Mark & Vicki

Usually when I write something, I plan it out in my head for days or weeks or however long it takes me to figure out what I want to say. There are times when I am surprised by how a thought takes on a life of its own once I start writing and goes in a completely different direction than I had planned. But for this one, the story of Mark and his sister and their relationship, there has not been a single clear path to writing it no matter how many times I roll it around in my head.

I thought about writing of their connection to each other through ice skating, Mark as a hockey player, Vicki as a figure skater. How Mark started in figure skating (which was always a hilarious visual to me), and how he could do jumps and turns because his sister taught him. How he played hockey in high school and then at Purdue University where he was Rookie of the Year in his freshman year. How when we were dating we would go ice skating and he’d bolt around the rink a dozen times, and once he got that out of his system he’d come behind me wobbling on his skates, grabbing me by the waist and pretending that we were both going down. How he was as at home on hockey skates as he was on a bike. How Vicki made a career of figure skating, in private lessons and as the first person in the country to bring synchronized skating to the collegiate level at Miami of Ohio University. How the team won fifteen national titles, qualified for international competition eight times, and how she was twice named Synchronized Skating Coach of the Year. How both her and Mark in different ways changed the lives of thousands of college students in the course of their careers. How the year we went to Ohio for Thanksgiving, Vicki and her husband opened the rink so we could all skate and she gave Will lessons by having him push a paint bucket around on the ice.

I thought of writing about them being in the foxhole of childhood together with their stories of laughter, ice rinks, summers in Michigan, and much that did not see the light of day. How my presence in Mark’s life steadied those waters but the ones needed to steady Vicki were not good choices. That up until Mark’s end he flourished while his sister spent the last few years floundering.

How Vicki came to see us two summers ago, and when I picked her up from the airport I almost didn’t recognize her. How she seemed so frail that I called Mark at work and told him ahead of time to prepare him to see his very athletic sister in declining health. How when we went to bed that night I said, “We might need to think about the possibility of Vicki coming to live with us at some point.” How when he said, “I was thinking the same thing,” you could feel the weight of his sadness in the dark. That the following morning, Mark sat at the dining room table and dove into work because that was his fall back when he couldn’t face hard things, and that night I said to him, “Please don’t do this, Vicki needs you,” so the next morning he took her on a tour of his lab and out to breakfast and told me when they came back that they had a good talk.

That her coming to live with us never happened because a few months later I had to call her and tell her that Mark had died and she kept saying, “no, no, no,” and I had to repeat it three times because she could not grasp what she was hearing. How for the entirety of Mark’s funeral and reception afterwards she never stopped shaking. That she never recovered from his death.

How Mark was so gentle with her, how even though he was only two years older than her he always called her “kiddo”, how he felt it was his duty to protect her even when he was hundreds of miles away. That his inability to do so would eat away at him more than he ever let anyone know, including me. How Vicki’s self esteem was so damaged that she built a wall that only allowed Mark and a few others in.

Ten days ago, Vicki died quietly in her apartment from a heart that gave out. It felt like I was reliving Mark’s death all over again, and talking to my niece, my mother-in-law, and my kids felt like we had been collectively dropped into another bad dream. Once again it was too much, too sad, too confusing. Vicki’s difficult life ended in a whisper, without sirens, interference, or another trip to the hospital, and while there is some peace in that it does not diminish the loss.

Years ago I put an old, small photo on the bathroom shelf of Mark and Vicki when their family had taken one of their annual summer trips to Michigan. Over and over I’d see the photo face down and I’d stand it back up. Sometimes the frame would get cracks in it and I would glue it back together. I couldn’t understand how it kept getting knocked over until I had a conversation with Mark one day. That afternoon I replaced the photo with one of just him and Vicki and when he came out of the bathroom he said, “I know why you did that. Thank you.”

On the day Vicki died, I took the photo off the shelf and looked at it closely. After all those years of it being there, it was the first time I noticed how tightly their little hands were holding onto each other. I knew what it was like for Mark’s hand to grab yours. He reached for mine thousands of times in the years we were together, and most nights before we fell asleep. It made me feel confident of my place in his life and the world, it made me believe I deserved nothing less, and it is the reason that I know I will be okay.

Maybe the only thing that needs to be written is that when I heard the news of Vicki’s death, I prayed that Mark’s hand was there to grab hers and protect her on her final journey out of this world. That the comfort they always found in each other was ever present, and that she was showered in love when her brother introduced her to the other side.