Currency

Whenever Mark and I would go to a social event and someone would ask him what he did, he would say that he worked at KU Med Center. Then they would ask what he did there and he would say that he worked in the Biochemistry Department. Then they would ask what specifically he did in that department and he would say that he was a biochemistry professor. I watched this interaction dozens of times. Finally I asked him why it was that people had to drag that information out of him, why he didn’t just say what he did for a living. He said that people tended to think it was a bigger deal than it was and that he found it awkward. “If I say that right off,” he said, “then they would think that there wouldn’t be anything that we would have in common and I don’t want that.”

A few weeks after he died, his friend, Tom, called me. At one point in the conversation he said, “You know that Mark was world famous in his field, right? That everybody was hot on his tail to catch up to what he was doing?” Well, no, I didn’t know that. I knew that he was traveling a lot in the last two years, mostly in the U.S. but there was also a trip to London and Switzerland this year and Portugal last year. I only started to think he may have been a bigger deal than I thought when I got so many sympathy cards and emails from around the world. Mark was doing groundbreaking work in his professional life and it is among the many heartaches of his death to not see all those years of labor brought to fruition.

In a social media world that he didn’t have much use for, his likes were people he met along the way. A Holocaust survivor that once sat next to him on a plane, fellow bikers he would meet on the way to work, a young kid he met when he waited six hours at the DMV this summer to get his license renewed, the owner of a lawn care business that our neighbors used.

I was not prepared for the number of people outside of our family that came to his funeral. Everyone in his department, every department chair he ever worked for, friends, neighbors – current and past, fellow dads from Boy Scouts who he hadn’t seen in years. I would find out later that the med center chartered two busses so that all the graduate and medical students could attend. It was an overwhelming show of love.

After the service ended, I greeted people who I hadn’t had a chance to talk to during the visitation. A man came up to me and introduced himself. “You don’t know me,” he said. “I live on 42nd Street and your husband used to ride his bike down my street on his way back and forth to work. My dog used to hassle him whenever he rode by so one day I went out to yell at him to stop barking and your husband stopped to talk to me. After that, he’d always stop whenever I was outside and we’d talk. Your husband was a good man.”

Of all the people there……

How did he even know Mark’s last name? How did he know he died? How did he know where or when the funeral would be?

Despite the title of Mark’s occupation and the years of training it took to achieve that, more years than not were tough financially. We struggled to put our kids through college. I would often complain about things around the house that needed fixing or renovating that it seemed we could never afford. Mark would nod and agree and then say he thought we were just fine.

In a world that is more and more impoverished by money and fame, Mark Fisher’s currency was his connection to every living thing. I never saw him kill a bug that was in the house but rather scoop it in his hands and take it outside. The squirrels who ate his tomatoes all summer were trapped and transported to a park. We even argued over killing weeds.

Now he is gone and my reflections are forty years of memories that I play over and over in my head. My daily prayer that he always stays connected to me.