The Day He Forgot To Say Goodbye

For the past six weeks, everyone has looked to me for the answer to Mark’s sudden, intentional death. I understand this as I have many questions myself, but what a burden this has been at times. The explaining, the wondering, the conversations that sometimes felt like a casual discussion between friends of the latest episode of 48 Hours instead of the horrible ending to my married life.

The weekend before Mark’s death the lid blew off decades old trauma that he kept tightly contained most of his life. Was there a trigger that unlocked all that anguish? Yes but that is something the kids and I will sort out, probably for the rest of our lives. On one of our many walks that weekend, he told me things I had never heard before. Things that as a boy made no sense and that as a man looking in the rear view mirror seemed very confusing and wrong. As we were walking in the park on Saturday night, me listening to him trying to figure so much out, I said that I had once read that men sometimes manifest depression as anger and that it seemed to me that at times he got angrier than the situation warranted. He stopped in his tracks and asked me where I read that. I couldn’t recall but he said, “Oh my God, that’s it. That’s what I do. Sometimes when I’m riding to work I’m so pissed off and I don’t even know why.” For his entire life Mark was a student, an avid seeker of information to put pieces together both professionally and personally, and finally this seemed like the missing piece that explained much of what he was feeling. He talked about that several more times that weekend as if it was a relief to know why he thought and reacted to things the way that he did. On Monday night, he told me he was going to make an appointment to see a therapist at the med center that he had seen years before. While I stood in the upstairs hallway, he descended the stairs, stopped, and looked up at me.

We’re going to be okay, Mark.

At 9:30 he emailed a close friend that he had seen on Saturday and who he wanted to talk to again regarding what he was going through. “I’m going to go into work a bit in the morning,” he told me, “and then ride out to his house in the afternoon.”

I think that sounds like a good plan.

I don’t know when he came to bed but sometime during the night I heard him get up. He was hot, he told me, a frequent occurrence on our second floor bedroom during the summer, and said he was going to the basement to sleep.

That morning I got up, fed the pets, had coffee, and turned on the news. Normally, Mark would have heard me or the coffee pot and woken up on his own but I thought that since he had a hard weekend and a restless night that I would let him sleep a bit longer.

Mark, you need to get up. Don’t you have a class to teach this morning?

He wasn’t asleep on the basement couch and I instantly panicked. I sprinted up the stairs, saw his phone on the table and his work bag gone. I ran out to the garage to see if his bike was there and told myself to calm down – that he had left early to teach and that he didn’t want to wake me to say goodbye. But the minute I walked back in the house everything felt off.

Everything.

I went to work, answered some emails, went to a staff meeting, and then called his work number. It went straight to voicemail.

Hey, it’s just me. You’re probably teaching but I wanted to check in and make sure you were okay.

The next few hours became a round robin of calls – his work number, our home number, his cell. I emailed him. I texted him.

It’s me again. Maybe you’re at lunch. Call me when you can.

Are you in a meeting? Call me when you get out.

Give me a quick call when you get a sec.

Are you okay?

You left your phone at home but I thought you might have stopped to get it before you went to Allen’s house. Just wondering if you’re okay.

Please tell me where you are. I’m so worried about you.

Three hours after my first call to his office number, I emailed my boss to say that I needed to leave early. I looked up his friend’s address, wrote it down and called his cell again.

You’re at Allen’s, right? You’re there and I’m going to come and get you. You’ll be okay, Mark. Just stay with Allen and I’ll come and get you and bring you home.

As I was packing my work bag my cell phone rang.

Is this about my husband? Is he okay? I’ve been calling him for hours and I don’t know where he is.

Twenty minutes later I arrived at the police station and was taken through a door and into an interview room. Sitting at a small, white table with four chairs, two police officers told me that my husband had died, that it appeared to be intentional, and did we have any marriage or money problems. I don’t remember how long I was there. Not long but there was my life prior to setting foot in that police station and then there is the after. The after felt like I was watching a movie of myself where I was told my husband was dead and since that didn’t make any sense I still struggle to believe that any of it was real.

Since that day I have replayed our last weekend together over and over and over. It was difficult and emotional, but thankfully it wasn’t burdened by the distractions of social commitments, our phones, or the television. It was just me and Mark talking, like it’s been since he picked me up for our first date at Denny’s forty years ago.

I didn’t want to take you to a movie because I thought it would be better if we could sit and talk and get to know each other better. Is that okay?

In a better ending of that day that I also replay over and over, I would hear him close the front door and run downstairs in time to see him in the driveway. I would watch him swing his leg over his bike, hook his shoe onto the pedal, adjust his work bag over his shoulder and look back to see me. We would lock eyes and despite all that troubled him he would know that at day’s end he should come back to me. He would tell me to have a good day and I would tell him to be careful as he pedaled down the driveway and into the street.

And then I would go back in the house and pour myself a cup of coffee, unaware that I should fall on my knees and thank God for another ordinary day.