Vivre

Dear Mark,

In a few days it will be four years since you died. “Four years already,” someone recently said which startled me because how do I explain that four years is always yesterday in my life. You were here, I went to Target and texted you to ask if we needed cat food, you didn’t answer, I bought it anyways. I came home to find you at the dining room table pulling sticker balls off your pants. “I walked the creek,” you said, “it felt good.” I told you that you should do that more often and you said, “I know, I don’t know why I don’t.” You grilled some chicken that night and I mixed it in with a salad and a loaf of French bread on the side. “Perfect summer meal,” you said to me, and three days later you were dead.

The other day I was making the bed and flashbacks exploded within me like the finale of a fireworks show. The call from the police, you whistling When I’m 64 every day that summer, me sitting in the car in the driveway and unable to get out, you winking at me across the room at a party, calling the kids to come home and then screaming at the horror of it all, the smell of your neck, your phone abandoned on the dining room table, your bedroom eyes, the sobs of our three beautiful kids echoing in my head.

To this day there are people who still want me to be mad at you. I have surrendered that conversation. While I readily admit this was an awful decision on your part, I also know it is what you felt you needed at the moment to find peace. Last fall I stumbled on the song Wildflowers by Tom Petty and have let it wash over me so any times. You belong somewhere you feel free. Oof, that line does me in. Though it has caused me my greatest pain, I will never waiver from believing that you deserved to break free from the chains of trauma.

My mom is declining from dementia and will soon be wherever you landed. I used to be able to make her laugh when I got to talk to her via Facetime and I loved when that happened. I’d tell her some story about something that happened, pepper it with outrage, and her eyes would flicker back to life. How many times did I tell you that I thought she liked you more than me? Too many and you’d say in all seriousness, “Of course she does. How could she not?” Like you, I am counting on her looking out for me on the other side. Even when I watch her struggle to find the simplest of words, I sense that she knows more about the road I’m on than anyone else in my life.

Your two students reached the summit of the graduate school mountain and are now proudly in possession of a hard-earned PhD. I listened to their dissertations and took them out for happy hour afterwards. You would have loved the gossip. “Mark wasn’t like any of the other professors,” they said to me, and I needed no further explanation about that. There is a bench in your memory that will be installed soon on the campus of the med center outside the biochem building. When I went to see the plan for the garden and to pick out the location for the bench it was too much. That building without you in it, without you running towards me if I swung by to give you a ride home. I don’t know how I’m supposed to settle for a bench when there should be a Mark. Your beloved, Joe, spearheaded all of this, and in a recent conversation we decided that if it wasn’t littered with spandex biking shorts, stained coffee mugs, and stacks of research papers it wouldn’t be authentically Fisher .

The kids and I fell like dominoes to Covid this summer. That sort of thing was your Super Bowl and if you were here you would have provided a detailed play-by-play. We muddled through without the presence of your enthusiasm for complex viruses, and even that felt like we were being cheated. Maggie is back in her school library introducing little ones to the wonder of reading, Will started a new design job and found the perfect work home for him, Mal is juggling a job and graduate school and shares your enthusiasm for diving deep into tough subjects. They miss you far more than they tell me but, oh my goodness, if you could witness their bravery, empathy, and wit you would be so proud of them.

Unbeknownst to 95% of my inner circle, I have been dating someone for the last year. He is a musician, introduced me to live music all over town, and this summer we danced the night away many times. It was fun and new and exciting. It was also hard and confusing which is why I intentionally kept it under wraps. Along the way there were things that sometimes didn’t feel quite right, but loneliness tends to turn red flags into the most harmless shade of pink. In what is the worst time of the year for me to make any decisions, I decided to end things with him. I instantly regretted it but that was fear-based and not a good reason to stay with someone.

I don’t know what this weekend will look like. Hard, sad, unreal like this anniversary always looks. I can’t say I have settled into this life or ever will, but I do feel like I’ve got my sea legs and have the most faithful squad of cheerleaders rooting for me. That goes double for you as you are right by my side, always reminding me that I am a writer before I am anything else.

Vivre, Mark Fisher, vivre. Messy, complicated, unpredictable life, and all those years we poured into making it beautiful. I haven’t forgotten that part.

love,
k.