Category: Uncategorized

Before Mark’s death, I was a frequent contestant in the If That Were To Happen Me game. This is where someone throws out a tidbit of a life event and you fill in the blank. Sometimes it could be fun like spending mega millions from a lottery win or living abroad for a year. The food! The wine! The scenery!

More often than not, though, it is a more dire circumstance – death of a spouse, death of a child, a devastating diagnosis, making a decision about life support, an aging parent who cannot safely live on their own, an unwanted divorce, someone you love who is an addict, a fractured relationship beyond repair. The only rule of the game is that you have zero life experience with said topic which makes it obvious that you know exactly what the next right thing is to do. But what happens when life does hand you one of those circumstances, when you can no longer play the game you were so good at when nothing was at stake?

The summer Mark died was the same summer a dear friend’s husband was losing his life to cancer. They were taking a family vacation a few hours away from us and we drove down on a Sunday to meet them for the day. All of it was so normal – the conversations, the laughter, the ease of being with long-time friends, and yet crushingly sad. How I would glance at Jim and plead with the universe that he was too good to take. How I wanted to take him aside and promise him that I would be there for his wife, but every practiced conversation in my head got stuck in my throat. Little did I know then that my own husband was going to beat him to the other side by eleven days.

Three weeks after that visit there would be a horrific boating accident on the same lake we had been on when a duck boat would venture out in questionable weather that quickly became life threatening. Seventeen people on board would die, five of them children, who became trapped inside the boat. One woman who managed to escape with her nephew lost nine family members that day. The story was national news for many days and I watched in horror. We were just there. Five children? An entire family gone? How is this possible? I texted Carla. Did you see this? Can you even imagine? Two months later I would learn in my own life that everything can change in the blink of an eye and there is no going back from the edge of that.

We are all lousy contestants in the game of pretending we would know exactly what to do when life upends all that we cherish, though, we like to believe that is not the case. The chasm between what if and what now is too big to cross with any certainty save for those who got pushed to the side that was just fiction until it wasn’t.

And on that side the only thing we have figured out is that we are here and we have keep going.

On the month each year that is devoted to the awareness and prevention of suicide, the irony of my story is that it’s the same month my husband ended his life. Mark’s story is so painful for all of us who loved him that it has been, to date, daunting to even try to talk about prevention without enormous guilt for what was out of our control.

When you are suddenly thrust into the club whose name is only spoken in a whisper, you find out quickly that you have plenty of company. Both of my sisters have had family members on their spouse’s side that died by their own hand. While working in the back room of a retail job I had after Mark died, a coworker who heard about my story confided to me that her sister died by suicide, another an ex-boyfriend, the sons of two dear friends – one before Mark and the other after. The list is long and always heartbreaking.

I only have my own experience and am not qualified to make public service announcements, but I do have some thoughts regarding changes I wish for around discussions about suicide. First, please please please stop saying committed suicide. While there are all kinds of self-inflicted causes of death, there is no other kind where the word committed precedes it. Saying died by suicide feels far less shameful, and for someone in my shoes, like you are not judging or casting scorn on the death of someone whose back story and struggles you do not know.

Secondly, mimicking shooting yourself in the head, slitting your wrists, or any number of ways a person can die by suicide is not funny. There are far more people who have lived in the aftermath of these kinds of deaths than you can imagine- family, acquaintenances, strangers, and first responders to name a few. The horror of losing someone you love in that manner is a trauma shared by people who were merely going about their day or doing their job. It is painful to see it displayed as a joke. At the very least know your audience.

Third, if you love someone who is struggling with their mental health help them get professional counseling. After Mark’s death I felt nagged into seeing a therapist but had no idea who to contact nor the energy to follow through. Months later I finally reached out to a friend who worked in student counseling at the same medical center as Mark and her boss gave me a name. I went into a conference room at work and my shaking hands could barely push each number. When someone actually answered I immediately felt like I was going to throw up. In Mark’s case, casting him out to navigate finding the right therapist was unsustainable given his demons and the pain of growing up in a family that never acknowledged their own or that they passed them down to their two kids. In my case, I desperately needed help finding someone who specialized in grief. If anyone would have offered to do some homework on my behalf it would have helped immensely.

Finally, there’s this story. Many years ago Mallory was working at a restaurant during her college years and was at the hostess stand wiping off menus. One of the other hosts arrived for his shift and she started chatting with him. He was usually quiet and introverted and she was hoping to get him to open up a bit or at the very least make him laugh. Sometime later he told her that he had decided that he was going to kill himself later that day but that she seemed like she really cared how he was doing so he decided to stay.

Not every story like that ends happily but it is a stunning example of the power each of us have to prevent the tragedy my beautiful family (and so many others) have lived with for years. We really can change the trajectory of someone’s life when we care enough to carry their tender heart in the safety of our hands for a brief moment.

For many, many years in the shopping center in my neighborhood was a family owned drug store. It carried everything you could imagine including an interesting makeup section. I was working at a women’s clothing store around the corner when a customer told me about a moisturizer they carried. “It’s made by a small company and nobody else in town carries it. It’s a steal at $25 – go get yourself some. You won’t regret it.” That’s how I got to know the manager of the cosmetics department who gave me the details of that product along with many others that they carried. At night an older woman took over that section. She was close to 90, still worked full-time, and always the later shift because she was a night owl. “Soon as I get off here, honey,” she said to me one night, “I head home, stop at QuikTrip and get myself a nice big soda, and then do my crossword puzzles.” If you lived close by (they checked your license) and were sick the pharmacists would fill one bottle a year of cough syrup with codeine without a prescription. It was quite the perk.

Several years ago and in what seemed abruptly, the drug store closed. At the time I was working at an art museum and was talking to the gift shop manager about it. She told me that she worked there with the manager I had gotten to know and that they both started in high school. “She never left that job,” she told me, “it’s the only place she has ever worked.”

Last month a grocery store nearby announced that it would be closing. I used to go there all the time and was familiar with many of the employees. There was a bagger who had been there for years who hated bagging. One time when I was checking out he said that he had to go in the parking lot to corral carts. The cashier said to him, “No you’re not. You just did that. You’re going to stay here and bag this lady’s groceries,” which made him furious. There was another cashier who nearly always worked the express checkout near the front door and talked to every person who walked through. Her greetings were so genuine that you couldn’t help but immediately like her and look forward to seeing her. She died suddenly and you could feel the sadness of her coworkers for months. Her death made the local news, her photograph was displayed near the register she always worked, and a donation fund was set up for her surviving son.

After the store made the announcement that they were closing I stopped in twice. The butchers were mostly absent and there were no stockers cutting open boxes and filling the shelves. It had the feel of a place whose time had passed. At the same time a clothing store I loved announced that they were closing. I had shopped there many times – mostly when things were on sale as it was expensive. I was familiar with a few of the people who worked there. I talked to one of the sales associates about it, how closing a store could be emotional as customers come to pay their condolences as much as shop the deals. At some point you just want it to be over.

At work our usual mailman hasn’t been doing the route and everyone wants to know if he has been replaced. The new guy has no idea. The dropoff of packages from the UPS man are completely different when our regular guy is on vacation. I love our mailman at the house – he is so friendly, looks like he could be in ZZ Top, and who I am leery of being replaced. The butchers at the grocery store nearby ask, “Chicken again,” when I walk up to the counter. Michael said that when he goes to the coffee shop in his building they start filling his order when they see him coming.

I’ve been walking in the park earlier than usual and have recently come across an older woman using a walker as she traverses the path. As it has gotten a bit cooler in the morning, she is there wearing long pants, a sweatshirt, and knit cap on her head. The other day I started talking to her. She told me where she lived, that she and her husband bought the house she’s been in for decades because it was within walking distance of the Catholic school her son went to. He was afraid of the bus so they fixed that problem by moving close enough that he never needed to ride a school bus again. “I decided I needed to start moving more,” she told me, “so every day I’m trying to make it over here and am meeting the nicest people.” “Oh yes,” I told her. “I’ve been walking this park for years and there are lots of regulars here.”

Seeing her these past two weeks has been the highlight of my mornings because she reminds me so much of my mom who used to walk several times a day. I want to tell her that but I also don’t want to scare her off so I head out, hope I run into her, and wish on the morning sun that the other regulars in my life whose brief and steady presence I took for granted have all landed on their feet.

Dear Mark,

This week marks seven years since you died. In the early years after your death, I used to say that it felt like you were here yesterday and a thousand years ago. Now it only seems like the latter. I have recently been following the online account of a man who lost his husband a few months ago. I recognize the raw and unrelenting pain he has of losing his partner. I think anyone who has lived through that, regardless of the years that have passed, can attest to the fact that the pain can surface to the top very easily. I often want to reply to his stories – to say that somehow things start to get better, that grief lessens its clutch. I never do, though, because how do you tell someone that it really never ends, that you slowly manage to fill in the space around you until it no longer feels like it’s going to kill you.

The world of science, your world that you loved so much, has been decimated. I told the kids that even though it sounds horrible to say out loud I am glad you aren’t around to witness what is happening. Charlatans you would call them, and they are even worse than that. Michael and many, many others are fighting the good fight day after day but everything that has been done will take decades to undo. I miss your calm explanations of how science research works and how you could counter most arguments with facts readily at your disposal. Ever since Covid people rely on that one high school chemistry class they took in high school and YouTube hacks for their information. The ignorance is laughable except when it’s your life’s work. If you were here, it would break your heart.

Yesterday I was in the backyard at the house looking to see what plants I could find to move over to mine and Michael’s. Lo and behold there were morning glorys growing. After you died I never could get them to grow again and there they were this year – bright and happy and tangled around the roses.

Like you, Mark, still tangled in the lives of me, our kids, and everyone who loved you. Your death will reverberate forever but for what seems like a minute I could call you mine. That was my favorite part.

love,
k.

****************************

Dad,

The days after you passed were the darkest, coldest days of my life. One of those days was rainy and gloomy. I looked out the window and saw life carrying on and something caught my eye. The hummingbirds were braving the heavy rain and flocking to the feeder. Seeing one always feels like a rare occurrence and on that day it felt like a sign from you – a way to freeze the moment and breathe.

As the years have gone by I often think about my future. What does it look like? Who will I be? In those questions there is always another one that follows. What would it look like if you were here? Where would you be?

My future became a blur this past year and I’ve had to rethink everything and rewrite what it looks like. But I’ve rebuilt myself and refilled the hummingbird feeder. At first it took awhile for them to come back. Now I see them almost every day, and when I see the hummingbird I instantly stop and watch – putting my future on hold for just a moment to be with you.

Will

Last month Michael and I went away for a few days. Nearly all of the trips we have taken since we met have been work related for him so we decided that maybe a long weekend not structured around a meeting would feel more like getting away. Our criteria in picking a place was that it had to be cooler than the Midwest and near water. Bar Harbor, Maine won because of its proximity to Acadia National Park. Our first full day there we walked to town and down to the waterfront, went to a bookstore and touristy shops, had lunch, and wandered.

Prior to going, I had contacted Mark’s first boss in the science world – the young upstart professor who recruited him to work in his lab and guided him to a PhD. I knew he and his wife had been going to Maine every summer for decades and it seemed crazy to be in the same town as them and not reach out. It took a bit to be able to get a hold of them but when I did we had a tentative plan to meet for a drink. As regulars in the area, they suggested a place to go that was just outside of Bar Harbor.

“Try to get a table outside,” they said, and there we were on a lovely Saturday night overlooking the water with, Steve, who I last saw six years ago and his wife, Mary, who I had last seen 38 years ago. It turned out to be an easy conversation between three scientists and me – much of it around the current state of affairs with funding being slashed, the morale amongst students and junior faculty, and finding a way through the mess.

When that had been hashed out, they asked what we were going to be doing the following day. With the exception of going to Acadia, we never had a plan for any day of this trip. Being near water and nature was all we needed but they were clearly planners and we waffled. Mary then asked, “What do you like to do for fun? Do you like to hike? Bike?”

What do we like to do for fun?? I had no idea how to answer that except to say that people like me don’t have fun. We worriers can find a hundred reasons why either of those activities could lead to death. I faked it, though, and went with the hiking thing because everybody says they hike because everybody thinks it sounds cool. They had a lot of suggestions and I listened and nodded like a badass with a sturdy pair of Merrells and a CamelBack.

The next day Michael and I had breakfast, went to an antique store, then lunch, and headed back to our inn. A few blocks away was a sand bar that every day during low tide you can walk across to one of the islands off of Bar Harbor. There are warnings to pay attention to the tide because when it rises the sand bar disappears and you could be stuck on the wrong side until the next day and low tide.

We had gone there on our first day and I wanted to return. The sand bar is home to thousands and thousands of rocks of all sizes – most covered with barnacles. I loved them and wanted to bring some home so we headed over there and I began my rock hunt. This time, though, we walked across to the other side and though we were in no danger of being stranded there, my anxiety at the thought of it was off the meter. I had visions of being marooned, of weird birds pecking at my head all night, and mostly not getting back to our inn in time for their fresh baked coffee cake and locally brewed coffee. I shut that down (thanks anxiety meds!) and then hunted, picked up and saved, picked up and tossed, gave a yeah or nay to ones Michael found, and said more than once, “If I lived here I’d come with a front loader and get some of these huge ones for my garden.” We worked our way across the sandbar and filled a small backpack with the keepers.

The next day we crammed our rocks into our carry ons and suitcases and headed to the airport. Remember when Southwest let you check one bag for free? Well, they don’t anymore and my little rock haul cost $70. When we got home I unwrapped them along with the shells I picked up and thought it was a little crazy. But I had the same idea in Ireland, the beach a few years ago in Gulf Shores, the beaches in Florida more than once, and several national parks.

I am a long-time admirer of fun people who seek the next thrilling experience throughout their life. I love seeing their social media posts and photos. More often than not I want to be one of them, but every day I look at my dumb bowl of rocks and shells and remember where all of them came in case anyone asks.

Some adventures are a whisper.

When Michael’s new home was finished and closed on, he was moving from an apartment he had lived in for a few months, emptying a storage unit and moving the contents, and continuing to work. He had been juggling a lot for many months and I offered to unpack some of his things on my days off.

Much of his belongings had been sold in an estate sale. The things he wanted to keep from the house he and his wife, Marlene, had lived in for years was packed with the help of his sisters. Both of them would put professional movers to shame. There wasn’t a single thing broken – everything carefully wrapped in paper, bubble wrap, or both.

In the empty house during the cold and overcast days of December, I opened the boxes marked Kitchen, upwrapped every piece, and then gathered everything on the island until I had amassed all the wine glasses, all the plates, all the pots, the silverware. Then I would open drawers and cabinets and figure out where everything should go. The daily things next to the stove and the things used less higher up in the cabinets. The house was deathly quiet with no tv or music to distract – only me and the contents of a kitchen from a woman who had loved and built a life with the same man as me. It was unnverving, sad, and surreal.

When Michael came home he was apologetic. “We don’t have to keep any of this,” he said, “we can get all new stuff if you want.” It would be months later before I moved in so that didn’t seem like a logical decision. “It’s fine,” I said, thinking that him seeing the things of a life he no longer had in a kitchen with someone else in it had to be even more unnerving, sad, and surreal.

I moved in during late spring and added my own things, but much of what we use every day are things Marlene bought. She had very good taste. The dishes I reach for over and over are classic blue and white. There is a panini maker that had never been used. I always longed for a Le Creuset dutch oven but could never bring myself to pay for one. In the boxes I unpacked was an orange one that I have used many times. There is a rice maker, a Cuisinart toaster oven/air fryer, and spices that I have never used. All the belongings of another woman’s kitchen.

In this new life there are many times I think I don’t deserve any of this. Times when I look at this house and know this came to be because of what Michael and Marlene built not Mark and Kathy.

But when my grandson has a soccer game it is Michael and I that sit and cheer from the sidelines. When my granddaughter had a piano recital we sat next to each other watching her. On Sundays my kids come for dinner. When they leave all three of my grandkids hug us goodbye, often running towards Michael with outstretched arms. Children that are the result of a life Mark and Kathy built not Michael and Marlene.

Last month the two of us took a short trip to Maine. We have been using a car service to go to the airport whenever we leave town and have gotten to know the driver. He was very chatty on this last trip and told us about all the hobbies he dabbles in. Some we knew about but this time he told us about his love of biking and how he has taught himself how to sew and now alters his own clothes. Later Michael said to me, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that Robbie loves doing the same things as our late spouses? Marlene with the sewing and Mark with the biking?”

There are many things that feel foreign to both of us and probably always will, but then there is this driver who showed up on our driveway shining light and unbridled enthusiasm on what we thought we had lost.

If you were to lose someone you dearly loved tomorrow I would tell you that the veil between here and there is as slim as the eye of a needle. Time after time it beckons you to look through it, and when you do you could swear that everyone you ever loved has never left you.

My childhood memories of my mom during the summer are of her being miserably hot for the entirety of it. At no time did I ever hear her declare a love for that season – she was an unabashed fan of winter. Eventually her and Dad got a window unit air conditioner for the family room and since that was also where the washer and dryer were that’s where she would be most of the day. At night we would go to sleep with the windows open and the attic fan cooling us off like old-timers.

Summer temperatures back then were not as high as they are now but there were also very few homes that had central air conditioning. Being outside during the day under the shade of a tree was a far better option than being inside the stifling house. Now the climate has heated up and what has been inherited and brewing for years has come to fruition.

I am my mother’s daughter. I hate summer.

While I’m surrounded by summer lovers, I am a stewing in my own sweat waiting impatiently for a predicted cool front to move through. When it finally does and the temperature drops four degrees and the humidity level goes from 69% to 63% I AM APPALLED. A cold front? That’s a why-you-playing-me front. I want that Lake Michigan thunder and lighting show that rattles the house, keeps you up half the night, drops the temperature thirty degrees, makes you grab a sweatshirt the minute you wake up, and has your mom joyfully saying over a cup of steaming coffee, “Thank god.”

For reasons I do not understand, summer people think that eating outside is a given when the temperature climbs. In the meantime my hair grows like Fred Flintstone’s thumb when he smashes it with his bowling ball. This has been my reality for as long as I can remember only this year my big, fat, humid hair decided it wants to be in on the sweatfest. While I’m sitting on a lawn chair with a beer and a burger it’s hard to distinguish if the sweat is dripping from my face or my hair onto my paper plate. Good times.

Inevitably someone will say something dopey like, “It’s not bad out,” or “Can you feel that breeze? Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Are you really talking about that one branch that ever-s0-slightly moved two inches one way and then another? For that one time? Cuz what I’m talking about is that we cross the threshold into that air conditioned house to keep cool instead of being out here like a bunch of martyrs waiting our turn to be charred at the stake.

One of our local tv stations has something called the EOI during their weather report- the Eat Outside Index. In spring and early summer there are many days that are a 10 which is no surprise. That’s when everyone wants to be dining al fresco including me. They haven’t even had the EOI in the last month because eating outside would be at your own peril. Ya ding-dong.

So far this summer I have googled heat exhaustion, heat headaches, heat deaths, neck fans, and a real Hail Mary – Are Old People More Affected By The Heat? Yes. Yes we are. Then I googled heat anxiety because I swear on the cool side of my mother’s final resting place that when I’m sitting with a group of people who say they’re hot but aren’t sweating it makes me anxiety sweat.

Dining al fresco in the heat and humidity of the Midwest looks nothing like the pages of Have Your Best Summer Ever! magazine. It is beat red faces, mopped brows, pitted out shirts, stinging eyes from sweat dripping into them, slapping bugs, and barely being civil to each other because everyone is hot, cranky, and sitting on the opposite side of the most amazing invention.

A temperature controlled environment.

Between Michael and I we had three cars, and when a squirrel made a home in the one parked on the street and chewed through the wiring causing a tow to the repair shop, we decided that one of those cars needed to go. Mallory was driving a seventeen year old Honda and so I offered her my much newer Honda Fit. Will, who had already made plans to visit his sister, offered to drive the car out to her. Not one to be left out of a road trip I decided to tag along, and on a Saturday morning in early May we hit the highway.

Like all the road trips I’ve taken, I appointed myself Deputy of Snacks and loaded up at QuikTrip. The guy behind me said he approved of my choices and wanted to go wherever I was going. I told him I was headed to Los Angeles, he said he was from LA, and as we were discussing the route we were taking the guy behind him overheard and said he was from Pasadena. I was in the middle of the country in the middle of a reunion of West Coasters which I took as a very good omen.

Will mapped things out and had lofty goals. Our first stop for the night was going to be in Albequrque which was twelve hours away. We made our way south through the small farming communities of Kansas where we stopped and ate lunch at a local diner. Nearly everyone around us had ordered a burger and we followed suit. There we were in the corn and wheat fields of the Midwest in a gathering place that was likely the host of every event for miles around – wedding receptions to Kiwanis Club meetings to post-funeral luncheons. I found it both endearing and a little sad.

After that we traveled briefly through Oklahoma and Texas and then a long haul through New Mexico. Will had picked our next stopping point and when dinner rolled around we exited the highway. Part of this town’s claim to fame was being on Route 66 but its heyday seemed to have evaporated. We drove from one dilapidated area to another – every home with peeling paint, rusted cars in front, garbage and unused bicycles laying next to the road. After thirty minutes of driving without many options we found a place to eat though neither of us were excited about it. Mostly staffed with younger adults, I wondered if this was as good of a job you can get in a town like that. On our way back to the highway we passed a young couple walking their baby in a stroller past a park. The park was a bed of gravel that consisted of two swings, a metal climbing gym, and not a single tree to shade it. One can only imagine how hot that metal got in the New Mexico summer. We never saw a hospital, a school, a library, a doctor’s office, a church, police or fire department, even the ubiquitous mattress stores that are in every direction where I live. Every motel and restaurant along Route 66 were abandoned. There were more closed businesses than open. Like the small towns we had passed all day, Dollar General was the grocery store, Wal-Mart, hardware store, and Walgreens combined.

The following day we ended up in a different but equally depressed town for lunch – a place that claimed to have the best food in town plus antiques. The antiques were mostly old bikes that were covered in dust and likely hadn’t been touched, moved, or sold in years. The restaurant was half a dozen wood tables and chairs and two women taking orders and running food back and forth. When we went to pay the credit card machine was causing problems and they offered to get so-and-so on the line to walk them through it but I had cash and so we paid and left. The sky was foreboding and the wind was picking up when we walked outside and by the time we made it to the gas station we were in the middle of a dust storm. Though short-lived, it might have been the single most scary weather event I’ve ever experienced and a fitting farewell to New Mexico.

That trip was two months ago, and I think about those towns every day. I think about how impossible it must be to leave because that takes money and a U-Haul and a security deposit and how can you possibly save for that? I think about having a kid who’s autistic or dyslexic and what kinds of services they need and don’t get. I think about an appendix that bursts or a car that breaks down or needing a lawyer and none of those services are either close by or free. I think about how drugs can come in through the back door of any small town and infiltrate it to the point of collapse because when there is no hope you escape in whatever way you can.

I’ve taken many road trips over the years and seen so many towns like that but they never included watching a sweet, young couple pushing their baby in a stroller against the backdrop of a colorless landscape. They were chatting the whole time they were walking and I wondered what hopes and dreams they had for their young family. But this country, this land of opportunity, decided this week that it should wrap its hands around the ankles of those young parents who had the misfortune of being born in a lousy zip code and put them on notice that they will have to work ten times harder to stay afloat. And while all eyes are turned towards those stunning New Mexico sunsets, nobody notices those same hands are reaching inside their stroller and snatching their baby’s future.

I have vivid recall of the day John Kennedy was assasinated. I was in first grade when the news was announced over the intercom and our teachers openly wept while a class of six year olds sat confused and silent. My brothers and I were sent home early from school and we walked into the house to a stunned mom and my visiting grandparents and aunt glued to the television. A somber Walter Cronkite gave updates in black and white and my mom sent us off to play rather than subject us to what nobody could fathom. A few days later the funeral of a president was televised and our house was blanketed in sorrow.

Politics weren’t a nightly subject in our house but the importance of voting was always passed down to us and now to our kids. The thought of skipping an election was never a consideration and if you dared to think you had a valid reason you’d better not tell anyone. My dad would tell us that if you reaped the benefits from a fire department, a paved road, and streetlights then you were required to vote and pay your taxes.

I am a political junkie but with this administration I often have to remind myself to unclench my teeth, relax my shoulders, and breathe. Other times I have to stop myself from flinging my phone against the wall after reading another ridiculous headline.

Mark had a tendency to hyper-react to political news – often worried that the NIH was going to be handcuffed and that his research funding was going to be ripped away. He’d be livid about something we were watching and to him it probably seemed like I was under reacting but until I understood what was going on I tended to remain steady. I was always the calm in his storms. There were many stormy moments in his head and heart but none more than whenever his mom came to visit. He would be on a hair trigger – reacting to everything she said with an anger he never showed anyone else. When this would happen I would try to smooth things over and keep the peace with both of them. In different ways and for different reasons it was exhausting for both of us.

It took his death and a lot of therapy to understand that this was the result of childhood trauma. That the home and life we created was the safest place he had ever known and any threat to that was a threat to him and his family. Of course he never knew this about himself, and for me, understanding these things after the fact are painful.

What I know from what I witnessed and have since lived is that chaos shakes the earth beneath your feet. Even when you’re away from it you don’t trust that everything is calm. Years later you remain on high alert waiting for the shoe to drop, a dark closet, or for the unspeakable to roar back to life.

I think about Mark and Vicki and how both their lives ended, how they spent decades giving to and nurturing college students, how they went to bat for their programs and those intrusted to their care. On his last day Mark was unable to stand up for his own life because despite the love and admiration of us, of colleagues, friends, and family he never could shake the thought that he was a bad boy.

I feel that every day. I also can see that in the midst of this daily chaos we are living, where children are being taken from their homes, is the photo of these two smiling back at me. These two who desperately tried every day of their adult lives to get the ground to stop shaking.

I am more than willing to go a few rounds for both of them.

Last month Michael and I were at Costco because even men who are no fans of shopping love THE COSTCO. I don’t remember what we were there for except the tariffs are coming, and even if a product isn’t affected by them, we all know that prices only go up while the size goes down. We grabbed a cart, wandered into the store, and Michael asked what was on the list. The list? We don’t shop Costco just off a list. We gotta browse. My man, though, stayed focused while I rabidly scanned the aisles for things I didn’t need then headed towards the center where the high-end designer who goes by the name of Kirkland was calling my name.

It always goes the same for me when it comes to Costco clothes. I look at everything, find my size, hold it up, mull it over, and then carefully refold it because of all those retail years. I move from one table to the next and question every life choice I have ever made while a gigantic blow-up pool slide casts its shadow . Do I really need another sweatshirt? No. Do I need it if it’s $11.99? Maybe.

Michael found me and we headed to health and beauty where we actually did need something. Collagen peptides? Oil of Olay? Supergreens? Nothing that exciting. We needed toothpaste and it was there that my superstore mojo fell apart. When did toothpaste get so complicated? Why are there a hundred different kinds?

I stood in front of all those boxes there like a deer in headlights and my wonky tooth that has had a root canal, a crown, and so many appointments years ago due to some weird phantom pain started to throb. “I’m looking for a paste,” I said, “not a gel. The gel ones are a mess,” and waited for the paste ones to stand up and wave so we could wrap this up. All those tubes, though, sat there with their attitudes as if defiantly saying, “Figure us out, lady.”

When my kids were little I had a dear friend and neighbor whose husband was a doctor in the Navy. They got stationed in Italy for a few years and we would send letters back and forth to each other. She told me how difficult parts of a life abroad were with three young kids but that there were some things that she loved. Mostly, that her choices were very limited – that there were three TV stations, smaller markets, less places to get things. “It’s freeing,” she said. That was over thirty years ago and that may not be necessarily true anymore but I have thought of that often. How our lives have become a series of micro decisions that are annoying on some days and exhausting on others. It’s toothpaste, deoderant, mascara, detergent, frozen pizza. Canned tomatoes can now be seasoned for chili – firey hot or your basic hot, basil and garlic for spaghetti sauce, no salt, low salt, crushed, diced, whole, whole but peeled.

“I think we should go with this one,” I said grabbing a box off the shelf. It turned out to be what I wanted which was pure luck. I nixed the idea of looking at sweatshirts one more time and we headed to the checkout.

A simple life they say, aim for a simple life but I’m looking at a claim that my new toothpaste can provide 24 hours of antibacterial protection. The science can’t possibly back that one up and I’ve got five tubes of a marketer’s dream customer because wearing one out is also a strategy.