Ripples & Waves

When Mark and I were dating, most weekends during the summer we would make a two hour drive to Michigan to spend the day at Warren Dunes. We both loved being near water, and back then a few daredevils would hang-glide from the top of the highest dune and sail over the lake and back onto the beach. We always stayed long past most people, and on our way back to the parking lot, would walk along the shore and let the water ripple over our feet one last time before we left. It always felt peaceful at that time of day, especially since Lake Michigan could often feel terrifying with waves and rip currents that claim many lives every summer.

A few weeks ago I had to have an MRI. I have always been claustrophobic so the idea of being rolled into a tunnel for forty minutes made my stomach flip every time I thought of it. I chickened out and changed one appointment, and when they called to tell me the machine wasn’t working that day and I’d have to reschedule again I was ecstatic. My day of reckoning finally came and for a few days before I doubled up on my anxiety meds, did an exercise I’d read about to calm my nerves, and showed up for my test. I was put on the bed and a very Hannabel Lecter like mask was put over my face, a panic button was placed in my right hand and I was rolled in. I opened my eyes and two inches from my face was the top of the machine. I said “holy shit”, closed my eyes and immediately traveled down memory lane and onto the shore of Lake Michigan.

The next day I went to work, ate a salad for lunch and got E. Coli which was a first and not the least bit fun. The following day I was getting ready for work when the familiar stab of a kidney stone barreled into me and I spent the next two hours throwing up from the pain until there was nothing left in me and I could keep a ten year old hydrocodone down. Two days later I tested positive for a UTI and given antibiotics.

That Friday I left work early to join a Zoom meeting where Mark’s last graduate student did his thesis defense. Like pretty much everything concerning Mark’s occupation, I didn’t understand any of it and was a poor substitute for the person who was supposed to be there. The guy who shepherded so many students to master’s degrees, but only had three that got PhDs and two of those were after he died. Pierce told me once that if he was on his way to the bathroom and saw Mark coming down the hall he would hightail it out of there because if Mark had his eyes on you because he had an idea for an experiment he’d keep on talking no matter how badly you needed to go. Alex told me that when Mark came in the lab to check on how things were going, he’d circle the lab bench over and over to get his steps in. Both of them were in the lab and talking to Mark on a Friday, on a Wednesday morning two professors came in, sat them down, and told them that Mark died and their worlds were turned upside down.

At the end of Pierce’s defense he thanked Mark and those who got him to the finish line without him. I stayed on for the questioning then closed my laptop, set my head down on top of it and sobbed. If Mark were here he’d come in the door that night on cloud nine and say, “These kids, and I know I’m not supposed to call them kids, are so goddamn smart. So much smarter than I was at that age,” and we’d probably go out for dinner and celebrate another wavemaker in the biochemistry field. Instead it’s me sending an email to both of his students who are now doctors and planning a lunch this week to celebrate.

The following day I worked my retail job, and in the frenzy of a store full of shoppers, I was chatting with a customer while I was ringing up his stuff. He was kind and full of the Christmas spirit and asked me how long I was working. “All day,” I said and he said “Woo boy that’s going to be long if it stays like this.” I laughed and said it would be like this every day until Christmas and it was mostly fun and only a little overwhelming. After I handed him his bag he touched my hand and said, “Then I hope the rest of your day is non-stresssful,” smiled and walked out the door. I wanted to cry from the kindness, for being seen for a moment by a stranger when it had been a week of kicking furiously away from crashing waves.

“You must love to write,” someone recently said to me and I burst out laughing. “Oh geez, everything I write makes me cry so, no, I don’t love it. All I know is that I need to write.” This week we will celebrate our 4th holiday season without Mark. There has not been a single day since he died that I’m not stunned by his absence. I think that will always be the case and I am learning to live with that, but December and its long days of darkness make it much harder. While trying to make sense of something senseless, I tend to forget that we are promised light and days that will grow longer once again. And so I write and pay close attention to the ripples, because those, too, have the power to make a weary world rejoice.

Merry Christmas.