Here & There

The other day I was watching my daughter’s two kiddos and my granddaughter started talking about the vacation all of us took in June. I asked her if she liked that, liked that all of us took a trip together, and she said, “Yes, but next time we have to pick up Boompa and bring him with us.” I told her that would be wonderful but that I’m not sure where he is. She said that he is in the United States and we need to find him and bring him with us.

When my daughter came home from the visitation of a teacher friend’s beloved mother-in-law to pick up the kids, she said that as soon as she saw her friend’s husband she lost it and sighed at how little support she was to him. “That was honest,” I told her. “You know what it’s like to stand and greet people who mourn your loss but could never understand what it was like to be the child of your dad. They try but the void is too massive to begin to explain.” She said that she always thinks of Mark not being here which I think all of us have in common. He couldn’t have possibly died as the finality of that word is too much.

He simply is not here.

I cannot move his shoes, his ballcaps are on the railing post upstairs, his coats in the closet, his phone on the buffet, his keys by the front door, his bikes in the garage. He’s not here but he can’t be dead so I leave everything where it was in case he decides there isn’t right for him. There is a basket of unwritten thank you cards for supporting us after his death but should those finally get written and sent? What if he wants to be back here? Wouldn’t that be confusing? And if that were to happen should I reimburse everyone for all the food and flowers that flooded the house?

I open his closet and all his sport coats hang by color – something I did because I like to organize. The linen blazer that he wore to a retirement party we went to last summer and a wedding the summer before. The one that he would put on and I’d say, “Dang, Mark Fisher, you look goooood in that.” How can I possibly fold that up and put in a bag to donate? Would somebody at a thrift store know he wore that for me because I always told him he looked hot in it?

Should I leave the toothpaste he bought in the dollar aisle at the grocery store? The one that made me wonder if it passed any kind of inspection? Because if he came back I could fling open the hallway closet and say here’s your toothpaste. I saved it because I know how much you prided yourself on saving more money than I ever did at the grocery store. That I still buy peaches and let them go bad because every summer he rated them and if they were so juicy he had to eat them over the kitchen sink he’d say “buy more of this kind” and I do but can’t bring myself to eat a single one. That I buy the yogurt he liked and when he would finish spooning it out he’d run his finger along the inside to get every last bit. That if he came back I’d say, “Mark, even though I thought that was gross I do it now too. So I can get every last bit.”

That his summer bike clothes and his winter bike clothes are all where he left them and I don’t look at them because I especially liked when he wore the blue shorts and shirt. That when he’d come home sweaty, unfasten his helmet, and take off his glasses the bluey-green pools that were his eyes would pop against the blue shirt. That I sleep on his side of the bed now with my back to the other side so I don’t have to look at the emptiness.

I have often heard that the veil between here and there is razor thin. Is it the ones who haven’t lost it all that say that because to me it feels like a chasm far too wide to reach him? Since Mark died, the kids and I end most conversations with an “I love you”, something that was not a habit before. Now it comes out with ease because if this is the day you go there then by God you are going to go knowing you are loved.

The funny thing is that even now when we know that is possible because we are living it, we are audaciously hopeful enough to believe that it is inconceivable that those of us left to carry Mark’s story will not be here tomorrow. And maybe that’s a blinking flashlight from there saying I see you, I’ll always love you with my banged up heart and soul, and I’ve saved you a seat beside me when your work is done.