Month: March 2026

If you were to ask me if I had a baby other than my three kids, I would tell you that I most certainly did and it was the house Mark and I bought 34 years ago. Months after moving to the Midwest from the DC area, where buying a house seemed to be for those with very high incomes or an inheritance, we’d get the Sunday paper, open up the classified section, map out scheduled open houses, pile our two kids into the car, and imagined one day owning a home of our own. The kids would claim bedrooms they’d never live in because we were as far from being homeowners as one could get on an annual income of $41,000.

But that was 1992 and we would find out that there were loan programs for 1st time home buyers with good credit and not much to put down. After getting very close to commiting to a split-level, we went a week later to another open house (this one for sale by owner) and found exactly what we were looking for – a four bedroom cape cod built in 1949 in a tree lined neighborhood with a shopping center we could walk to and a gang of young kids up and down the street. The next day we put an offer in and couldn’t believe it was ours. Two years later another baby arrived and our four bedrooms were full.

As older homes go it had its share of problems and no repair was easy. Often it involved undoing the sins of previous owners who either didn’t do it correctly or didn’t have access to newer options. It became my playgound of creativity and I was always tinkering with it – painting, moving furniture or flipping rooms, and desperately trying to make its tiny kitchen function better for five people.

Several years after we moved in I found someone (the classified ads again) who was a landscape architect. For $250 she drew us a plan in colored pencils for the front and side of the house that took us ten years to complete. It would have been much sooner had we had money to spare but we didn’t so it was the two of us trying to make the hardest, rockiest dirt ever suitable for plants, searching nurseries and home improvement stores for evergreens and small trees we could afford, setting them in the ground, mulching, watering, watering, watering, and turning it over to the landscape gods to deliver. They did and when we finally finished the English garden I imagined I was so proud every time I pulled into the driveway. With sweat equity, aching muscles, and dirt imbedded in our fingernails we had pulled it off.

Life ebbed and flowed in that house. Our kids left for college leaving their rooms empty and then came back for a time before launching off on their own. When it was time for Mal to make her move to California, she stood in the driveway for a long while. I asked her if she was okay and she said, “I just want one long look before I go.” The full nest emptied out for good and then a granddaughter arrived. How had time moved so fast?

And then tragically there was the day that Mark left it for the last time, getting on his bike and pedaling to his death. I often wondered if he looked back that morning as Mallory had done years earlier. Did he see all that we built together, the twenty one boxwoods that were miniscule when we planted them and were now big and full like our lives? Did he take it all in and have second thoughts? That is my own wishful thinking as the mind of someone planning their death is only working towards ending their pain. Those boxwoods, hostas, and hydrangeas that had made it through thick and thin were no match for what was happening within his own brain.

Two years ago I moved in with Michael and Will moved into the house he grew up in. He started with a partner and a few months later was on his own like I was after his dad died, picking up the pieces and trying to figure out how to move forward. The suburban life wasn’t for him and after a long search for a loft apartment in the city, he found what he was looking for and moved out last week. As luck would have it, a dear friend of Mark’s was in town last fall and looking to move back to the area. When he was over for a drink, I said my house might be available in the spring and he jumped at the chance.

For the last two weeks I have been moving things out of the house that I never dealt with when Will moved in. I have had nearly every room repainted and the hardwood floors have been refinished. Yesterday when it was okay to walk on them again, Maggie and Will met me over there – the rooms vacant like the day we closed and got the keys. Every morning for two weeks I would bring the two of them and a car full of boxes that I would unpack while they would run through every room and up and down the stairs over and over. When Mallory arrived she would join in the mix of squeals, tears, laughter, and arguing that filled every corner of that house.

A few years ago I asked Will if he would want to buy it if I ever decided to sell it. “I don’t think so,” he said, “I think maybe we should turn it over to another family to love it like we did.” I’m still not ready to do that but I am turning it over and, whew, it’s been emotional. Yesterday Maggie got there before Will and I did and was in tears which I have been a time or ten these last few weeks.

“It was a good house for me to heal in,” Will told me after he made the decision to leave it. For a long time after Mark died I hated to come home to the hollow, lonely place that had always been so full of warmth and love. That slowly subsided as I began the very rocky process of building a new foundation. In time it became my safest haven again and I swear there’s some kind of magic within its walls. I knew it the minute we walked into it and whispered to Mark in the upstairs hallway, “This is it. This is the one,” and he whispered back “I think so too.” We played it cool and told the owner we’d have to think about it then got in the car and told the kids it was their new house before we had even pulled away. And while we didn’t live there happily ever after, we got to live there happily for a very long time, loving and being loved back by a sweet, old cape we found in the Sunday paper.

For months before Mark died I had been struggling with sciatica. I had it many times over the years but that time was the worst it had ever been. I did all the usual things – alternated heat and ice, took lots of ibuprofen, got massages, did stretching videos I found on Youtube, and went to a chiropractor who guaranteed it would be gone in six sessions. He nor anything else relieved it. Eventually my primary care doctor referred me to a pain specialist in the neurology department who prescribed muscle relaxers and prescription Tylenol. While it took the edge off it didn’t help enough and I made a return visit where he advised a nerve block in my lower back. I was scheduled to have it a week after Mark died.

I never made it to that appointment and the shooting pain in my back that traveled down my leg matched the pain of the sudden death of my husband. Months later I rescheduled the nerve block that I prayed would relieve it. I was told that it wouldn’t be a problem for me to drive home myself, so I told no one and went alone. I checked in for a 3:00 appointment and the waiting room was packed. Thirty minutes later a nurse came out and asked me my name. I told her and a man sitting across from me said, “She better not be getting special treatment. The rest of us have been waiting here a lot longer than she has.” I was stunned and the nurse explained to him that she was merely checking to make sure I was on her schedule and not moving me ahead of everyone else. I was so rattled by him that I debated between getting up and leaving or leveling him flat with sarcasm and the widow card.

I did neither and finally got called back – the last person they were seeing that day. The nurse told me that the portable xray machine for their department wasn’t working and they had to share one with the ER thus causing the long wait. The procedure itself took about fifteen minutes then I was put back in a room while they checked my vitals. Three hours from when I arrived, I told the nurse that I HAD TO GET OUT OF THERE and when I stood up my knees buckled and I had to grab the arm of the chair so I wouldn’t fall. She had her back to me entering notes into the computer and didn’t see me. I told her I was fine and got my stuff, held the handrail as I walked down the hallway, and cried all the way out the door.

The effectiveness of the nerve block lasted all of one week before I was back to where I started. Though not as bad as it was back then, my sciatica has gotten to where I can manage it but has never gone away. Some days it can ramp up for no reason and make me miserable but never enough to consider a repeat nerve block which at the time the doctor said I may need.

For the last two months I have had burning pain in my knees and the soles of my feet. Some mornings I would get out of bed and walk on the sides of my feet because it hurt too much to walk like a normal person. I chalked it up to years of retail jobs, concrete floors, and questionable shoe choices. I made a doctor appointment and then cancelled it. A few weeks went by and I made another appointment. I would have cancelled that one, too, but then it was too late so I went and felt like an idiot because it was probably me being dramatic.

I explained what was going on to the doctor and within minutes she said, “Oh that’s sciatica. The nerve goes down your leg and ends at your feet. The telltale sign is that the pain is burning. That means it’s a nerve,” and I was stunned because what the heck, I know plenty about sciatica. She gave me a muscle relaxer and presciption Naproxen, ordered physical therapy, told me to take a hot bath or shower every night, and then showed me two stretches to do afterwards when my muscles were nice and relaxed. That night I followed her advice and the next morning was so much better I could have cried.

Last weekend my grandkids spent the night and I texted my daughter and son-in-law an update on how bedtime went. I didn’t hear back from them until the next morning so I went to bed assuming that they were dead. Two nights later Mike took the dog out one last time and was gone too long. I looked outside for him and didn’t see him and threw some clothes on when I heard the garage door open. He decided to take the dog around the block while I decided that I needed to get dressed for when I would find him dead outside.

I have long believed that the sciatica that came months before Mark died was a warning shot of what was to come. Since then, trauma’s tentacles have wound themselves around every inch of me. I take meds for anxiety and try to talk myself out of fearing the worst which is planted so deep inside of me now that it is my normal. I am with someone who loves me and makes me feel safe every day and have every reason to believe that just around the corner pain no longer has its eyes on me. My back has never forgotten when it did.