Say Something

Many years ago I had my first date with a kidney stone when I was minding my own business and got a stabbing pain in my upper back. Within minutes I was bent over in agony. I didn’t know at the time what it was but it was bad and I told Mark I needed to go to the emergency room. For a guy who worked at a medical center, he wasn’t inclined to use it much and thought we should take a wait and see approach. I told him that wasn’t possible, he didn’t argue, and I threw up in a plastic bag all the way there.

Once we got there it was determined fairly early that it was a kidney stone, and, yes, they are as bad as you’ve heard. Because the med center is a teaching hospital, students wander in and out and do the same thing and ask the same questions that the ones before did, there is a doctor with an actual degree but still training, and after what seems like forever a real doctor makes an appearance. I was in there for hours and they took me for a scan to confirm the diagnosis and by that point I didn’t care because I’d already had a shot of morphine. We waited to hear the results of the scan and to finally be discharged when another doctor came in and said that there was indeed a stone and I also had a mass on my kidney. A mass? Mark and I both looked at him in shock as he went on and on about my “mass.” He and Mark had a very technical conversation about kidneys while I zoned out in the hospital bed and I was sent home with meds and the recommendation that I see a urologist stat.

We drove home in silence and I went right to bed to sleep off the morphine. After a few hours Mark came to check on me and crawled into bed. “What if this is really a mass,” he asked me. “What if this is bad?” Even in my groggy state I was worried about the same thing as the word mass flashed over and over in my head. “While you were sleeping I was outside and all I kept thinking is this whole place is you. The garden, the landscaping you wanted so bad, getting the house repainted, making everything look better. Everywhere I look is you and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if you’re not here.” After a worrying couple of weeks, I finally got in to see a urologist and my mass turned out to be a cyst which was a far better diagnosis and Mark and I breathed a big sigh of relief.

Early on a Saturday morning two years ago I had another kidney stone. I waited for Mark to get home from bike riding with his buddies, he changed and we drove to the med center, me throwing up in a plastic bag the whole way there. The ER was quiet at that time of the day so I got put in a room pretty quickly. I was in a shaking, fetal curl of misery on the bed and peppered with questions about my pain. Why did I think it was a kidney stone? How could I be sure? What happened the last time I came in? How long ago since I came to the ER? What did I get for the pain? What prescription meds do I take on a regular basis? I realized that they thought I was shopping for pain killers and were going to take their sweet time giving them to me. This went on for a long time and at that point the only thing they’d done for me was start an IV. When they left the room I pulled Mark down next to me and said, “Why aren’t they doing anything? Why aren’t they helping me?” He threw himself on top of me to stop me from shaking and said, “Look at me. They’re going to give you something and you’re going to be okay.” It would be awhile longer before they ordered a shot of morphine and when they did the nurse only gave me half. When asked by the doctor why she said, “I’ve found that a half usually works,” and he said well clearly it isn’t and you need to give her the entire dose. Finally, I got some relief for the pain.

Like the house and yard were the epicenter of me for Mark, the med center was mine for him. Because of my own job I didn’t visit him often but if I did he’d be leaning over the 2nd floor railing and saying “Hey, darlin,” when I got there. Since he died I have only been back to clean out his office but I do drive by there often. In the before days I’d text him if I were close by to see if he could meet me for lunch, but in these after days I don’t even turn my head in the direction of the building he worked in every day.

This week his two graduate students were doing a presentation on his career at the department spring retreat and invited me. I supplied some photos for them to use and said I’d do my best to make it but could make no promises. Outside of my own kids I have worried about their emotional well-being the most, and have done what I could to support them and their grief. Tough as I thought it was going to be, I also know that it helps me to see and talk to them. The three of us share a connection to Mark that I hope never goes away.

My anxiety about the day, though, was off the charts and I wondered why I was putting myself through that. To go to that building that was so much of Mark’s identity but he is nowhere to be found is like a stab to my heart, but I think if there were anything he would want me to do professionally in his absence it would be to be supportive of Alex and Pierce until their graduation.

I slipped into the back of the room before they started, and they tagged team putting on a presentation of his career that was mixed with his humor and brilliance. He would have loved it. It was hard and wonderful to watch and I was glad I came, for them and me. The retreat broke for lunch after that and I carried my shaky legs out into the hallway where I was met with a few “hey how are you doing” by his colleagues, a congratulatory hug to his students, and a short conversation with his former boss about an award that will be named in his honor. Mostly, though, there was a filing out of one after another who dared not make eye contact with me, the widow who is too hard to see, the one who carries the weight of this pain.

He loved you, I wanted to say to them. He talked about you all the time and now you can’t even look at me? Do you know how much guts it took for me to even walk in this building? That if you looked at me you would see him because I carry him everywhere I go? How can you walk past me pretending not to see me me when I have known you for years?

As if it couldn’t have gotten any shittier, when leaving the building I had to walk past all of them while they took the annual faculty photo, the first one in twenty seven years that he wasn’t in. When I got to the parking garage I forgot where I parked the car which only added to my aggravation, and when I finally found it I got inside, locked the door, and sobbed in a combination of sadness, anger, and relief. I had to go back to work so I blew through a dozen Kleenex, took some deep breaths, started the car, and remembered that time in the emergency room when there was no attempt to help me through the pain until it was confirmed that it was legit.

In all these months there has not been a single colleague of his who has been able to look at me, call, text, or email to simply say, “I miss him too, Kath. A lot.” It makes me think he has been forgotten and that is an unbearable pain to carry, because this time around there is no Mark to throw himself on top of me and tell me it’s going to be okay.