Saved

A few months before Mark died, he twice said to me, “I’m on to something so big it scares me.” By the look on his face I could tell he wasn’t exaggerating. He, of course, meant things in the lab. He had signed a contract with a biotech company to purify their proteins, and a pharmaceutical company had scheduled a phone conference to hopefully do the same. His fear was that this was going to take off and he wouldn’t be able to find a qualified lab tech to replace the one who had recently given his notice to take a position on the west coast. His worry was for naught, within a day he found someone at the med center that was looking for a new position and was a perfect fit.

Besides my own nagging feeling that a future trip with a friend would be missing Mark, I had something else happen that was as powerful to me as Mark’s worry was to him. I was upstairs making our bed, stopped for a minute to look out the window and knew that I would one day be alone in the house. I shuddered at the thought and figured that would be decades in the future, but it unnerved me. Looking back now, it seems that we were both experiencing a shift in our universe that was tilting out of control in ways we couldn’t imagine.

Many times over the years we were married, Mark would tell me that I saved him. I thought he gave me far more credit than I deserved, considering that on any given day I am a mess. While Mark was intense and focused, I am dreamy and rudderless. In my 6th decade of life, I am still unsure what I want to be when I grow up and am prone to the gypsy life when it comes to a job. Mark could never understand why I couldn’t just stay on a job and like it, but I always had to pack up my work tent and move on every few years. It drove him crazy, but I stayed friends with all those people in all those places and he often said that I got an A+ in making our circle bigger. Despite that, I was stable and calming for him. When things at work went off the rails, a grant didn’t make the cut, or he was raging against the administration, I was able to take things down a notch, steady his nerves, and turn his face toward the sun. We were Team Fisher and immensely proud and supportive of each other.

Whenever Mark would say that I saved him, it felt too much for me. He never seemed like he needed saving, but the weekend before he died I got a glimpse of the darkness he rarely showed and we talked about all of it. What time he left the house that morning has haunted me more than anything, and now that day in September has given way to winter and spring will be here shortly. Still I struggle believing any of this really happened. Every night I lay in bed looking at a photo of him from one of the thousands of happy days, and ask him to show up in my dreams. In those shocking, early weeks, I prayed he would let me know that he is okay and that the something so big filled him with wonder and not fear.

Now I ask him to tell me me how I saved him so I can save myself.