Fault Line

My dad died thirty years ago from a rare form of melanoma that started behind his retina. He had treatment at a hospital in Milwaukee where they removed his eye, planted radioactive isotopes to kill the cancer, put his eye back in, and then waited. The treatment reduced the size of the tumor but did not eliminate it, and eventually he had to have his eye removed and replaced with a glass one. After awhile him having a glass eye became less of a thing, and he’d have to remind you if you were talking to him to sit on his good side so he could see you.

Three years after that surgery, a tiny black dot appeared on his cheek which seemed like No Big Deal. He had it removed and I was with my sisters and our significant others sitting in the bleachers in Wrigley Field on the day he was supposed to find out how the biopsy went. “That spot is too small to mean anything,” we all said, confident that when we got home from the game that good news would be waiting for us. That small spot was big enough to indicate his cancer had returned and he would end up at the University of Chicago for more experimental treatment until the summer of 1990 when he said, “Enough.”

He would die in September, and my mom, who nursed him through all the chemo and all the scans, who changed the gauze on his face where there was a hole where an eye used to be, stood strong and unflinching through it all. But even after all these years if you were to ask her about those days when my dad was so sick, her face would change and she would quietly and remorsefully say, “I should have insisted he go to a better eye doctor from the very beginning. We wasted so much time with that guy who didn’t know anything.”

That is what death does, it takes sadness and turns it into regret, second guessing, and Monday morning quarterbacking. It makes you doubt every single thing you did, as if you were capable of outmaneuvering the Grim Reaper if you weren’t such a bloody idiot. Suicide takes that ball of regret, pumps it full of steroids, hands a boulder back to you and says, “Not so fast, sister, you’ll need to carry this now.” Carry it I have, and it is a rare day when I haven’t gone over that last, long weekend with Mark, the same thoughts swirling in my head like a grief tornado. Why didn’t I stay up all night with him? Why didn’t I wake up before my alarm? Why did I go to work when I was worried about where he was? Why didn’t I call the friend he was going to see that afternoon to say he needs you now?

My therapist reminds me often that this is about control, that I think I could have changed the outcome when it was Mark’s intent that day for me not to hear him leave, for me not to find him. Anyone who knew him, even casually, cannot fathom him ending his life. A zest and curiosity for life exploded out of him, and it ending the way it did stuns me every day. So much so that I still question if all of this really happened or that I am unable to awaken from a horrific dream.

Even when I have taken the blunt force of Mark’s actions, my therapist points out that I only speak of him with love and compassion. And that is true, I do speak of him that way to every one, every time. Mark saved me from a life of mediocrity, he made me question everything, he taught me that the status quo was bullshit, that accumulating wealth was greed and not a legacy, that we had enough all along, that travel was the best education in the world, that life is God and you can see it everywhere if only you paid attention.

Mark kept notes on everything. When I cleaned out his office I found notebook after notebook after notebook. He wrote in the margins of papers, he wrote on business cards, he wrote on resumes, he wrote on scraps of papers, and so it wouldn’t be like him to end his life and not leave a note. It is that note that has broken me in so many ways. There is such defeat and resignation in those words, and I cannot imagine what it was like for him to write them. Many of his thoughts circle back to me, one paragraph ending, “My wife understood my pain.”

There was a moment when we were walking that weekend when I realized that the boy in him had never understood his life. It was so crystal clear to me I can tell you exactly where we were in the park when it happened, and the enormity of that moment still takes my breath away. When the weight of my sadness feels like it is pulling me into the darkest of holes, I always wonder what it must have been like for Mark. To have nobody tell that little boy that he wasn’t imagining anything, that all along what he knew in his gut was the truth, that only he could save himself by talking about all of it and letting light burn its power, that he was worthy of love and forgiveness, that being my husband and the father to Maggie, Will, and Mallory was a gift none of us ever wanted to lose.

Through time and practice I am learning to speak compassionately to myself about Mark’s last days, but the season of grace will take time to bloom. This life of mine turned out so differently than I thought, but in this place, this place where so many days feel pointless, sad, and unending, I am indebted to my husband for what he knew throughout our marriage and made sure I knew on the last day of his life.

That the gift of being human, compassionately and genuinely, is to see the pain of someone else and not run from it.