Author: Kathleen Fisher

While Mark was an avid cyclist, I preferred walking. The only gear required was a decent pair of gym shoes, and while he was supportive of my daily walks, my husband much preferred the manly sport he chose. I felt like a little kid who was patted on the head whenever I’d leave for the park doing my lil exercise. Then he did some research, found out that daily walking was good for your brain health, and all of a sudden he wanted to join me.

The summer prior to his death, we’d head outside after dinner and roam around our neighborhood and the expensive one next door. Two blocks from our house we would pass by an older woman tending her garden in her front yard. She would scoop small amounts of mulch from a bag with her spade, dump it in the dirt, smooth it out, and repeat over and over. I felt like we should offer to pick up the whole bag and dump it which would be so much faster, but she seemed content with her plan and so we’d say “hello, beautiful night, your garden is looking great” and keep moving. On the way back she’d still be out there in the dark with her spade, her garden, and her plan. “I want to be like her when I get older,” I told Mark, “tending the earth with the lightning bugs keeping me company.”

For the longest time I didn’t see her and was worried that she had died except I hadn’t seen a moving truck in the driveway or for sale sign planted in her yard. The one person I knew who lived near her had moved so I had no way of finding out what was going on or why she wasn’t in her garden every night. A few weeks ago I passed her house on the way to the park and there she was, sitting in a wheelchair by the front door watching the neighborhood activities. Dottie was still with us. I smiled and waved and teared up from relief and happiness.

Michael is an avid, daily walker and after one of his early morning walks told me that he passed by a house where an ambulance was parked in the driveway. He described the house and I peppered him with questions. Was it next to the gray house that was for sale? Did it have a white iron bench in front and a small garden next to the driveway? Did you see an older woman with gray hair being brought out? He didn’t have an answer to any of my questions until a few days later when we were in the car and he pointed the house out.

My heart sank.

Weeks later I still don’t know what happened and for now I prefer it that way. Watching this woman in her garden and knowing my mom was safe and cared for in a memory care unit made life feel safe. On the way to work the other day I was stopped at a light and an older man in a different park was walking the path and picking up sticks along the way. He didn’t toss them aside into the grass but held onto them stooping over to pick them up. I prayed he wouldn’t fall when he bent over as my mom often had.

The light turned green, and I wished I could have had a bit more time watching him. Salman Rushdie once said, “We all owe death a life,” and as I have grown older, I prefer that it be simpler, much like Dottie the Nighttime Gardener or the man I saw picking up sticks. Stewards along the path, caring for what is beneath our feet, and making the journey a bit more beautiful as we watch each other grow in wisdom and gratitude.

In the early months and initial year following Mark’s death, when all of it seemed like a nightmare I couldn’t wake from, I ceased living and without even knowing entered the existing category. I would show up to work and social occasions with a smile and my I’m-just-fine face and act my way through until it was mercifully over. When I’d get back in the car I would collapse from the mental exhaustion of pretending that, why, of course, I’m rebuilding my life, how lovely of you to ask. In reality I wasn’t rebuilding anything as most times I’d have to give myself a pep talk in the house to go, another in the parking lot to start the car and drive home, and then in the driveway to get out and go back into the house.

There seemed to be no end in sight to the anguish of Mark’s death despite weekly therapy appointments and trial and error with meds for anxiety and depression. I had no choice but to show up in my brokenness to a life I did not recognize. When I did, people seemed genuinely happy to see me and I had no idea why. I had nothing to offer, I was depleted in every way. I devoured grief books, desperate for something to cling to in order to hold it together. In one of them I stumbled across this quote, “There will be more light upon this earth for me.” I typed it out on the notes on my phone and repeated it over and over and over throughout the day.

Therewillbemorelightuponthisearthformetherewillbemorelightuponthisearthformetherewillbemorelightuponthisearthforme.

I did not believe it, but it seemed encouraging and not patronizing, and since nothing else was working I gripped it tightly and started paying attention. This promised light started showing up in small ways – watching my grandkids which made me forget my sorrow, a garden that took off, a new job with some incredible women. It wasn’t even close to what I had but it was drops in the parched well of my life.

When a few years had passed and I started feeling a bit stronger, I decided to dip my toe in the dating pool and the light got squashed like a bug. I met someone who spent two hours telling me how he fixed his toilet, I dated a musician who reeked of weed all the time, and then there was this guy. One day I told my sister all I really wanted was another professor. “I know that world,” I said, “I’m comfortable in it, and besides those guys are really smart.” “I think you only get one of those in life,” she said. She was right, I had had my shot.

After more bad dates with some very questionable men, I said to myself, “Welp, this dating thing isn’t working and needs to go.” My life, I decided, would be as a full-time cat lady who watches true crime dramas mixed in with some decorating shows and occasional trips to Target for a bottle of wine, a candle that masked the smell of depression, and lightweight, clumping litter. I had a plan for my future, albeit a bad one. I opened the app on my phone to figure out how to get rid of it (and the monthly charges) and a face I’d never seen popped onto the screen. I read his bio and said to the cat, “Hmmmmm….. he seems interesting” He was a widower and I messaged him about this nonsense of “starting over.” We messaged back and forth for over a week until he suggested we meet in person. I told him I had no idea of the dating rules when you are of Medicare age but if he wanted to come to my house I’d make us dinner. Was this a bad idea? Of course, but it had the potential of making me the dead star of my own true crime story which seemed especially good for my blog stats.

It was on a Saturday night last September when he arrived at my house with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers, and by the end of the night I knew that things in my life were going to be going in a different direction. They quickly did and there were aspects of it that were terrifying. When you have experienced a traumatic event in your life, it is difficult to recognize and accept happiness. I often felt like the floor beneath me was going to collapse and I’d be in free fall again. An unanswered text didn’t mean he was busy, it meant that he was dead somewhere and the police were on their way to tell me. It turns out that, like grief, moving forward with someone also requires a lot of emotional work.

Since that initial date, this lovely, kind man and I have cried together many times over our experiences of losing our spouses and how present each of them remains in our lives. We honor the sadness and the joy of our previous lives with enormous gratitude tinged occasionally with guilt for being happy. It is often overwhelming. “I think we are brave,” he said to me one night which made me cry. We are, and I have stopped worrying and wondering how long we’ll have until life has other plans. We have today.

Meet Michael. He works at the same medical center as Mark did, in the same building. He is a professor in the pathology department.

The light is blinding.

**Michael knew Mark during his years at the med center, although not well. He said he and his wife and Mark and I were at the same party once and we all talked but I have no recollection of it.**

*On April 17th, our mom’s long life and battle with dementia came to an end. Here is the eulogy I gave at her funeral.*

At the beginning of the year, I was in town for my uncle’s funeral and to see our mom at the facility where she has been living these past few years. On the way home, Ann said to me, “Have you started to write Mom’s eulogy yet because you know you’re going to be asked to do it?” I had not because the prospect of describing what it was like to have Gerry Werner as your mom was daunting. The prospect of not having Gerry Werner around even more so.

Our mom was tough – with six kids she had to be, lest the inmates take over the asylum, and Lord knows we tried. The boys once broke one of her plants playing hockey in the family room with a tennis ball – a plant she had nursed from a tiny log with a single leaf coming out of it. She was so proud of that plant and how big it had gotten and then those noggin heads whacked it in half. I thought that they were for sure, that time, going to the orphanage that Dad always threatened them with. Somehow they were saved from that fate but it was just one of a long list of transgressions where we collectively lied, stole, broke curfews, broke the mental health of a certain babysitter, dented cars, dented our heads, dented each other, excelled in school, failed in school, and broke the bank with Catholic school tuition and sports equipment. Though not our intent, I think every day we were a six-man wrecking crew trying to break that woman.

Though she was small she was mighty and we failed miserably. When we had a story to tell her about some mishap she would listen intently, nod, say, “Oh boy, that’s terrible,” then sigh and say as she walked away, “You know I wasn’t born yesterday.” On a Saturday afternoon when I was with a friend and had walked to K-Mart which Mom had strictly forbidden, I came home and she asked me why I was late. I told her we were at the playground at St. Jude’s and then realizing that a priest was at the church hearing confessions decided I should go before I headed home. That night at dinner Mom announced to the table that maybe my siblings should heed my actions and TAKE IT UPON THEMSELVES TO CONFESS THEIR MANY, MANY SINS. Everyone glared at me and after dinner Tom cornered me and said, “I don’t believe for one minute that you went to confession.” How did he know this? As soon as Tom got his drivers license, he and I would leave for church on Sunday morning, say “see you in an hour,” and drive straight to McDonalds for breakfast. Then he’d drive back to the church parking lot where I would hop out, run inside, grab a bulletin from one of the ushers, and check out who the priest was before we headed back home. Tom, most definitely, had the goods on me. The next day I went to Mom and folded like a card table to which she said, “Oh for crying out loud, Kathy, did you really think I believed you went to confession?”

We grew up, managed to stay out of the prison system, somehow got responsible, and Mom finally got to relax. Just when life was supposed to get easier Dad died and she became a widow far sooner than she should have. We all saw her more tenderly after that, as the woman who mothered us through so many trials was now facing her hardest. Like everything about her, though, she quietly and without fanfare wore her heartbreak with stunning grace. She did not complain, she did not want pity, she kept her sense of humor intact, she moved forward. She bought a new house where in no time she knew all of the neighbors, got a dog named, Duffy, who was her constant sidekick, sipped on afternoon wine, and watched most Cubs games. She could tell you about Cody on Sister Wives and ask how all those women could love that idiot. She said Adrienne Arpel who sold a skin care line on QVC had “work” done. “She’s gotta be a hundred years old,” Mom would say, “she’s not fooling anybody with that Aurora Borealis cream.” She was always cheerful whenever you called or stopped by. If, as one of her kids, you were mad at someone and told Mom she fiercely clenched that grudge right along with you. “How’s that idiot Mark works with,” she’d ask me every time I called, not once considering there was any other side but mine. If you were to ask any of her grandkids who they thought was her favorite they would all say, “Oh, it was definitely me,” because she had the uncanny ability to take an interest in their interests and make each one of them feel special.

If we could have had a single wish for our mom, it would be that her last years on earth would have been easier than they were. To watch the cruelty of her vibrant personality be slowly diminished as she searched for words, searched for recognition, or searched our faces felt like a slow drop off a cliff into the unknown. She was fiercely independent and at the end had to rely on help for everything. “Come on, Gerry Berry,” the afternoon aide said to her on that last night when she was giving her morphine and trying to get her to swallow. Her eyes never opened that time or any other, but every person that came in her room told her everything they were going to do to her to make her more comfortable. In the midst of such sadness, we were well aware that there were angels among us.

I once read a story about a man whose mother was in memory care for dementia. “Will this ever be over,” he asked the aide who said, “Why, honey, she’s got the dementia. She’s trying but she can’t find the right door.” Last Tuesday night our mom found the right door and on the other side was our dad, the girls she gave birth to who never took a breath, her mom and dad, her sister, her stepdad who raised her. Their favorite girl was finally home and though we will miss her until our very last day, she is exactly where she wanted to be.

And so, Grandma, Ger, Gerry, Gretchen, Mrs. Werner, G-Dawg, Aunt Gerry, Gerry Berry……we will mourn your loss and the incredible, generous life you lived. Will we be okay? You needn’t worry about us, Mom. We were loved and raised by you. We know exactly what direction to go from here.

Two weeks ago I traveled to Chicago to be with my mom who was in the end stages of dementia and her life. How my mom was still alive was a mystery to all of us as she has had many things happen to her in these past few years that should have been the end. Somehow, though, she always recovered. This time was different, and as I hurriedly pulled things out of the closet and drawers, the same thought kept repeating itself. What are you supposed to pack for your mother’s death?

I flew out in the morning, my sister picked me up at the airport, and we went right to see Mom. She was not awake, her breathing was shallow, her eyes closed, and along with one of my brothers and his wife and my other sister we sat vigil in her small room. Many, many thoughts were going through my mind as the minutes and then hours ticked by and a lot of them were ridiculous. I became obsessed with the fact that the only light on was an overhead one. I hate overhead lighting and kept eyeing the lamp on a table behind her – a lamp I bought her at least twenty years ago. Finally I got up to turn it on – it was not plugged in and it wasn’t near an outlet so I sat back down. I made a mental checklist of what I want at the end – a lamp or two on, classical music softly playing, a diffuser going that smells like spring, quiet conversation, and if it’s nice out the window cracked open just a bit. Basically like a well-scripted scene from a movie which isn’t at all how most deaths go. After awhile of sitting in my own agitation, I announced that we needed to turn the ceiling light off and find a plug for the table lamp. My sister found something to unplug, we turned the lamp on, and my therapist would have a field day with that one. Hint: I was trying to control something completely out of my control.

The day lingered. My sister left for a doctor’s appointment. Mom was trying to cough, something she had virtually no strength to do and distress covered her face. It broke me and I got up and kneeled next to her bed, rubbed her cheek, told her we were there and everyone was going to take care of her, that she needed to relax because it was almost time to see Dad. “I think she needs morphine,” I said, as if I know about such things. It was already on its way and it wasn’t long before she got her first dose. Her face relaxed in minutes and so did the rest of us. My brother and his wife went to get lunch, another brother arrived from Florida with his wife and son. My sister came back with her husband, my niece, her husband, and daughter came, my nephew and his fiancee. My mom had a lot of grandchildren, seventeen to be exact, and she was adored by every single one of them. As soon as they came in her room and saw her they sobbed which pretty much broke open the dam.

At one point I walked down the hallway where some of my siblings were gathered. We discussed a date for the funeral which was weird considering she was still alive. These things, though, need to be sorted out especially when you have a very large family scattered across the country. My oldest brother and I went to get dinner. We weren’t gone long – maybe thirty minutes and when we walked back into the room to tell everyone the food was there my sister-in-law (who is a nurse) said, “I think she’s gone.” She checked her pulse and for a few minutes you’d have thought we were all dead the way we just stood there in disbelief. Two aides came in and verified it and while there was never any hope that this was going to end differently, it still felt shocking to say our tearful and tender goodbyes to the woman who raised us all. “Thank you for everything, Grandma,” my nephew said to her and I felt like my legs were going to give out.

Earlier that day one of the residents came by Mom’s room so we could meet her dog. It was a stuffed animal tucked under her arm and one thing you learn when you’ve loved someone with dementia is that where they are is where you’d better get to, and so we petted it and asked the woman what his name was. She smiled the whole time and said he didn’t have a name yet but he would soon and off she went to show him to everyone else which she probably does a dozen times a day.

A few hours later the woman appeared again outside Mom’s room. On a small shelf in the hallway was an old rotary phone and she picked it up and started dialing. “Mary, what are you doing,” one of the aides asked when they walked by. “I’m calling my mother,” she said. “The phone doesn’t work,” he said and she put the receiver down, looked at him, and said, “Well, it did yesterday when I called her.”

She walked down the hall and I watched her as she made another loop with her stuffed dog tucked under her arm, her ever-present smile, a room crammed with love and tears a few feet away, and I knew that like her I’d have a hard time believing that my mom was gone when it seemed as though I just talked to her yesterday.

Last week I celebrated my birthday for the 67th time. It is a weird thing to be this age as underneath the senior discount, the wrinkles, and tired eyes is an undersized ten year old girl with a face full of freckles, an overbite, and hair her mother couldn’t get to lay down without a generous helping of Dippety Doo.

The day before my birthday, after cleaning and organizing the pantry after work, all I wanted to do was to take a hot bath with a glass of wine. That got put on hold after my daughter called to tell me her youngest was in the ER after days of throwing up. She wanted to join her husband and said, “It’s okay if you don’t want to, you can say no.” I have not forgotten how scary it is to have to take a sick baby to the hospital so I got in the car and drove over to watch the big kids. She got back after eleven, her husband still with the baby who was getting an IV, my sedate evening plans dashed.

The next day I ran errands, and as I was leaving the house, heard the sirens of a fire truck that sounded like it was getting closer and closer. I stood by my car door to see where it was going and watched as it turned down my street. We have a neighbor who has MS that we all look out for so when it didn’t stop at her house I let out a breath. Mary was okay. The truck instead stopped at the house of a man who has been rather reclusive. His parents lived in the house for decades and when they died he moved in. He’d wave on the rare occasions when he’d drive by in his truck but other than that he was rarely seen. The fire department didn’t act like it was an emergency and I assumed it was for a furnace check or something related.

I went about my day checking things off my list. I swung by my daughter’s house with lunch for me and her husband and rocked their sick bambino to sleep so his dad could take a work call. He fell fast asleep, and I gently lowered him into his crib and drove home. The police were at the house the fire department had been at earlier and the next-door neighbor was outside. I walked over to ask him what happened, and he told me that when he hadn’t seen Steve’s truck move for a few days he got worried. He checked his front door camera to verify and sure enough he was correct – the truck had not left the driveway for three days. He went in the unlocked front door and found Steve dead on the floor upstairs. “I called 9-1-1,” he said, “and they told me they’d send someone right over but, in the meantime, said to roll him on his back.” I told them, “He’s dead. There’s no point in doing that.” This was not the story I imagined and as we were talking my neighbor said, “Looks like they’re taking him out now,” as a stretcher went down the stairs, the reclusive neighbor covered with a sheet and headed to the morgue.

Late that afternoon I got a text from my son offering me dinner. I declined and texted DO NOT FEEL GUILTY. I took my delayed hot bath with a glass of wine and was in bed by 9:30 with a book and my emotional support heating pad. The next day I woke to my chirping alarm, rolled on to my back, and took the first breath of the day. My immediate thought was what a gift the days before had been – to watch big kids and rock sick ones, to clean a pantry and run errands, to love and be loved by your people. There have been many recent years when I wished for none of it, when I was engulfed by loneliness and sadness, but that little girl with the freckles, overbite, and wild hair always had to chime in with her ever optimistic, “Happy birthday to us!!! This is the day Mom makes us our favorite dinner and bakes us a cake.”

I am thankful that little girl still weighs in. As for her mom, she would spend another day in memory care not knowing she had a daughter who had a birthday or that she had two other daughters and three sons. But none of us have forgotten how much she loved the little and grown up versions of us extra special on our birthdays.

Somewhere I think there’s a signed agreement that says we aren’t allowed to waste that.

If you walked through the door of my house, I could easily count for you the number of pieces bought new on the first floor. The total is five. Everything else has come to me through the divine intervention of antique stores, thrift stores, estate sales, the curb, friends wanting to unload something, or Craigslist.

Though he would brag to others about my ability to pull things together in the house, my scavenging made Mark crazy. The minute I would tell him that I saw something on Craigslist that I thought we should look at, he’d get really excited and say something supportive like, “Oh for fuck’s sake.” I ignored his lack of enthusiasm, and for the most part tried to keep him out of the loop for the sake of staying married. One time I went to look at something an older man was selling and he asked if I wanted to take a look at the stuff in his garage so I did. Then he asked me if I wanted to see his vintage pieces in the basement and I did that too. When I told Mark he couldn’t believe I would do that. While not one of my brighter ideas, Craig Lister was at least thirty years older than me with a gimpy leg so I figured I had a better than average chance of outrunning him if he tried to kill me. But after that I kept my shopping within a five mile area thinking that the further from home I wandered the less chance my husband had of finding me in the kind of dumpster I shopped from.

Life in the secondhand lane was cheap and abundant until estate sales and thrift stores got wind of the profits that could be made from reselling. Prices went up, sales became competitive, the fun was being drained. Since I didn’t need anything I took a sabbatical until along came Facebook Marketplace and it was everything a girl like me needed. I was like a an old lady sipping on her rum and Coke, her oxygen tank parked behind her, and pulling the lever on a slot machine. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled hoping to score and I did – an antique dining room table, a vintage wicker table, an iron table with a marble top, an old green, wicker planter. I was hooked and would brag about my finds like they were gold. Inevitably, some Nervous Nelly would ask if it was smart to go into a stranger’s house to buy something. Most of the transactions were done in a public space or bought sight unseen, money sent via Venmo, and picked up at your convenience, so, no, I was never scared off from buying something I didn’t need.

But I ran out of things to buy so I’d listen to friends tell me what they were looking for and I appointed myself as their personal shopper. Did they ask me for this service? No. Did they want someone else’s castoff? Probably not. Did it stop me? Duh. I’d peruse the Marketplace over and over every day. I’d screenshot sofas, drapes, plants, chairs. I sent my daughter a screenshot of a dresser for her baby boy’s room and the next day it was in his room. Sometimes I’d get feeback. It’s good but I don’t think that leather is decent. This from my interior designer son. So picky. Good thing I knew all about a good, used sofa. After a long time of being a picker and sending screenshots without my advice being heeded it occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t being helpful at all. Maybe people didn’t want secondhand crap and if they did maybe they were capable of shopping for it themselves. Like a mother sending her last off to college, I realized I was no longer needed on a daily basis.

It. Was. Gut. Wrenching.

I filled my time with stupid stuff like going to my job and working on my personal growth. I arranged the shoes in my closet in color order, organized my junk drawer, got a carousel for my makeup and separated the eye liners from the lip liners then spun it over and over out of boredom. I had lost my purpose. On a whim one day after work, a Tuesday when seniors get 30% and where they say to me, “You can’t possibly be a senior,” which I totally bought into until I heard the same thing said to someone pushing a walker, I went shopping. For what I do not know. Like Target, the thrift store tells you why you’re there when it’s below zero and snowing. And like the Road To Oz, I followed the yellow brick road to the back of the store where there was the sweetest old chair – high backed, apple green with olive edging, a pleated skirt around her. I died. The color, the detail. Then I looked at the price tag – $18.99 and I hefted that baby atop a cart, wheeled her to the front, and loaded her up.

I drove around with it a few days until I called my friend and said I had a present for her. We unloaded it from my car and took it inside her house. Her vacuum was out and she gave it a quick cleaning and we put it in place. “I love it,” she said and I dabbed my watery, proud eyes.

I was back and better than ever.

The other day on the way to work a dead bird was on the side of the road. It looked like a baby owl but as I had never seen that before I wasn’t entirely sure. It was at the corner of a well-traveled road where, at least in the morning, many cars run the red light – not exactly a good place to slow down for a better look. The next day I was stopped at the light and saw for myself that it was indeed a baby owl. My stomach flipped as those kinds of things remind me too much of Mark’s death and people driving to work – unbeknownst to them that day that someone ended their life a few feet from the road they were traveling.

At the same time as this was unfolding on my morning drive, my brother was helping our uncle who he has cared for in innumerable ways over the last few years. His health has been declining and he needed to go into assisted living. My brother was at his apartment trying to figure out what to move to his new place while my uncle was at church. There was a commotion in the parking lot and it turned out that on his return my uncle fell backwards going into the building and his head hit the pavement. He was taken by ambulance to the local hospital and then transported to another hospital in Chicago that could better manage the severity of his head injury after having a seizure at the first one.

There was talk of DNR orders and next of kin and my brother handling all of it in the middle of the night from one hospital to the next. Days later my uncle was taken off life support and died shortly after. While we all knew this was coming the wave of sadness I felt hearing the news surprised me. If ever there was a person who deserved far more in life than he ever got it was my dad’s youngest brother. Whenever he saw me he always said, “How are you, honey?”, kissed my cheek, and bear-hugged me. My sisters, sister-in-laws, and kids would say the same thing. When Mark died he called me and said, “I sure loved the two of you together,” and it was the most simple and beautiful expression of loss that anyone said to me.

A few days later a friend texted me that her dad died. When my own dad died we were young mothers living a few doors down from each other in Maryland. She never met my dad and yet listened to my heartbreak over and over, from his cancer reoccurance, to my long stays in Illinois to help out, to his death three weeks before Will was born. I have always felt indebted to her for that, then our husbands died within two weeks of each other and the bond that formed so many years earlier became even stronger.

Last week a dear friend notified our close-knit group that her husband had died and, me, who has lived this, was at a loss for words. Death comes in threes they always say, and this third one was especially painful. I don’t want any of my friends to outlive their husbands and yet that has happened again and again. And this husband? He was kind and good, a joy to interact with every single time we’d all be together and the pain of his loss cuts deep.

When Mark died what I needed most was someone to listen to my pain and disbelief but everyone around me wanted to fix the unfixable. I understand that, I understand the anger at the unfairness, I understand that you have to get comfortable sitting in the dark before you can look for the light. My friend and I used to shake our fists and broken hearts at the universe and demand an end date to the mourning when our lives disintegrated before our very eyes. How naive that seems now, to think that missing someone you loved has a best buy date.

A few days after I had first seen the dead owl it was gone. Thank god, I thought, someone took care of it and put him back upon the earth to which he will return. I wondered if the mother owl screamed when it happened, if she felt better that her baby was off the road where it’s spotted dead feathers wouldn’t ruffle with every passing car, if she stared into the blackness of a cold, winter night and wondered what comes next when death comes sweeping in for one of your own.

Mark’s favorite holiday was Thanksgiving – the bigger the table the better. For all of us, the last one he was alive was our most memorable. It would be the first one we would be celebrating without Mallory who had moved to California and had to work that day. At my sister’s house the night before in walked Mal who had bartered with someone to take her shifts after my younger sister arranged and paid for her to fly home. We jumped up and screamed when they came in the door, Mark’s eyes filled with tears. That was also the year my mom was not yet in the abyss of dementia and my brother and his wife flew in from Las Vegas. We were so happy that weekend, never knowing it would be drastically different the following year.

In these last few months there has been a young mom I’ve gotten to know whose story of loss is so similar to mine it catches my breath. I want to scoop her up and cradle her like the broken bird she is and I was five years ago. I want to promise her that one day things will get better, but if someone had said that to me in the early months following Mark’s death I never would have believed them. She will have to lead herself and her young daughters to light, the steps forward so incremental they can’t even be measured. On the day of the year designated for family and thankfulness that feels like an impossible task.

This year our table will look a bit different. I’m not sure what healed is and whether I will ever be completely there, but I am happy which for so long I wanted to believe was possible while never actually buying into it. One day I will write about how that came about, how the stars aligned in the most incredible way, and you will think I made the whole thing up. Like other times over these past few years, I keep asking myself, “Is this real?”

I think the most grateful people in life are the ones who have suffered tremendous loss. They are the ones at the Thanksgiving table who know there is no guarantee that the same people will be there next year. They act accordingly, taking in every detail and putting it in the bank, on-their-knees thankful for every life preserver that was thrown their way when the dinner in front of them on Thanksgiving Day looked like a heaping plate of loss.

When I talked to some writer friends about turning this into a book one day, one of them said, “It needs to have a happy ending.” There was some disagreement about that, about why things only feel complete when there’s a happy ending. I might have been the one pushing back the most on that idea. It has been hard to allow new things to come into my life when both of my hands were tightly clutching what used to be. But I never let go of hope and one day it said to me, “You can unclench your fingers and set those things down now. I am here. You are going to be okay,” and I grabbed the ring and allowed myself to drift towards something new.

When I was a little girl, a cat gave birth to kittens underneath the shed at the back of the yard where my siblings and I grew up. Our mom discovered the litter and let us bring them into the garage. We were obsessed with these newborn cats, held them, chased them, squeezed them until our arms were covered in scratches, and then go crying to Mom with our bloody forearms. After a thousand times of her telling us to leave them alone, she’d had enough and told us that all the cats were going to a shelter. We begged her to let us keep them but she was sick of nursing our scratches and said that we were not a cat family.

Mark, on the other hand, was from a cat family and it wasn’t long into our marriage that we went to the shelter and adopted one, followed by a dog for me. After that there was a parade of animals that came into our home. When two of our cats died fairly close to one another, we got another cat from the shelter – a tabby that we instantly fell in love with. On a Sunday morning while walking her dog, our neighbor found him on the side of the road across the street from our house. He likely had been hit by a car and we were heartsick he was gone from our lives so soon.

As Mark had an accomplice in Mallory, they were in cahoots to get another cat right away. We had a wedding coming up and I was adamant that there would be no new pets until the wedding was over. Maggie and Nate tied the knot on a Saturday, we had family over for breakfast on Sunday morning, and when everyone headed out of town Mark said, “Okay, we ready to go to the shelter now?” I thought he had to be kidding – we were exhausted – but Mal got her shoes and said, “I’m ready!” and I went to keep some control over the situation.

On the way there I said, “You know this is only a looking expedition to see what’s available, right? We don’t have to actually get a cat today,” and they nodded and I already knew the odds were stacked against me. We went in, signed some paperwork to look around, and went cat shopping. “Remember,” I said, “ONLY ONE!! WE ARE ONLY GETTING ONE CAT,” and I don’t even know why I bothered because nobody was listening to me.

One by one we looked at the cats, those two ten steps ahead of me, and they came across a gray and white one named Pip. Mal loved him, Mark said, “Pip, pip, hooray.” They gave me a hard sell and I asked if maybe we should look around some more but they had made their decision. We were about to take home our one new cat when Mark and Mal found out that the cat next to Pip was his brother, Francis. Mark pulled me aside and said, “I don’t think we can leave a brother behind,” and I said, “Oh my god, will you stop? This isn’t the History Channel and he isn’t in the infantry. We’re talking about a cat.” He sighed and said to Mal, “Mom says no to two cats, we gotta leave the brother behind.” I told him I knew exactly what he was doing and said, “We had an agreement.” “Well, actually,” Mark said, “we didn’t agree to anything,” and then he said, “We’ll call him Frank. Anybody calls him Francis and we’ll kill them,” and pretty soon I’m giggling over my funny husband and he’s motioning to the shelter employees that we’ll take the brothers and all of a sudden I’m realizing I’ve been played.

We brought them home and while Pip was needy and in your face all the time, Frank hung out all over the neighborhood. He could get into our neighbor’s screened porch through their dog door and in the summer went over there most afternoons for a nap. One time they found him napping in their bathtub. Sometimes he’d be gone for days and we found out that on the other side of the creek was a house that fed him so if he didn’t like the choices here he’d head over to their place.

When Mark died, Frank started following me around the neighborhood. If my neighbors were sitting outside and I decided to join them, Frank followed me the whole way. I’d tell him I WAS FINE and he needed to go home because while he patrolled my end of the street, Bootsy owned the middle and wasn’t fond of this gang banger showing up on his turf. The two of them would hiss at each other, Bootsy livid at the audacity, but Frank never left. He’d sit in the driveway waiting for me and when I headed back home he’d be ahead of me, looking over his shoulder to make sure I was still following him.

Last month, I picked Frank up to put some flea medicine on him and could feel every vertebrae in his back when I ran my hand down him. He was always a big cat and by appearances he still looked big but something was going on. The next day I couldn’t find him and Maggie came by and helped me look for him. A little while later I spotted him on the patio laying in the shade. I brought him some water and he lifted his head and drank a bit. When the kids came over for dinner I told them I thought Frank was dying and that I wanted him inside. There were other cats that came around, along with the occasional possum and raccoon. Frank had no fight in him and I didn’t want him outside where he might get hurt. He let me pick him up and bring him onto the screened porch where we petted him and cried at the thought of our big, bad Frank weak and struggling.

If you want to know if I ever get mad at Mark, this would be one of those times. All of our cats died at home and Mark nursed them to the end. He always seemed to know what to do, I had no idea. The next day I put Frank in a box with the intent of going to the vet hospital. I didn’t even make it a block. For a cat that was very sick and weak he had plenty of energy left to go absolutely nuts in the car. I came home and brought him upstairs. During the night I checked on him. He was under the bed so I grabbed a pillow and laid on the floor with him. When I woke up in the morning I was shocked that he was still alive. Will brought over a pet carrier, I arrived at the vet first thing in the morning and cried the minute we walked in the door. “He’s probably got twisted intestines,” they said to me but I knew our Frankie Boy was on his way out.

He went fast after that – so fast that the original plan to bring him to a little room for me to hold while they administered the meds had to be changed. They led me back to their ICU where he was barely alive. “He wasn’t exactly affectionate,” I told the vet, “so when he jumped on you and started purring it was really a big deal.” This poor vet who probably sees this too many times a day waited for me to give the okay. I petted Frank on the head, scratched behind his ears, told him he was the best mouser we ever had, and then it was over. I cried during all of it, on the way home, most of that day. Then I had to call Mallory and tell her and we both cried.

The house has become eerily quiet for a cat who preferred roaming the neighborhood to being inside. Pip is still here and still like the Real Housewives of Felines, drunk with neediness. I miss our Frankie Boy and his non-chalant bad assery in my life more than I ever thought possible.

Isn’t it funny how if you let your guard down, people can teach you how to cast a wider net and love the unexpected?

If there was ever a week that checked every box of emotions, the most recent one would have been it. Highs, lows, disappointment, and the finale on Saturday a car that decided to join me in the lane I was driving in and then get mad at me for not getting out of his way.

Midweek I met a friend for happy hour. I should have cancelled but I’d already cancelled once so I met her at a packed restaurant where everything felt like too much. I told her how my week started by seeing Beyonce with my kids on Sunday night only to get a text before the concert started that made me want to go home and cry. She listened and we drank wine until I had to cut our visit short because I told another friend I would take a breathwork class with her. I didn’t want to go to that either but she has been my hairdresser and dear friend for nearly twenty years. This spring she got a virus which led to a diagnosis of Guillian Barre Syndrome and has been unable to feel her hands or feet since. There went her career, her confidence, and her stability until her nerves repair themselves which could take 1-2 years. We have told each other the most intimate details of our lives, so when Amy told me she thought a Breathwork class might be good for me I listened even though I didn’t have a clue what it was about.

We met at the yoga studio she is working at now because her friend who owns it needed someone to work the front desk and Amy is able to use a computer. She was so happy I actually showed up for the class as did her son who I have heard about for years. The three of us settled on mats in the front row which I immediately disliked because it makes me think I’m going to be called upon to answer a question to something I should know but don’t because instead of paying attention I was taking a trip to LaLaLand. We would stay on the floor throughout with a blanket on, a lavender-scented eye mask to completely darken the room, and listening to the rhythm of our own breathing.

In a very quiet and soothing voice, the instructor set the mood by saying, “Relax your forehead, your eyes, your jaw,” and I was concentrating way too hard on all of that until a “Relax your ears,” and I was like now you’re just making shit up because there’s no such thing as relaxing your ears. Then I checked myself into LaLaLand and imagined a bunch of witchy healers with dreadlocks in their gypsy robes reeking of patchouli sitting around a campfire saying, “I know you guys!!! What if we say to relax your back molars,” and everybody laughs hysterically, writes it in their notebooks with an owl feather dipped in ink, and passes a joint and a jug of Gallo wine around the circle.

I stayed on the floor not relaxing as we went through different kinds of breaths until I decided I needed to refocus because I’m pretty certain I barely breathe all day. I’m upright and functioning but that’s more due to coffee, a handful of Hot Tamales, and a lot of sighing which I’m told is not the same as breathing. The instructor had a voice like butter and I listened and took deep breaths in and swooshed them out over and over, convinced that I am an utter failure at breathing. This went on for nearly an hour, my chest moving up and down, near constant trivial chatter inside my own head, and me wondering if it would be rude to take my eye mask off, sit up, and look at the clock because I’m feeling trapped by the sound of my own breath.

She walks us to the end of our class, our breathing slows down, it is back to a steady in and out, the room is quiet, and she tells us to place our hand on our heart. We say sweet nothings to it which feels awkward, and then she says, “As your hand is on your heart, make a vow that as the days go by you will not forget to be more tender with it,” and I take those words in and turn them over and over.

I will be more tender with you.

I willl be more tender with you.

I will be more tender with you until I want to sob because I am more tender towards my dead husband’s heart than my own, the one that has survived the unimagineable, the one that clings to hope, the one that kept a broken family intact, the one still very much alive, beating, and trying to breathe .