immediately disliked because it makes me think I’m going to be called upon to answer a question to something I should know but don’t because instead of paying attention I was taking a trip to LaLaLand. We would stay on the floor throughout with a blanket on, a lavender-scented eye mask to completely darken the room, and listening to the rhythm of our own breathing.

In a very quiet and soothing voice, the instructor set the mood by saying, “Relax your forehead, your eyes, your jaw,” and I was concentrating way too hard on all of that until a “Relax your ears,” and I was like now you’re just making shit up because there’s no such thing as relaxing your ears. Then I checked myself into LaLaLand and imagined a bunch of witchy healers with dreadlocks in their gypsy robes reeking of patchouli sitting around a campfire saying, “I know you guys!!! What if we say to relax your back molars,” and everybody laughs hysterically, writes it in their notebooks with an owl feather dipped in ink, and passes a joint and a jug of Gallo wine around the circle.

I stayed on the floor not relaxing as we went through different kinds of breaths until I decided I needed to refocus because I’m pretty certain I barely breathe all day. I’m upright and functioning but that’s more due to coffee, a handful of Hot Tamales, and a lot of sighing which I’m told is not the same as breathing. The instructor had a voice like butter and I listened and took deep breaths in and swooshed them out over and over, convinced that I am an utter failure at breathing. This went on for nearly an hour, my chest moving up and down, near constant trivial chatter inside my own head, and me wondering if it would be rude to take my eye mask off, sit up, and look at the clock because I’m feeling trapped by the sound of my own breath.

She walks us to the end of our class, our breathing slows down, it is back to a steady in and out, the room is quiet, and she tells us to place our hand on our heart. We say sweet nothings to it which feels awkward, and then she says, “As your hand is on your heart, make a vow that as the days go by you will not forget to be more tender with it,” and I take those words in and turn them over and over.

I will be more tender with you.

I willl be more tender with you.

I will be more tender with you until I want to sob because I am more tender towards my dead husband’s heart than my own, the one that has survived the unimagineable, the one that clings to hope, the one that kept a broken family intact, the one still very much alive, beating, and trying to breathe .

I rarely and only vaguely have written about my dating life for a multitude of reasons. My experience has been that if I so much as breathe the word dating, everyone feels the need to weigh in and tell me they would never ever ever date anyone if their husband died, or suggest a fling with a twenty year old, or to shake their head in disgust and say, “You’re not on one of those dating apps are you?” I have learned to button all of that up nice and tight because the less people know the less they can tell me how to manage this part of my life which for the record is very confusing.

Because I was raised with three older brothers and then lived day-in-day-out with Mark for 35 years, men have always been a big part of my daily life. When Mark died nearly all of those friends of his that we both knew slowly left, and while I love the many supportive women in my life, I miss the perspective of a guy. Mark was often a sounding board when I was wringing my hands over something, and when I’d ask him what I should do he’d say, “You just need to napalm that bridge and move on.” It was blunt but he was always in motion and had no time for inconsequential things in his life that were fixable by walking away.

Without the Mark guardrail in my life and being out of practice for four decades, I’m like a newborn LadyBaby when it comes to dating. I’m out in the world flailing on my own (which should be illegal) and wondering if I’m seeing what’s really there or what I hope is there. Is this guy attractive or have I lowered my standards? Is he funny funny or obnoxious funny? Is he one of those guys who thinks he knows everything or is amused and curious about life? I don’t even know anymore, and because I have over analyzed every single thing since Mark’s death, my current style is to jump in the deep end with my concrete shoes which is how I found myself happily agreeing to a Sunday afternoon lunch date. Prior to this meet up, I had many back and forths with this potential suitor via texting and talking. He was a landscaper which I swooned over. We could go to the garden center together!! He probably gets a discount!! He could fix the spot in my backyard where the grass died!! I bet he has a truck! He used to be a cook. A cook?? He could make dinner every night!! He lived on a farm. A farm?? I make my own granola and salad dressing like an old fashioned Midwestern pioneer lady!!! However, in one of our conversations he said something that caused my Brain Elf to wake from his nap, hook a red flag to the pole, and hand-over-hand start raising it, and I was like WILL YOU SIT BACK DOWN?? That’s not a RED flag you dope. That’s a CIRCUS flag which means fun fun fun. Why I bet he even has a pet monkey that rides a bicycle.

McDreamy lived forty minutes away and I offered to meet him in the town where he lived because I needed a little highway drive to think about how charming I was going to be. It was brutally hot that day and the sun was blazing in the driver’s side window. I realized that I had forgotten to put sunscreen on my neck so I popped the collar on my shirt to shield my delicate, Irish skin and my charm time got sidelined while I fretted over having to have another mole removed. What if that happened and I had another Frankenstein scar on my neck? Would it scare McDreamy away or would we be married by then and he would hold me captive on his farm until the public was ready to see me?

I got to the restaurant, did a quick gaze, and didn’t see him. I went to the hostess desk and said I was looking for someone and she immediately said, “Are you Kathleen?” McDreamy had told the hostess I was coming in and might ask his whereabouts. Oh my gosh! Farmers are so considerate!! She took me to his table which was in another room, I sat down, and we chatted over beer as he had ordered a couple of samplers. A few minutes later he said to me, “Do you mind if I fix your collar? It’s sticking up.” I must have given him some kind of look (the kind where my daughter says, “Mom, your face”) because he then said, “Or you can leave it up.” I explained that I had recently had a mole removed that left a big scar and yada, yada, yada about the sunscreen and flipped my collar back down.

After more of the getting to know you chatting and more beer tasting he said, “I love your hair. It’s very sexy,” and Brain Elf got up off of his recliner and snapped that red flag so hard I flinched. I laughed and said, “Oh my hair. People have lots of things to say about my hair.” And then he said, “I can’t wait to lay next to you and run my fingers through it.”

I gagged on my beer and it wasn’t a delicate *cough cough* lady gag, but the kind that had me bent under the table because it felt like it was going to come shooting out my nose. “Are you okay,” he asked and I was like FUCK NO I’M NOT OKAY!! I’VE KNOWN YOU TWENTY MINUTES. WHY WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT??? Later when I told a friend about it, after we discussed at length what would make a grown man pull out the kind of line a seventeen year old might say because he’d heard it in a movie once, she said, “Did he actually look at your hair? Like really look at it? Because it’s not exactly the kind that anyone could run their fingers through.” Which is true because I once had a fly get stuck in my hair and when I couldn’t unknot an exit ramp for it to get off I said, “Welp, I hope you’re happy now because this is where you live.” Then I had to wait for Mark to get home and fish it out which couldn’t come fast enough because that frantic fly buzzing made me think I was having a stroke.

McDreamy was just getting started. He told me how he acquired his farm (an inheritance when his mother died) and that she left him pretty financially secure. Then he asked, “How about you? You get some life insurance when your husband died?” By this time Brain Elf was screaming ABORT ABORT ABORT but I was like CALM DOWN I’VE GOT THIS. I slowly pulled the knife out of my heart, slammed the rest of my drink down, and asked why his last relationship ended. He said it was mostly due to sex. Ohhh for the love of god. He liked it and wanted it and his partner didn’t. My first inclination was to say, “That you ever got any sex is a goddamn miracle,” but I didn’t cuz what do I know about any of his baggage except I was a solid for Team Ex. “Those things can happen in long-term relationships,” I said. He helped himself to some fries off my plate and asked, “How about you and your husband? Were you still doing it at the end?” Small question. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF FOREPLAY? Maybe you should start with the conversational kind and work your way from there. I leaned across the table and said, “My husband and I were very passionate people. We fought hard and we loved hard. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.” His eyes got big and he said, “I want you to come see my farm as soon as we’re done.” I told him it was way too hot to be traipsing around a farm. “Oh not the farm but my house,” he said, “it’s air conditioned.”

So hopeful. So not going to happen. Ever.

We left the restaurant. I said I was going to check out the bookstore and he told me it had moved and offered to show me where it was now located. We walked inside and it had that wonderful bookstore smell, and I thought SO HELP ME, dude, if you say one word while we’re here and ruin this bookstore for me I will strangle you. We wandered in different directions. I bought two books. We left and he walked me back to my car. “I have the exact same car,” he said, and every man I don’t want to date drives a Honda Fit. He then asked me if I could drive him to where his car was parked. This was not some bustling city with a bunch of parking garages. This was a small college town so I knew he couldn’t be that far away.

I drove him hmmmm……half a block where he told me how much he couldn’t wait to see me again. Then he moved in for a kiss and I backed up so far that I’m pretty sure the door handle of my car is permanently indented in my back. He got out. Did a hi-ho cheerio wave. I smiled like I do when my doctor tells me it’s time for another colonoscopy.

That night I talked to my daughter and told her how bad this date was, how it shot to #1 on the Bad Date Chart. Then I told her one of the books I bought was about a group of nuns who get sent to live at a halfway house for recovering addicts. “It’s research,” I said, “because after today I’ve decided that I’m going to be a nun.” Maggie said, “Oh my god, Mom, you would make the worst nun,” which is mostly true. I drop ef bombs on the regular, I like trashy tv, I only serve people if I get some kind of discount in return, and they’d have to take my lipstick from my cold, dead hands. But like a lot of places that are hard up for help, I’m thinking the nuns have drastically lowered their standards and somebody like me doesn’t look so bad now. As we were ending our conversation Maggie said, “Well, Mom, you put yourself out there and that counts for a lot.” “While I appreciate that,” I said, “and there are many times I deserve an atta girl, this is not one of those times.”

The next day I had therapy where I told my therapist every offensive thing he said. I said I was going to text him and school him on appropriate first date protocol BECAUSE I WOULD BE DOING A PUBLIC SERVICE FOR EVERY UNATTACHED WOMAN OUT THERE. As my therapist tends to do, she said slow your roll there, girl, you don’t want to have this converation with him. I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted someone to have my back while I smashed the partiarchy one man at a time. Two different things, she said, and I KNEW THAT but I was on my high horse and she wasn’t hitching hers to my wagon which pissed me off.

That afternoon I begrudgingly took her advice, texted McDreamy, and said that I thought I was ready for dating but it turns out I’m just a sad, old, widow lady destined to be alone forever and that I wished him well. He texted back, “Okay.” Okay??? What do you mean okay? That’s it? You’re not going to plead your case or tell me how disappointed you are to know I wouldn’t be your Farmer Wife? What about the granola and salad dressing? Let me tell YOU something, Farmer in the Dell, I am worth far more than some generic, lame okay. Brain Elf, who’d had enough of my shenanigans, turned off the football game, set his beer down, wearily got up from his Man Cave, pointed his finger at me, and said STAY.

LadyBaby got put in the Dating Detention Center until she lawyers up. Send stationary, stamps, and ciggies. I think I’m going to be here awhile.

.

,”

Dear Mark,

Yesterday marked the day you abruptly left this earth five years ago. The fact that you have remained dead fluctuates from astounding me to pissing me off. A few days after you died, when I had worn and slept in the same clothes for three days, I showered, put clean clothes on, did my makeup. There was so much food coming in the house and I couldn’t eat any of it. When a friend offered to bring me anything I wanted, I asked for a salad. When she arrived with it she said, “This seems really inappropriate to say but you look beautiful.” I didn’t think it was inappropriate at all. I wanted to look beautiful for you when you came back.

I started a small remodel of the upstairs bathroom three weeks ago. It had the kind of chaotic energy all my creative endeavors have which drove you nuts. Even though I always insisted I had a plan and you needn’t worry because IT WAS GOING TO ALL COME TOGETHER AND BE GREAT, I was always (and still am) flying by the seat of my pants. Months ago I called the guy who did the kitchen, he put me on the back burner which was fine, I called him again, and he said he’d get back to me which I’d heard before, and then he called the following week and said he’d be starting the next day. He demo’d the floor and said tile would be going down the next day and I didn’t even have tile. Hell, I hadn’t even looked at tile so I went on a frantic search that night with Will who picked a few samples out and said, “Let’s take these home and try them out,” and I said, “Yeah, no, I have to buy this one and cross my fingers it works because Kyle is laying it tomorrow.” Will let out a long sigh and said “Jeezus, Mom” which was very reminiscent of you.

While the upstairs bathroom was torn up, I was using the downstairs bathroom. I don’t know why you liked showering in there. The shower head and water pressure sucked but that may be because it’s the first time it’s been used in five years. Every night I’d go down, turn the water on, step in, and the first thing I’d see was your bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo tucked in the corner, on the other side your netty pot. Showering with the relics of the life we used to have was like keeping company with a ghost and I never lasted longer than five minutes.

Last month the kids and I all went to Ashley’s wedding. Let me tell you (as if you didn’t know), your kids are so much fun. When Mal and Rubin made it to our hotel and we were so excited to meet them in the lobby, the desk agent told us we had to lower our voices because it was midnight and they had a strict policy on noise which made me giggle because they had a far less strict policy on the smell of weed wafting through the place or providing hot water. The next morning we went to downtown Ann Arbor, had coffee, spent forever in a bookstore, then ate lunch and watched the coming and goings of the Pride Festival. The day had the quiet comfort of doing ordinary things with people you love and reminded me of the time you and I were in New York and took our coffee and books and went to Central Park.

I recently had a mammogram which I got a call back on for a spot that needed more imaging and an ultrasound. Early after your death if I’d have had the same call, I would have prayed it was the kind of cancer that took me fast so I could be with you. But my stomach flipped at the news and I told very few people. I longed for the intimacy I had with you, telling you and knowing by your eyes that you were worried and we were in this together, you squeezing my hand extra hard at night. Everything came out okay and I imagined you saying, “I knew you’d be fine,” when I knew, without a single word being spoken between us, that you were relieved beyond measure.

You always had a frantic pace about you that I never understood until recently. There were never enough hours in the day for you to accomplish what you wanted and as soon as you met one goal you’d have five more lined up. For the past two years I have been working at an interior design studio. The environment is wonderful, there are so many perks to this job, I am well paid, and yet so restless. Every month I create invoices for clients’ billable hours which requires me to take the notes the designers input and turn them into pretty little sentences. The guidelines are very specific and the writing has to be tight, not one unneccessary word. I edit daily which I think has helped me in my own writing, but on the flip side of that is accounting and spreadsheets and coding massive credit card bills. I’m not doing what I’m most talented at or proud of so I have a goal and a plan for the spring. I am not wringing my hands over this one as changing course and setting my sail in a new direction, even if it fails spectacularly, could never come close to the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I read that the hummingbirds were migrating so I made some nectar and filled the feeder. It’s in the front garden now where I can keep an eye on it and change it every few days. I had taken the feeder down and was letting it soak for a bit in the sink when I went out the front door and there was a hummingbird hovering where the feeder was supposed to be. With its long beak and the sort of franticness I’m familiar with, he darted back and forth a few times and then disappeared in the blink of an eye.

I don’t know how one ever gets used to the loss of beautiful things.

love,
k.

P.S. The bathroom CAME TOGETHER AND TURNED OUT GREAT 😉

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.***