Replay

Since Mark’s death the replay of the last weekend of his life and the events that led up to it are on a constant loop playing over and over in my head. Even on the rare occasion when I am engrossed in something else the loop will start up – a reminder that it is in control and not me. It is exhausting to pick apart every detail in hopes of finding something that was missed earlier, a clue, an off-handed comment, anything that would unveil what he was thinking that morning. Sleep is my only escape and even then there are no certainties, because despite how tired I am when I get in bed it is the replay that calls the shots.

The replay rarely changes, repetitively wondering the same thing. If only I had woken up during the night, if only I had heard him leave the house, if only I had seen something that concerned me enough to stay awake with him, if only I had made a plan with him the night before to get some help.

If only if only if only.

I know that there is nothing to be gained by replaying things over and over but his death has obliterated the life I knew. Most of the time I feel like I have been through an earthquake and am on the floor picking up rocks where my house once stood. By continuously playing the loop, I can turn the rocks over and over and know that this one was the foundation, that one came from the kitchen, the pebble from the front steps. As if closely examining the rubble will result in a rebuild of the life I had where he comes waltzing in the door just like before.

Many people have asked me if I am mad at Mark. My reality is that I fell hard and fast for him on a blind date forty years ago. He was unlike anyone I had dated before and there was nobody that I would come to love more. Empathy, brilliance, and wonder oozed out of him. His curiosity about everything was contagious. At the time of his death I was going to physical therapy and after a month long absence returned. My therapist spent the hour listening to me tell her the events of that day and said, “When I heard what happened all I could remember was the time you told me a story about him and said that nobody made you laugh as much as he did.” He always did and yet died broken and alone, so how exactly am I supposed to be mad at him?

In the years since the kids have grown and left the house, we settled back into being two again. We went out to eat more, we saw more movies, we traveled, we sometimes grocery shopped together. I could even get him to go to Target on the weekend, bribing him with Starbucks. Because those things had been few and far between for so many years, I’d often look over at him and think, “lucky me to fall for that guy and to have him to myself again.”

Because the replay is unforgiving it also repeats the last thing I said to him as he walked down the stairs the night before. “We’re going to be okay, Mark.” I meant him and me but since then have wondered daily if he thought I meant me and the kids after he was gone.

One day the kids and I will be okay. For now we are in the weeds of a loss we couldn’t imagine, weeds so high we are unable to see a sliver of sunlight that would guide us out. Mark used to tell me how the Indians on the plains rode horseback through the tall prairie grasses so they would be obscured from enemies but have a vantage point to see what lay beyond. I think about that often. How one day I will see a life beyond loss, a life where empathy, brilliance, humor, and wonder will lead me where I am supposed to go, Mark’s spirit showing me the way.