Evidence

On the day of Mark’s death, that awful day in September when I was sitting in a sterile, white room at the police station, two detectives quietly and calmly told me that my husband was dead, that he rode his bike onto the tracks of an oncoming train, and that it appeared to be intentional. It was unbelievable and the most crushing thing I’d ever heard in my life. His bike? Onto train tracks? Are you serious? The guy who would cup moths and beetles in his hand to let go outside, who taught his three kids to do the same, that as toddlers would learn that smashing a bug with their chubby feet wasn’t something you did in our family. That guy rode his bike onto the train tracks on purpose? It not only made absolutely no sense to me, it was so horrific that considering it for even a few seconds made me physically sick.

The immediate aftermath of that conversation that afternoon was calling the kids home and telling them, their faces mirroring mine in shock and anguish, driving to the airport at midnight with my son to pick up our youngest daughter who came off the plane shaking uncontrollably, calling family and friends, and then the planning of Mark’s funeral. All of that kept me from diving too deep into the details of that day, but when family had gone home, friends went back to work, and the house became eerily quiet, that day was all I thought about. Besides going over and over it, I longed to have anything of his that he carried that day. Was all that gone too? No work bag, no keys, no wallet, nothing? Gone like him? Just disappeared from the face of the earth? The friend Mark was supposed to see that afternoon has been instrumental in helping me in thousands of ways. In one of our conversations I talked to him about Mark’s personal belongings, that I desperately needed something of his from that day and he offered to check on it for me.

Three weeks after Mark’s death I was back at the police station after calling to make an appointment with the property department to pick up his things. They told me on the phone that they had his work bag, his wallet, his keys, a bike helmet, and a bike. A bike helmet? A bike? The bike was in the warehouse but they would bring it to the station for me to pick up if I wanted it. Was that some kind of cruel joke? Hey lady, here’s your dead husband’s smashed bike. It’s not worth a damn but we don’t know what to do with it so you can figure it out. I told them I wanted it and decided that if it was in as bad a condition as I imagined it to be, I would find a dumpster on the way home to ditch it because there was no way in hell I was going to let the kids see that.

Three different people offered to go with me to the police department to pick up his things but I declined each one. Each one of them said they insisted, that I absolutely shouldn’t go there by myself, and I said they were probably right. I looked at the calendar on my phone which was empty of everything and told them Wednesday seemed like it would work. Then I picked up the phone, called the police department, and made an appointment for Tuesday morning.

I arrived at the station, checked in, and sat in the same chair in the same waiting area that I’d been in weeks earlier. My eyes never drifted from the door the detective came out of that Tuesday afternoon. I expected at any minute to be called back into that sterile, white room where the tone would be much different this time around and I would be peppered with questions about everything that led up to that day. That I would crack like a suspect on an episode of Law and Order and say the same thing over and over, that they would look at each other knowing they got their accomplice.

I didn’t wake up.
I didn’t wake up.
I didn’t wake up.
It’s my fault.
I didn’t wake up.

Instead, a very cheerful, female police officer came from an elevator behind me and I turned my head towards the sound of Mark’s bike. His favorite bike, the carbon fiber bike that he loved. When he brought it home he called me out to the driveway and said, “Look at this, Kath. You can lift it with two fingers. You know what that means? I’ll tell you what it means. It means the lighter the bike the faster you can go on it.” I marveled at the genius of this and he said I had to pick it up to really appreciate it so I put my hand under the cross bar and he said, “No, no, no. Two fingers. Pick it up that way.” I did and he smiled and said, “See what I mean? Can you even believe that?”

I had to sign some paperwork and the properties police officer disappeared with it for a few minutes. I grabbed my phone and took a picture of his stuff. I don’t know why. I wondered if that made me look guilty or crazy, and that on second thought maybe this wife did need to be interrogated by those detectives. I will never know what made me do that. I think it was because I didn’t actually believe his bike was intact. That it was leaning against a railing with not a scratch on it. The police officer reappeared and offered to help me out with his stuff. She started rolling his bike and I picked up the bag with his things. A white sticker on the front of the brown paper bag said “evidence” and I thought my legs were going to go out from under me.

I opened the tailgate and she wondered if we’d be able to get the bike in there and I said don’t worry I’ve done this a hundred times. It will fit. Mark and I had that down to a science. I put the brown paper bag inside and she lifted the bike and said, “This is the lightest bike I’ve ever seen. Look at this. I can lift it with one hand.” I tell her, “Two fingers. You can lift it with two fingers.” She tried and said oh my gosh you’re right, I think I love this bike.

He did too, I say to her. He’d never have let anything happen to that bike and isn’t that funny? In the last moments of his life I can picture him gently laying that bike down along the grassy side of the train tracks like he did with every harmless bug found inside the house. But I cannot picture that without also picturing that he thought his life should end with the cruel violence of cold steel.

When I got home I sat in the driveway for a long time, just me and the stuff of his ordinary work week in the back of the car. Eventually I decided that sitting there in shock and tears wasn’t making anything better so I opened the garage door and wheeled his bike next to the three others he had. The late summer morning was so quiet except for the ticking of the chain – as if all the birds and the cicadas in the neighborhood stopped for a moment of silence. His riderless bike rolled into the garage, his last words tucked in an envelope inside a brown paper bag.

All evidence that his life was over.

I have and will always deeply love you. You were the light to my darkness…..