A Speckled Trout

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.***

As is fitting for a guy who packed a lot into 24 hours, Mark was born on the longest day of the year. He loved summer, and fortunately for both of us, we grew up a hop, skip, and a jump from Lake Michigan. While I was an Indiana Dunes girl, Mark loved to go further north into Michigan and the Warren Dunes State Park. Weeks into our dating life he took me there and I never looked back. The Warren Dunes were untouched by commercialization, by noisy boats and wave runners, by throngs of people. It was perfect for me and my new hottie, explorer boyfriend. We’d climb the massive dune, trek into the woods and walk a trail, cool off in the water, eat at the snack bar. We always stayed until the sun was setting and drove home after dark. “Less traffic if we wait,” Mark would say. By that time nearly everyone would be gone and it felt like it was all ours.

When the kids came along and we’d be back in Chicago visiting family, we’d drive up to Warren Dunes for the day. First we’d stop at the Swedish bakery on the outskirts of town and then make the meandering drive to the lakefront. Upon entering the park it’s very wooded and doesn’t seem like there’s a lake anywhere, but then you’d catch tiny glimpses of blue until the trees thinned out and there was that beautiful lake. The kids would scream and say, “It’s as big as the ocean,” and Mark would yell, “Look to the right! Look to the right!” And there would be the other main attraction, the massive sand dune, and the kids would scream again.

Over the years we were gone the sleepy, little town of Sawyer became the hot place to build a vacation home. We were talking to a merchant one day about how much the area was growing. “It’s technically a suburb of Chicago now,” he said. “Why back in the eighties you could buy lakefront property for $20,000. Nobody cared about this place.” To which Mark said, “We cared!” We came here every weekend,” and then he looked at me and said, “We should have bought a lot. I mean $20,000. What the heck? Can you imagine?” Except we didn’t have $20,000 back then. We didn’t have it at that moment either. When I pointed out this glaring fact Mark said, “We could have figured it out,” and yet there we were with our three kids eating their donuts and no idea how we were going to afford their college tuition let alone a vacation home.

The days leading up to Father’s Day this year were fine. I got a huge raise at work, my garden is looking great, things were going okay. Then Sunday arrived and on social media there was post after post about wonderful dads and husbands. “Nobody loves me like my dad!!” “I didn’t know when I married my husband that I married the perfect dad!!” All I had to offer was a dead dad in one hand and a dead husband in the other. I got off my phone and went to Target. I came across a dad who looked so miserable with his family, kids who didn’t listen to a single thing he said, one who kept threatening to leave with the cart, another barefoot and dressed in an Elsa costume that kept following me and saying “hi” over and over. I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say, “For what it’s worth, I think this day is shit, too.”

Three days later was Mark’s birthday. I met a friend at my neighbor’s house first thing in the morning and the three of us dug up her plants for her to take to the new place she is moving to. We worked for over an hour and when I came home I decided I’d figure out what to do with my little patio that was a mess. Mark laid it out many years ago and now the bricks are uneven, the weeds pop up everywhere. Last year I got an estimate to have it redone. It was $6000 and I laughed when I read that because it’s not much bigger than my dining room table. Deciding to live with its imperfections, I cleaned it, pulled weeds, cut a border, went to the pop-up nursery that was closing the end of the week, spent $15 on plants, and stopped by the hardware store for mulch.

That night I was watching a show on cabins. Each episode is ten minutes long and shows someone who bought a cabin, why they chose the land they did, the materials they used, how they live in it. It’s a peek into the life of someone else, and unlike similar shows, these are not extravagant by any means. One episode was of a cabin on a river in Oregon. I didn’t love the inside but the view was incredible. As the episode was ending, it showed the wife in the kitchen cutting up vegetables and from the picture window she watched her husband walking to the riverbank with his fishing pole.

And that’s when I lost it. My pretense and busyness during the week blew sky high, just like the dream Mark and I had of owning a little place by the water that we could escape to on weekends.

When the owner of the company I work for was giving me my review, she told me I was always cheerful and willing to help anyone who needed it. After she left my desk all I wanted to do was sneak away and call Mark at his office and tell him the good news, to hear him say, “Woo hoo!! Let’s go out for a steak dinner tonight, Moneybags.” With that not an option I went back to work on a client spreadsheet where I had to make sense of a hundred pending orders for their new house, a task new to me but that they want me to take on. A few days later I was talking to the comptroller about my increase and thanking her because I knew her influence was the reason I got the raise that I did. “It seems to me you live your life with integrity,” she said, “and your work reflects that. You deserve every cent.”

I was flattered and on cloud nine until a few days later the thought of it made me want to burst out laughing. Integrity? Most days I feel like I’m the headliner in an off-off-off Broadway show. A show that has a compelling story with a lot of promise, deep pockets to pay for it, a great set, everything to eventually make it a smash on Broadway. Then the critics come to see it and say, “Close this farce down, the lead actress is simply awful, truly unwatchable.” I’m abruptly yanked off the stage with a shepherd’s hook around my neck and I don’t bother defending myself because it feels true enough.

.

Prior to Mark’s death, I knew little of a death by suicide. Both of my sisters had family members on their husband’s side who ended their lives, but other than that it was something I heard or read about, shook my head, and tsked tsked at the awfulness of such a loss. Then a friend’s son died and it landed on my street. When I heard the news and hung up the phone I couldn’t even absorb what I was told. Mark came out of the shower and when he asked who called so early I told him and he said, “Oh my god,” and started crying while I stood in unblinking shock in the bedroom. As the hours went by and I didn’t know what to do, I called my mom who asked me if I’d been down to their house to talk to them. I told her I hadn’t and she told me I needed to and I said, “Well, it’s almost lunch time so I’ll wait until they’re done eating and then go down.” The absurdity of that still baffles me, as if they were sitting around at noon having ham sandwiches and potato salad with a refreshing glass of lemonade and making a list of funeral homes as one does on a beautiful spring day. “You get yourself down there right now,” my mom sternly said and I will always be grateful she wasn’t about to let any kid of hers off the hook for not showing during someone’s darkest hour.

Five years later the same story would unfold in my house.

For those at the center of a death, whether intentional, sudden, or after a long illness, the moments pass in disbelief and fear. It’s like being on an out of control rollercoaster that nobody will stop as you are whipped from one side to the other. All you want is to get off of it so you can throw up, put your head between your knees to stop the spinning, and thank the universe that nonsense is over. Except over is very loosely defined and out of reach.

I was recently on the listening end of a story about someone I didn’t know who committed suicide. First of all, for the love of God stop using that term. It is loaded with shame and feels like salt poured on raw skin. Mark may have died that way but I know what he was committed to and every day but his last was not his own death. During this I sat with my hands under the table and my nail dug into my palm to keep from screaming, crying, or both. I could have spoken up but I knew it would be awkward and draw attention to the pain of a story that I thought was understood.

That night I had a dream that Mark and I were in a vintage store – something that he indulged me in often. We tended to wander away from each other and he was either way behind or way ahead of me but we would always find each other at the checkout. In the dream they announced that they were closing and all customers needed to bring their purchases to the front of the store. I was looking for him and he was nowhere to be found. An employee found me and told me I needed to leave as I was the only one left in the store. “I’m not,” I frantically said, “my husband is here. I was just with him five minutes ago.” She was guiding me to the exit and said, “You have to go,” and pushed me out the door and locked it while I screamed Mark’s name over and over.

I love a good story, I thrive on them. I have heard my brothers and brother-in-law tell the story of Mark’s bachelor party dozens of times and I never get tired of it. Each of them remember different parts of it so it’s layered, outrageous, and hilarious. You know what else is great about it? Everybody lived to tell the tale. End of life stories are missing the humor and waking up part which lands much differently. When anyone tells me about an untimely or awful death in their circle and asks me how to help a family, I feel their heartache and can think of so many things they can do. I am touched that they ask me, but anyone who has lived through it does not need to know about your cousin’s friend in the cul-de-sac one block over who is at death’s door. They have seen the color of death’s door. A person who watched someone they love have a heart attack in front of them will never need to know a single detail of a similar story you heard secondhand and does not affect your daily life. They witnessed and have relived every moment of it.

I was lucky enough to live most of my life without trauma or the resulting triggers and had no idea what a gift that was. That is not the case since Mark died and it is terrifying when I find myself in a loop of horrible memories. Each time another layer gets unpeeled because when you are no longer in shock your brain says, “Hey, remember this part? Oh you don’t? Let me turn the lights down and show you on the big screen because it’s a doozy.” There are coping strategies which sometimes work and sometimes don’t. There is ongoing therapy which often feels repetitive and unnecessary until you start sobbing in the middle of one and realize you’re not as okay as you thought, med adjustments, med changes, walking, walking, walking, digging in the dirt, and gently burying pieces of pain hoping it blooms into something beautiful.

I use all of the strategies and when they don’t work I go to bed and pray tomorrow is better which I also learned from my mom. But after a few painful days when I doubted whether or not I could kick myself to the surface one more time, I know I need to speak up, to address the awkward, and say that the need to tell a story I don’t need to know or you haven’t lived through, might land me back on the rollercoaster I worked desperately hard to get off of, and that feels landing back in my worst nightmare.

Before our kids were born, I told Mark that even though he wasn’t Catholic I wanted the kids to be raised in that faith. As we made moves for his career, I got to know different churches where I would take the kids and we would sit front and center so they could see what was going on and hopefully behave. When they were in grade school I enrolled them in religious ed. It was every Monday after school and they absolutely hated it. There were other Catholic kids on our street who went to the same church but also attended school there. “You’re not really Catholic,” one of the girls said to Will one day, “you’re only half-Catholic because you go to a public school.” When Will came home and told me I was first enraged and then thought it was hilarious. Talk about casting stones at the ripe old age of nine. “How you behave and how you treat people,” I told Will, “determines your faith and values and not where you go to school. Now go back outside and don’t give it another thought.” But I gave it plenty of thought, dug my heels in, and got more involved in that church and then another. I was committed to teaching my kids about a higher power and showing up weekly to make deposits into the Bank of Faith.

Last Monday I called a friend and it went right to voicemail which was odd. I tried again an hour later and the same thing happened. Later that night he called and told me he was in the hospital with six broken ribs and a concussion after falling down the stairs. He would stay there until Friday and is now in rehab. My hairdresser, whom I adore and have been going to for twenty years, sent a text that she was also in the hospital after her immune system went haywire fighting off bronchitis and a sinus infection. She’s still there. My neighbor signed off to finalize a divorce after 44 years of marriage. Another neighbor whose life fell apart exactly when mine did, who has sat with me many a night as we both cried and made dark jokes that I’d dare not repeat to anyone else, has to move because the house she has been renting for 15 years is being sold.

All of those things made for a strong case of heartache but the week had another trick up its sleeve. Last Thursday the med center Mark worked at announced the purchase of a cryogenic electron microscope. This was a huge win for scientists in the Midwest who have had to rely on sending images to research facilities on the east and west coast. Six years ago when we were visiting Mallory, Mark scheduled a meeting with a scientist at UCLA who had access to a cryo-em. Mark wanted images of proteins he was working on, and besides being very expensive, the wait to get them was close to a year. After many emails and phone calls, he was hoping an in-person meeting would bump up his wait time. “So you’re going to schmooze him,” I said, and he told me he was pulling out every stop to get things moving along. It didn’t work and he would impatiently wait, call and check in, and shake his fist that such an incredible research tool was only available to a few. The initial happiness I felt when reading the news quickly turned into something different.

On the flip side of the grief coin is raging anger. I hate feeling it, I hate when it takes over, I hate it. It rears its ugly head when life goes on in ways that are the new normally crappy, and it awoke from its slumber and barged in the door over news of that microscope. At my regular appointment I unloaded on my therapist who said anger was fine so long as it is directed in the right way and asked me what I did with all those feelings. “Well,” I said, “I dug in my garden until my knees throbbed, and the next day when it was too cold to do that I cleaned my basement. I ruthlessly got rid of things, gave Mark’s very expensive treadmill away, mopped the floor.” “This is good,” she said, “this is a healthy way to handle these emotions.” So how come it doesn’t feel good? And why does drunk dialing when you’re pissed off get such a bad rap? Because my dead husband dreamed of that microscope being at the university where he worked so I need somebody in charge to answer the phone and explain to me why he isn’t here to use it.

On Friday I sat on my porch until midnight talking to my neighbor about her impending move and cryo-em. “You know what,” I said, “it should have been Mark that came home months ago to tell me the inside scoop, it should have been Mark showing it off because he was the one who was writing the equipment grant to get it. He was the one who saw the value in it and now all of that is gone.” “Here’s the thing,” Jen said, “Mark was the kind of guy who could build the room. There was nobody else who could envision what he could, nobody who was able to see that far in advance. He could create it, build it, he could even put the roof on it, but he couldn’t run it alone. He needed everyone else to do their part. They’re running the room that would have never existed if it weren’t for him.”

My first big attempt at gardening has in recent years been neglected for other spaces. As we sat on the porch, I told Jen I needed to work on it, needed to amend the soil so everything had a better chance at thriving. A few days later I carted a wheelbarrow of compost from her house to mine but first had to dig up my chocolate vine. It was healthy and filled up a lot of space but it had become invasive. It wrapped around other plants and choked them off, traveled then would root and shoot off in a new direction. I didn’t know how much until I started digging and two hours later got it all up. It wasn’t lost on me how similar this vine was to how grief travels, how just when life seems steady and I think I’ve got a handle on things, a tendril reaches out, grabs me by the ankle, and pulls me to the ground.

In the many things I’ve read on loss, the common thread is that you become another person in the after, you hone in on what matters, and simplify. You can’t help but be different but the rest of it I already knew. I knew Mark was the best thing that ever happened to me. I knew that how we raised our kids was our most important job. I knew how we treated each other inside and outside of this house mattered regardless of deposits made. I knew very early in my life that when it came to a foundation of love and faith I hit the jackpot.

I don’t know that so much anymore.

There is a saying in the grief world that “one moves forward” after the death of a loved one rather than moving on. The latter implies that you are leaving that person in the past rather than going forth with the spirit of that person into the future. That sort of thing seems like splitting hairs to me when for the longest time I couldn’t move at all.

I tend to grip tightly to the thought that I am stuck in grief, in life, in everything. I bring this up in therapy all the time until at a recent session my therapist listed all the things I’ve accomplished since Mark died. “And on top of that,” she said, “you went through a pandemic.” Her list surprised me because I am moving in ways I have not acknowledged. Though it may not be in the way I want or as fast as I want, I haven’t settled for stagnation which is an easy place to stake your tent when your world turns upside down.

I recently went on a date and as a chronic overthinker I am surprised at how much I underthought that decision. Said sure why not and my young, single coworkers said, “Way to put yourself out there, Kath, good on you,” and I said good on me right back to me and met this man at a dance performance. Having two daughters who danced through high school, and one who majored in it in college, I have been to more dance performances than I could count. Ballet, tap, modern, hip hop, all the dances, and so I sat down next to this man in the second row of a theatre, and in the universe’s way of saying I see what you’re trying to do here, one of Mark’s colleagues was sitting right in front of us which upended any confidence I may have thought I had. We exchanged pleasantries, said it was good to see each other, while my brain frantically repeated shit shit shit a couple of hundred times. The dance started and it wasn’t long before I thought how much Mark would have loved it, how it being a Friday night and being tired, I would have laid my head on his shoulder and rested, how we would have talked about it all the way home. Instead I kept wondering if I was crossing and uncrossing my legs too much, why was it so bloody hot, and if it would be rude for me to lean over and whisper, “You seem nice but I can’t do this tonight,” and got up and left.

But when I make a bad decision I dig in my heels and go all out. I stayed and smiled weakly at Mark’s coworker when it was over, met a few friends of my date, and went to the reception afterwards. He walked me to the parking garage and when he saw my car said he had the exact same one. I wanted to ask him if he had a dead spouse, too, because then we would have two things in common. Once inside I rested my head on the steering wheel for a few minutes, exhausted in every way. When I told my therapist about the night she asked me if it made me cry and I told her it should have, everything was in place for a good cry, but I was too tired to even do that.

I recently read that grief is stagnant and it is joy that comes in waves. In a tidal wave of joy, my daughter and her husband, after having two miscarriages and many dark valleys, gave birth to a baby boy last month. I was on duty as Grandma Doubtfire for a few days and was woefully out of practice to wrangle myself, two kids, and a dog in the morning in any sort of timely manner. The first day Walter went off to preschool and Mabel was on spring break so I told her we needed to go to my favorite store because my birthday coupon was about to expire. She got herself dressed in leggings and a mermaid tshirt. When I said to her, “You good now? Need anything else before we go,” she thought it over for a hard minute and said, “Oh yeah, I forgot something,” pulled her rainbow tutu out of the drawer, and my gay pride little mermaid and I got in the car and headed off.

There was no news of a baby yet and behind me in her booster seat Mabel said, “Mimi, do you want to know what I think?” I said of course I did and she said, “I think this baby happened because Boompa and my baby sister who died knew how sad my mommy and daddy were. I think they sent this baby to us so we’d be less sad because they’re not here.” It took me a minute to gain my composure to speak and when I did I said, “I think you’re right, Mabel. I think those two did have something to do with your new brother, and aren’t we so happy they helped us?” She continued her gaze out the window and said, “Yeah, I think they’re in the stars working together.”

There is no amount of time that will diminish the what ifs and if onlys with some losses. That’s the deal we make with life and it seems like a fair trade until the reality of it knocks on our door. Death’s echo can be excruciatingly loud when you’re bravely trying to crawl out of the darkness of the valley. Meanwhile, the unseen is alive and moving around us in ways a seven year old in a rainbow tutu understands far better than me.

Last week I took a trip to Florida to see two of my siblings who have second homes in Fort Meyers. I was scheduled for an early flight and booked an Uber to pick me up at 4:00 a.m. Twenty minutes prior, when I was ready to go and hadn’t got a text from the driver, I checked the app and discovered that the credit card linked to my account was one that had fraud on it last month. The payment never went through which I didn’t know. I had a slight panic attack, threw my luggage in the car and drove to the airport – the brand new Kansas City airport that was having its debut that very morning. I was low on gas and high on adrenaline, and as soon as I walked through the doors I wanted to turn around, walk out, and drive back home. Traveling without Mark is hard, he loved to go just about anywhere, was always content to be in the window seat and take it all in, and loved the sun. Escaping the gray days of winter to relax where it was warm might have required some arm twisting if he was busy at work, but I knew from experience that once committed he would have loved every minute.

While walking to my gate, I passed a crowd of construction workers in neon vests and hard hats and found out they were one of hundreds who built this new airport and were there to watch the first flight take off. As I was already a bit shaky on this whole trip thing it could have sent me spiraling, but they looked so proud and I remembered when Mark and I were dating and he’d drive me past some of the roofing jobs he did. “This will still be standing long after I’m gone,” he would boast, and so I hung around with the trades and watched as a Southwest flight left the gate and taxied to the runway.

The sun and heat did me a world of good as most days we hung out at the pool. There are plenty of activities to do in their complex, and I thought “so this is what retirement looks like,” knowing with certainty that even if Mark were alive and well he could never do it. After a few weeks he’d be climbing the walls, driving me crazy, and desperately wanting to be back in the science game instead of on a pickleball court. The man had things to do and relaxing wasn’t one of them.

The last night I was there we drove to Fort Meyers Beach which was directly in the path of Hurricane Ian. Much had been cleaned up, my brother-in-law said, and yet the devastation was staggering. Whole houses gone, others stripped of everything inside, boats in the marina piled on top of each other, no trespassing signs on lots reduced to a pile of rubble. The expensive newer homes were still standing and looked to have minimal damage, but the framed homes that had been there for decades, the old-timers the town was built around were obliterated. Every single thing inside swept out to sea with the storm surge. How do you calculate your losses when everything you own is gone, not even a photo left of your life? I felt that destruction in my bones while over and over seeing spray-painted signs reminding people of #FMS (Fort Meyers Strong).

I lived many secure years in the house Mark and I built and was certain it was indestructible until the morning he left it and never came back. The house is still there, but for the life of me, despite how much I try, I cannot get it to stand as straight or beautiful as it once did. I thought that was what was expected of me, what my job was in Mark’s absence, when what it needs most is for the foundation to be shored up. That is an ongoing project, and so I will plant a sign in my yard that says I’m not strong at all but I knew to salvage every broken thing that both of us knew was important, while telling every passerby that they should have seen my house when the storm hit.

I couldn’t even open the door and get out.

I was recently talking to someone about the early days of Covid and all that has transpired in our lives since then. The day we were sent home from the office, I had to send my boss a list of what I would be doing that justified my getting paid while working from home. There were things that needed to be fine-tuned and/or revamped, but my job was student focused and I was winging it when it came to accounting for my time. In those first few weeks it felt surreal for everyone in the neighborhood to be home all day every day, and there were offers of grocery runs, puzzles dropped off on porches, and long distance gatherings for wine and talk of how long this quarantine thing could possibly last. Four weeks tops is what we thought at the time.

After weeks of not seeing anyone, my son called and asked if he could spend the weekend with me. He was also alone, working from home, and climbing the walls. I told him to come over and the minute he walked in the door he burst into tears. “Oh, buddy,” I said, “I know.” None of us understood what was going on, and if there ever was a time we needed Mark’s knowledge it was then, but we didn’t have that so we watched movies and reset our attitudes when it became clear this wasn’t going to be over any time soon. Will came every weekend after that, and when he wasn’t here I’d dive into a junk drawer or closet with gusto. Twenty years from now if I’m asked about the Covid years, I will say that’s when I incessantly read the news and organized every inch of my life.

Things started opening up, I got let go from my day job, and my fun weekend job took center stage. Slowly a new normal began to take shape which wasn’t nearly as terrifying to me as the new normal after Mark died. I went with the flow because if you learn anything in grief it’s that the more you fight it the more it controls your life. In the process, I have found out I’m more suited to a quiet life than I ever thought possible. Now that most things have returned to close to where they used to be, I’m overwhelmed by normalcy. Everything seems too much, too loud, too crowded. Relationships that were always challenging have run their course. I can’t do them any more. My energy reserves are at an all time low for problems that aren’t my own.

One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was an amaryllis bulb dipped in wax. I loved it so much I bought two for gifts. Every day I checked its progress and by centimeters it grew. I’d rotate it so all sides got to face the sunlight and when it bloomed I was as happy as my mom would be when her Christmas cactus sprouted color. It was gorgeous and I’d say “Look at you,” like it was my kid learning to ride a bike. In talking to my therapist, I wondered if this contentment from something so small was from grief, age, or Covid. “Probably a combination of all three,” she said.

During that awful time when Covid was ravaging the world, I watched a news report about a woman whose mother died, like most alone in a hospital ICU. The funeral was held in a parking lot and she sat on a folding chair underneath a canopy next to her mother’s casket where friends and family drove by to pay their respects. Such a contrast to Mark’s funeral, and I wondered how it is possible to survive the heartache of not only losing your mom, but then having to say your goodbyes on top of asphalt while people shouted condolences from car windows.

And yet somehow, I, like so many others have survived the heartache of the unimaginable. I’ve learned, I’ve changed far more than anyone realizes, I have oh-so-delicately dipped my toes into the pool of life and tested the water. This go ’round, though, is different. Because I am too familiar with how fragile this all is, the best approach for me is to live smaller and quieter. Will it always be like this? I don’t know, but I do know it’s the reason the beauty of a single blooming bulb in the darkest time of the year made me yearn for more of that.