Mind The Gap

Early in Mark’s career, when he was an assistant professor with three small kids at home, he went to a conference and met a group of British scientists that he fell for big time. They were bawdy and outrageous, minced no words when calling out colleagues over crap science, and I think Mark felt that in an occupation filled with inflated egos he’d found his people.

He could not stop talking about a guy named, Tony, and somehow convinced me that he needed to go to England for three weeks to work with him to learn some cutting edge techniques. I don’t know how Mark always managed to get me on board with his ideas. I think he was good at presentation and excellent at enthusiasm, and by the end of his spiel could convince me that I was helping the cause and would be the lucky recipient of a Junior Ranger Science Badge, which was only steps below a Nobel Prize. But we were barely getting by on his salary, I would be left on my own with the kids and no family around to help me, and nobody was bankrolling this endeavor. But I bought into the plan and off he went to stay with Tony, his wife and, Binks, his young daughter. He’d call me every few days to tell me about the science and the delightful Brits he was staying with, and I’d roll my eyes on the other end, because unlike him I was not being stimulated and/or having fun.

When he got home he had all kinds of stories to tell of his adventures. Mark was a fantastic traveler. He embraced the culture of every place he went, didn’t complain, and could regroup on a dime when things went south. He incorporated his travel into our lives, and for months after that trip, would go around the house and say, “Mind the gap,” in a very British accent to the kids who had no idea what he was talking about. “The gap,” he’d explain like they were supposed to know. “When you go on the Tube you have to mind the gap between the platform and the train. That gap,” and they’d nod and go off into their world which was the backyard and halfway up the block and no further.

This holiday season wasn’t the worst I’ve had which is the barometer I use now. I have been working two jobs since August, and by December was hitting the wall and counting the days until the office was closed for a bit and I could get some time off. I spent Christmas Eve finishing things up and searching frantically for two misplaced gift cards until I decided to quit looking and sat down with my phone. Up popped a photo of Mark with our youngest daughter in California.

We had gone out to visit her, and after Mark took care of some business at UCLA, we asked Mal what she wanted to do. “It’s all on you, you decide and we’ll make it happen,” we told her like we were the Griswolds going to Wallyworld, and Mal said she wanted to go to the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands? Why that sounded charming and off we went, and as those things tend to go for us it was an epic shit show. We stood outside the closed, small building where one can buy a ticket for a boat ride to these channels that had left hours earlier, because we presumed these things were hourly. Half-ass planning was how we rolled. Mark paced a bit, looked around like there was supposed to be a dock manager to make this right, then waved his hand and said, “Back in the car,” which is how we ended up in Santa Barbara, and it was perfect and beautiful and one of the best days ever.

So on Christmas Eve that picture popped up on my phone and I started to cry and could not stop because WHERE IS HE? WHY ISN’T HE HERE? WHY ARE WE CELEBRATING ANOTHER CHRISTMAS WITHOUT HIM? I was never a crier but now I am, and there are things I’ve learned along the way, that sometimes fighting it is useless, that without being aware things are building up that need a release, that you just have to lean into it. Sometimes it’s like a brief afternoon shower when the sun quickly reappears and the skies are blue again, but not so on Christmas Eve. I leaned hard into that one until I fell asleep and later showered and dressed and went to a friend’s house like we had been doing for years. The next day the kids came over and we Zoomed with our California girl and her boyfriend and it was so good and so generous in love and spirit. Mark would have loved it and nothing about the day made me sad which was a gift in itself.

People always say, “may their memory be a blessing,” when someone dies, and after Mark died I had the hardest time figuring out what that even meant. Memories are a very mixed bag for me – they are beautiful, funny, sweet, painful, and traumatic. They have their own operating system and can pop up out of nowhere, catching me off guard, and making me lose my balance. When that happens I swear I can hear Mark in his Brit accent pleading with me to “Mind the gap,” lest I slide down into that narrow space between here and there, light and dark, where he tripped one day and landed.

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