A Speckled Trout

There is a saying in the grief world that “one moves forward” after the death of a loved one rather than moving on. The latter implies that you are leaving that person in the past rather than going forth with the spirit of that person into the future. That sort of thing seems like splitting hairs to me when for the longest time I couldn’t move at all.

I tend to grip tightly to the thought that I am stuck in grief, in life, in everything. I bring this up in therapy all the time until at a recent session my therapist listed all the things I’ve accomplished since Mark died. “And on top of that,” she said, “you went through a pandemic.” Her list surprised me because I am moving in ways I have not acknowledged. Though it may not be in the way I want or as fast as I want, I haven’t settled for stagnation which is an easy place to stake your tent when your world turns upside down.

I recently went on a date and as a chronic overthinker I am surprised at how much I underthought that decision. Said sure why not and my young, single coworkers said, “Way to put yourself out there, Kath, good on you,” and I said good on me right back to me and met this man at a dance performance. Having two daughters who danced through high school, and one who majored in it in college, I have been to more dance performances than I could count. Ballet, tap, modern, hip hop, all the dances, and so I sat down next to this man in the second row of a theatre, and in the universe’s way of saying I see what you’re trying to do here, one of Mark’s colleagues was sitting right in front of us which upended any confidence I may have thought I had. We exchanged pleasantries, said it was good to see each other, while my brain frantically repeated shit shit shit a couple of hundred times. The dance started and it wasn’t long before I thought how much Mark would have loved it, how it being a Friday night and being tired, I would have laid my head on his shoulder and rested, how we would have talked about it all the way home. Instead I kept wondering if I was crossing and uncrossing my legs too much, why was it so bloody hot, and if it would be rude for me to lean over and whisper, “You seem nice but I can’t do this tonight,” and got up and left.

But when I make a bad decision I dig in my heels and go all out. I stayed and smiled weakly at Mark’s coworker when it was over, met a few friends of my date, and went to the reception afterwards. He walked me to the parking garage and when he saw my car said he had the exact same one. I wanted to ask him if he had a dead spouse, too, because then we would have two things in common. Once inside I rested my head on the steering wheel for a few minutes, exhausted in every way. When I told my therapist about the night she asked me if it made me cry and I told her it should have, everything was in place for a good cry, but I was too tired to even do that.

I recently read that grief is stagnant and it is joy that comes in waves. In a tidal wave of joy, my daughter and her husband, after having two miscarriages and many dark valleys, gave birth to a baby boy last month. I was on duty as Grandma Doubtfire for a few days and was woefully out of practice to wrangle myself, two kids, and a dog in the morning in any sort of timely manner. The first day Walter went off to preschool and Mabel was on spring break so I told her we needed to go to my favorite store because my birthday coupon was about to expire. She got herself dressed in leggings and a mermaid tshirt. When I said to her, “You good now? Need anything else before we go,” she thought it over for a hard minute and said, “Oh yeah, I forgot something,” pulled her rainbow tutu out of the drawer, and my gay pride little mermaid and I got in the car and headed off.

There was no news of a baby yet and behind me in her booster seat Mabel said, “Mimi, do you want to know what I think?” I said of course I did and she said, “I think this baby happened because Boompa and my baby sister who died knew how sad my mommy and daddy were. I think they sent this baby to us so we’d be less sad because they’re not here.” It took me a minute to gain my composure to speak and when I did I said, “I think you’re right, Mabel. I think those two did have something to do with your new brother, and aren’t we so happy they helped us?” She continued her gaze out the window and said, “Yeah, I think they’re in the stars working together.”

There is no amount of time that will diminish the what ifs and if onlys with some losses. That’s the deal we make with life and it seems like a fair trade until the reality of it knocks on our door. Death’s echo can be excruciatingly loud when you’re bravely trying to crawl out of the darkness of the valley. Meanwhile, the unseen is alive and moving around us in ways a seven year old in a rainbow tutu understands far better than me.

Last week I took a trip to Florida to see two of my siblings who have second homes in Fort Meyers. I was scheduled for an early flight and booked an Uber to pick me up at 4:00 a.m. Twenty minutes prior, when I was ready to go and hadn’t got a text from the driver, I checked the app and discovered that the credit card linked to my account was one that had fraud on it last month. The payment never went through which I didn’t know. I had a slight panic attack, threw my luggage in the car and drove to the airport – the brand new Kansas City airport that was having its debut that very morning. I was low on gas and high on adrenaline, and as soon as I walked through the doors I wanted to turn around, walk out, and drive back home. Traveling without Mark is hard, he loved to go just about anywhere, was always content to be in the window seat and take it all in, and loved the sun. Escaping the gray days of winter to relax where it was warm might have required some arm twisting if he was busy at work, but I knew from experience that once committed he would have loved every minute.

While walking to my gate, I passed a crowd of construction workers in neon vests and hard hats and found out they were one of hundreds who built this new airport and were there to watch the first flight take off. As I was already a bit shaky on this whole trip thing it could have sent me spiraling, but they looked so proud and I remembered when Mark and I were dating and he’d drive me past some of the roofing jobs he did. “This will still be standing long after I’m gone,” he would boast, and so I hung around with the trades and watched as a Southwest flight left the gate and taxied to the runway.

The sun and heat did me a world of good as most days we hung out at the pool. There are plenty of activities to do in their complex, and I thought “so this is what retirement looks like,” knowing with certainty that even if Mark were alive and well he could never do it. After a few weeks he’d be climbing the walls, driving me crazy, and desperately wanting to be back in the science game instead of on a pickleball court. The man had things to do and relaxing wasn’t one of them.

The last night I was there we drove to Fort Meyers Beach which was directly in the path of Hurricane Ian. Much had been cleaned up, my brother-in-law said, and yet the devastation was staggering. Whole houses gone, others stripped of everything inside, boats in the marina piled on top of each other, no trespassing signs on lots reduced to a pile of rubble. The expensive newer homes were still standing and looked to have minimal damage, but the framed homes that had been there for decades, the old-timers the town was built around were obliterated. Every single thing inside swept out to sea with the storm surge. How do you calculate your losses when everything you own is gone, not even a photo left of your life? I felt that destruction in my bones while over and over seeing spray-painted signs reminding people of #FMS (Fort Meyers Strong).

I lived many secure years in the house Mark and I built and was certain it was indestructible until the morning he left it and never came back. The house is still there, but for the life of me, despite how much I try, I cannot get it to stand as straight or beautiful as it once did. I thought that was what was expected of me, what my job was in Mark’s absence, when what it needs most is for the foundation to be shored up. That is an ongoing project, and so I will plant a sign in my yard that says I’m not strong at all but I knew to salvage every broken thing that both of us knew was important, while telling every passerby that they should have seen my house when the storm hit.

I couldn’t even open the door and get out.

I was recently talking to someone about the early days of Covid and all that has transpired in our lives since then. The day we were sent home from the office, I had to send my boss a list of what I would be doing that justified my getting paid while working from home. There were things that needed to be fine-tuned and/or revamped, but my job was student focused and I was winging it when it came to accounting for my time. In those first few weeks it felt surreal for everyone in the neighborhood to be home all day every day, and there were offers of grocery runs, puzzles dropped off on porches, and long distance gatherings for wine and talk of how long this quarantine thing could possibly last. Four weeks tops is what we thought at the time.

After weeks of not seeing anyone, my son called and asked if he could spend the weekend with me. He was also alone, working from home, and climbing the walls. I told him to come over and the minute he walked in the door he burst into tears. “Oh, buddy,” I said, “I know.” None of us understood what was going on, and if there ever was a time we needed Mark’s knowledge it was then, but we didn’t have that so we watched movies and reset our attitudes when it became clear this wasn’t going to be over any time soon. Will came every weekend after that, and when he wasn’t here I’d dive into a junk drawer or closet with gusto. Twenty years from now if I’m asked about the Covid years, I will say that’s when I incessantly read the news and organized every inch of my life.

Things started opening up, I got let go from my day job, and my fun weekend job took center stage. Slowly a new normal began to take shape which wasn’t nearly as terrifying to me as the new normal after Mark died. I went with the flow because if you learn anything in grief it’s that the more you fight it the more it controls your life. In the process, I have found out I’m more suited to a quiet life than I ever thought possible. Now that most things have returned to close to where they used to be, I’m overwhelmed by normalcy. Everything seems too much, too loud, too crowded. Relationships that were always challenging have run their course. I can’t do them any more. My energy reserves are at an all time low for problems that aren’t my own.

One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was an amaryllis bulb dipped in wax. I loved it so much I bought two for gifts. Every day I checked its progress and by centimeters it grew. I’d rotate it so all sides got to face the sunlight and when it bloomed I was as happy as my mom would be when her Christmas cactus sprouted color. It was gorgeous and I’d say “Look at you,” like it was my kid learning to ride a bike. In talking to my therapist, I wondered if this contentment from something so small was from grief, age, or Covid. “Probably a combination of all three,” she said.

During that awful time when Covid was ravaging the world, I watched a news report about a woman whose mother died, like most alone in a hospital ICU. The funeral was held in a parking lot and she sat on a folding chair underneath a canopy next to her mother’s casket where friends and family drove by to pay their respects. Such a contrast to Mark’s funeral, and I wondered how it is possible to survive the heartache of not only losing your mom, but then having to say your goodbyes on top of asphalt while people shouted condolences from car windows.

And yet somehow, I, like so many others have survived the heartache of the unimaginable. I’ve learned, I’ve changed far more than anyone realizes, I have oh-so-delicately dipped my toes into the pool of life and tested the water. This go ’round, though, is different. Because I am too familiar with how fragile this all is, the best approach for me is to live smaller and quieter. Will it always be like this? I don’t know, but I do know it’s the reason the beauty of a single blooming bulb in the darkest time of the year made me yearn for more of that.

I was recently talking to a widow friend about our journeys navigating the world as half of a couple. It wasn’t until I was alone that I found out how much power there is in being two. You have no idea of this when your partner is alive and well, but when that is no longer the case it is a startling revelation. Walking into a restaurant by myself or any kind of gathering, even after all this time, feels like a jarring exposure of every vulnerable part of me.

We also talked about being around people who constantly complain about their partner. That it is a different kind of jarring, the kind that can tip into rage at any moment. Thinking you know what life would be like without your partner and living in the reality of it are vastly different. “If only they knew what we know,” I said to my friend. “I could easily list a hundred things I miss about Mark without even trying that hard.”

• The smell of his neck.
• How tender he was with animals.
• The energy of him in the house.
• How the kids had to label their leftovers so he wouldn’t eat them.
• The sound of his bike coasting around the corner.
• His ginormous readers that looked so nerdy.
• Hearing at the end of the day about an experiment that his students knocked out of the park.
• His daily yelling at right wingers on cable news and Chuck Todd every Sunday morning.
• How every night he wore earplugs and a black sock over his eyes so he’d get a good night’s sleep.
• His whistling.
• When I was talking to him and he pushed the curls away from my eyes.
• Folding his clothes.
• How we worked side-by-side every Sunday to cook dinner for the kids.
• That he could sit on the screened porch and do nothing but watch the birds.
• The sound of his work bag when it thudded on the bench.
• His pride in the kids that would make his eyes tear up when he talked about them.
• That he was on so many committees at the med center because he believed it was his obligation, and also because he liked having the inside scoop on what was happening in that place.
• When he’d go to the store and would ask beforehand, “Good Visa (the debit card) or bad Visa (the one that always had a balance)? Then he’d use the wrong one.
• Seeing the debits in our account from him having a four-shot espresso with his students at their morning lab meeting.
• How he loved my style and would want to see what I was wearing before I went to work.
• That he could hear a couple of notes of music and know exactly what movie it was from.
• When he squeezed my hand every night before he fell asleep.
• That a prediction of any kind of storm caused him to say, “We’ve got to batten down the hatches,” as if we were on a dinghy in the middle of a nor’easter in the Atlantic.
• When I was telling him a story and got tripped up on some part of it and he’d say, “It was always, no it was never……..”
• That he appreciated homemade soup on a cold night.
• Going to the garden center together and him loading up on vegetables and me on flowers.
• Whenever he was near any kind of water he would crouch down and flip things over looking for snakes.
• The way he delighted in Mabel and being her Boompa.
• How he’d sit in the basement fixing a tire on his bike like he was doing surgery.
• That he loathed anyone in his field who he thought was phoning it in.
• When he came home with news that he’d gotten a grant and we’d go out for a steak dinner.
• How he called old professors who wouldn’t retire to make room for hungry, young ones “fossils.”
• The times Will would stop by with bagels after an early Saturday morning with his running group and he’d act nonchalant and then wolf down three.
• Watching him barbecue while reading a scientific paper over the grill.
• How my constant decorating and rearranging made him nuts but he’d always brag about it to anyone who came in the house.
• Him carrying the laundry basket up and down the stairs.
• That he’d clean the kitchen and make the next day’s coffee every night.
• How he’d putter with his fish tanks in the basement and after he died we found out there were thousands of guppies in them.
• When we’d argue about money and he’d say, “Tell me what it is we need that we don’t have.”
• How he loved talking to Mallory about dance and would research different styles for their next phone call.
• His intensity countered by his ability to be outrageously silly.
• How he hated hanging Christmas lights outside but did it because I loved it.
• The exchanges of love throughout the day, both big and small.
• When he’d hear me waking up and have my coffee ready when I came downstairs.
• How he’d say he was trying to lose weight and didn’t want ice cream but would help himself to a heaping bowl the minute I went upstairs to go to bed.
• How he always predicted another pandemic and would have been all over the research on Covid.
• How he’d say, “We need to get that fixed,” and pretend he was going to do that when we both knew it would be me that would follow through.
• Walking every night after dinner.
• That if he were flipping through the channels and came across Shawshank Redemption he’d watch it every single time.
• His disdain for wealthy people who didn’t use their money to make life better for others.
• How he could string curse words together like it was an Olympic event.
• His roofing stories and the pride he had in starting out as a blue collar guy.
• That he was adamant that every person who did any work in our house be tipped.
• The empty spot on the sectional we bought before he died that he never got to sit on.
• The many conversations we had about the kids and how he didn’t want them to make the same mistakes he did when he was young, and me saying, “And what part of that would you give up? What part didn’t lead you to where you are now?”
• Going Christmas shopping for me with Maggie and how I could tell when he walked in the door that he had so much fun with her.
• How he always kept the birds fed.
• That whenever I’d say, “Since you’re not doing anything…,” he’d yell, “I’M THINKING!!!” from the movie A Serious Man.
• That the cats ran to the door when he got home because they knew he’d give them more cat food even if they’d already been fed.
• How much he looked forward to he and Nate going off to see a guy movie together.
• The way he cherished the friendships he had with his biking buddies.
• When we had to do our taxes and he knew the details of every work trip he made that year and whether we could claim it or not.
• How he often repeated the story of the neighborhood kid who knocked on the door and asked to speak to Mr. Kathy.
• That his favorite winter activity on a Saturday night was sitting at the dining room table watching music videos on Youtube.
• Making something new for dinner and him raving about it.
• Knowing every single day that I was loved.
• How he worried about me every time I got a kidney stone.
• When I’d call him at work for something and he’d say, “Hey, darlin.'”
• The gentle way he always spoke to his sister.
• When he’d come home from work and say, “I was talking to Joe and he said…..”
• Our road trips.
• That he thought I never spent any money on myself because he never saw the bags.
• How when we’d get in an argument I’d say, “I’ll tell you one thing, Mark Fisher, my next husband is going to respect me,” and he’d imitate me and we’d both burst out laughing.
• His obsession with ridding the yard of squirrels.
• How he rated peaches and loved opening the fridge and seeing a bowl of cherries.
• When we were going to get something to eat and he’d say “no” to everything I suggested but could never come up with an alternative so we always ate at the local pizza place.
• How much he would have loved the bedroom flip I did because of how dark and quiet that room is.
• When the cats would scratch at the bedroom door at night to get in and he’d throw a pillow at the door and go right back to sleep.
• How he’d advise his mom on on her meds and tell her she needed to take care of herself.
• That he hated shopping but loved Costco.
• How he tried to learn as much as he could about each of his graduate students and stayed in contact with them after they graduated.
• That he was proud of his degrees and just as proud of the plaque he got for being Rookie of the Year for hockey in his freshman year at Purdue.
• Sitting around and deciding what we would do if we ever won the lottery.
• How he would research any subject that caught his attention.
• How he always wanted to take a sabbatical to work in Europe so we could have an overseas adventure for a year.
• That somehow his bike was an extension of him in ways I couldn’t explain.
• How he wore his shoes until there were holes on the bottom.
• That he never minded mowing the lawn or shoveling the driveway but hated taking the trash to the curb.
• Being at his work events and seeing how much his colleagues and students liked him.
• How much he loved my mom.
• That he only learned to appreciate the strategy in baseball when I explained it to him when he was high.
• How when we were in Portugal he noticed all the men wore scarves knotted around their necks so we went out and found him one and he wore it all the time.
• Taking care of him.
• Hearing the garage door roll up when he worked late and knowing he made it safely home.
• Checking National Parks off our list.
• Saying “This is my husband, Mark.”
• His work ethic.
• How he paid close attention to politics around the world.
• Our dream of having a cottage on a lake.
• His eyes, dear god, his eyes.

I will always feel fortunate that Mark and I gave each other a wide berth to have interests and friendships outside of our marriage. It made life more interesting for both of us, but at the end of the day it was him and me navigating life and marriage and jobs and kids and the world. If you think your life would be better without your partner next to you, then I think by all means you should make changes to make that happen. But for those of us on the other side, those of us who didn’t have a choice, please measure your words carefully. You have no idea the vacuum that absence creates, the huge and the small things that slam into you, even years later, from nowhere.

One hundred things is but a tip in the iceberg of loss.

On our first Christmas together as a married couple, I was working at a bank and Mark was a grad student. The bank was open on Christmas Eve until noon and I had to work. Mark decided to go into the lab for a few hours, and the plan was to meet back at our apartment, get our stuff, and drive the two-and-a-half hours to Chicago. We woke up to snow, and as the morning progressed the weather got worse. By 11:00 the interstate was closed due to blowing, drifting, and ice covered roads and there went our opportunity to get home to family. Because we had been planning on leaving town, there was little food in the fridge. On Christmas Day, we ate minute steaks and canned green beans on tv trays while sitting in lawn chairs (our furniture at the time), drinking the last two beers in the fridge, and watching MTV. I was either crying or napping from crying until Mark declared we were leaving the house and going to the movies. We saw Terms of Endearment.

Every year we would talk about that Christmas and how it was an Epic Holiday Shit Show. Terms of Endearment? What were we thinking? Mark was in love with Debra Winger and came out of the theatre so bereft over her dying he could barely talk. We drove home in silence, killed some roaches in the bathroom like we did every night before we brushed our teeth, and fell into bed. “Thank god this day is over,” I said to Mark before we both fell asleep. The following day the sun was out, it reached the high 40s, and you would have never known there was a winter storm the day before.

For decades we would drive back and forth to Chicago for Christmas. When we lived in Maryland it was twelve hours each way with two kids, from here nine hours with three kids. A few years before Mark died, I said “enough” and we stayed in our own house for the entire holiday. Turns out there are no trophies for driving through treacherous weather or ending up sick and exhausted from stress. I loved it and never wanted to go back to how we used to do it. Mark came to love it, too, especially when the kids piled through the door, but for all the happiness he felt for us to be under one roof opening presents, he was a horrible gift receiver. He never asked for anything extravagant, every year it was socks, biking stuff, new pajamas. The kids would call me and plead for ideas but Mark was never enamored with stuff unless it was useful. Every year when it was his turn to open, I had an underlying feeling that he felt a little embarrassed as if he didn’t deserve any of it.

Now I have a hard time being near the men’s department of any store. Sometimes I’ll be brave (or maybe punish myself) and wander through to see what I would have bought and put under the tree if Mark were still alive. Useful things like sweaters and dress shirts for work, maybe a pair of slippers, new biking gloves, and socks, good wool socks. He, on the other hand, always went overboard with me, and as they got older I’d send one of the kids with him to keep him in check. “Don’t you dare go over our budget, Mark,” I would say to him as he left and he waved me off in that way he did when he thought I was being ridiculous.

Last year we had Mallory and her boyfriend in California on a video call as we opened our gifts from Secret Santa. Later when I talked to her, she said that they both felt spoiled with everything that was sent to them for Christmas. “Good,” I said, “that’s exactly how I wanted you to feel.” In writing this blog, I often feel spoiled with love and support. I am grateful that openly talking and writing about loss has an audience, when for so long grievers have felt forced to stuff that pain so deep down it exploded out in other ways. Writing is a quiet and solitary endeavor, so if you have shared my work, left a comment or feedback, called or texted me after reading something I’ve written, I want you to know how much that means to me. I don’t think of this as a journey of mine alone but for all of us. I just happen to have figured out how to put it into words.

My life is proof that the most unimaginable things can happen when you least expect it, and if this season hits hard, terribly hard with longing, you are not alone. Maybe if we promise to stay the course, to not give in or give up, we’ll find a clearing in the woods under the stars where all of us heartbroken can gather to dance in the joy of loving and being loved so perfectly it hurts.

Merry Christmas,
k.

After Mark died and I started therapy, I told my therapist that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with not only the absence of Mark, but the absence of his career that loomed so large in our lives. Like him it was layered and complex, but one of my favorite things in the course of my work day was when Mark and I would email back and forth about our jobs, and seemingly being the only sane ones plopped against our will into the Land of Misfit Toys. I would laugh out loud at my desk at his takedowns, while across the state line he’d do the same with mine until we had to cut it off to actually do our jobs. My therapist said my life would eventually fill in with other things, and that Mark’s career and the med center would no longer be something I daily missed. Like many things I was told back then it seemed like utter bullshit to me.

By virtue of death, I was suddenly thrown into the job of being Mark’s designated hitter, and three months later went to his department Christmas party. When my ticket number was called and I won a door prize, I walked to the front of the room in my party dress and misty eyes, and wished a sinkhole would swallow me whole rather than having all those pitying eyes on me while I was handed a box of cashews. The following year I went again, that time with Joe and his wife. Was it any easier? I don’t know, I don’t remember any of it. Then Covid hit, the parties came to a halt, and I was so relieved to not have to show up and be on.

In the aftermath of Mark’s death, the med center wanted to honor him with the donations they received in his name, and I was in contact with his department on a regular basis. We mutually decided that a bench outside his building would be fitting, so on a hot summer afternoon I met Joe, along with the head of the landscaping department, to discuss the bench and pick out a spot. I stood there looking at the window of his former office, empty and still unused, and tried to pay attention to what was being said to me. I was so distracted, so shocked at being there without Mark that I kept mumbling “okay” over and over regardless of what was being said.

After years of delays, the bench was installed and dedicated a few weeks ago. I was dreading it and my anxiety was off the charts. The kids pointed out to me that this time around it wasn’t a solo mission, but one that they would be at and that we would all prop each other up. I was sick, tested myself that morning to make sure it wasn’t Covid, and drank cough syrup straight from the bottle so I could get through it without sounding, as Mark would say, like I was coughing up a lung. It was a warm, sunny November day and most of his department was there for it. It was brutal and it was beautiful. The bench is perfect – simple, quiet, the most understated stone. It faces the road alongside his building, the apartment buildings many of his students lived in, and the Vietnam Cafe, now torn down, where he would often eat lunch. The engraved dedication on it was the idea of his department chair and grad student. Whenever Mark would introduce a speaker, a class topic, or his own research, he would set it up and then say, “Without further ado….”, which then Joe said would blow the doors off and always be much ado. In the fastest decision ever made, the kids and I agreed it was the perfect thing to put on the bench.

In those many years at the med center, speakers would often come to town, and Mark (along with other faculty) would be obligated to take them out to dinner. Spouses used to be included and I’d go along every once in awhile, but then they put the brakes on that and Mark would go solo. When he’d get home I’d always want to know every detail. He’d give me the stats on the person and their science, which was very much him, when what I really wanted to know was what everybody had to eat from appetizers to desserts. Every time he’d order a pork chop and every time he’d tell me it wasn’t very good. One night when he was disappointed in his meal yet again, I asked him why he kept ordering that and he said pork chops were his thing whenever he had a work dinner. I don’t know how long Mark had been gone when I was thinking about those stupid pork chops again and how in this entire city nobody seemed to know how to cook one. How is that even possible? It made no sense and then it hit me. He down played every bit of those fabulous dinners because he knew I was at home eating a bag of microwave popcorn.

My therapist was right in that other things would eventually fill in my life to take the place of Mark’s career, and while I am grateful for that it will never be close to what I had. I miss hearing about lousy pork chops at expensive restaurants, papers published, colleagues, Mark’s exuberance and joy of discovering new things. Someone recently told me that they’ve thought of Mark so many times during these Covid years and asked me what he would have done. “I’m not sure,” I said, “but I do know that it would have been his Superbowl.”

With the last piece of business being taken care of at the med center, it no longer feels like showing up and being on is an obligation that is mine to fill. It took a long while and a lot of emotional work for me to get to this point, and like many parts of this journey unseen by most. After I spoke at the dedication, the department admin said to me, “Mark was always so proud of you. He’d come into my office and talk to me about you all the time. Sometimes he’d tell me about something you wrote and made me promise that I’d read it.”

Of course he did, because everything about him was about about blowing the doors off and making people pay attention to what he thought was important.

How do you not miss that?

There is a popular writer by the name of Glennon Doyle, who over the years, has coined the phrase “We can do hard things.” Her audience is predominantly women – the kind of women who have seen plenty of hard times and were desperately in need of a funny, poignant, and honest writer to push them through the goalposts of life’s challenges. I have read all her books, saw her in person at an author event, and listen to her podcasts. I’m a huge fan so when the kids were having problems, Mark’s funding dried up, or I was worried about anything, I would repeat her mantra with the fervency of my grade-school-self touching each bead of the rosary like a budding, little saint in the batter’s box.

IcandohardthingsIcandohardthingsIcandohardthings.

Oh, yes I can. I can do hard things.

Then Mark died and everything became hard. On a cold night during those early days, the smoke detector went off at three a.m. and the battery, incased inside and shrieking nonstop, pushed me close to the edge. I couldn’t shut if off until I got a hammer and beat it, the next day the dog ran away, the car needed repair, the holidays were coming, I barely slept. All of this was on top of the after-death things that consumed my life, but I kept showing up for the hard things like the infantry and getting them done. I couldn’t tell you how, I just did.

The hard things come less often these days which is a gift because I was about to collapse under the weight. My new normal has been mostly free of fear until this summer when mice decided my garage seemed like a good place to homestead. Every time I’d pull the garage door up I’d see a mouse scurrying about, and every time it scared the living bejeezits out of me. I resorted to banging on the door before I opened it to give the Meeska Mooska Mousketeers time to hide which they never did because they had a good attorney who told them that possession is 9/10ths of the law. I’d wring my hands and worry and incessantly read how to get rid of mice on the internet. Will, who had been setting traps for me, said that I needed an exterminator and I said, “No, honey, you see I feed you and your beau a fine meal every Sunday and whether you realize it or not, you have entered Bartertown. Now you two get out there and start doing some gang banging. Chop chop. I want to see dead bodies.”

Then my neighbor told me she had such a big mouse in her house she thought maybe it was a rat and I said to myself, “Speckled Trout, you gots to get your shit together on this mouse problem or you’re going to have Ratatouille in the kitchen and you don’t have a husband to handle such a thing.” So I went to Target and headed straight to the liquor department, the shoe section, checked out the Hearth and Hand aisle, browsed the books, and then went to the candle aisle for peppermint oil. The internet said THE MICE HATE PEPPERMINT and I came home and sprinkled it like confetti and I am here to tell you something incredibly shocking. It. Did. Not. Work. Neither did the Pesticator which emits a sound that mice find offensive. What is this sound? Nobody knows but it cost $35 and I set my money down and never thought twice that maybe this whole mouse eradication bizness is a racket.

One night while reading in bed, I heard something in the ceiling and here’s an interesting twist to this story. I have two cats that somehow could not be bothered hunting mice unless it’s at the downspout of my neighbor’s house where they camp out because actually physically chasing after mice isn’t necessary when they just drop down in your lap. So that Sunday I told Will he had to go in the attic and set a trap. “How am I supposed to do that?,” he asked and I told him his dad did and NEVER COMPLAINED and maybe he shouldn’t either so he squeezed his shoulders through the small opening in my closet and set a trap. The next week he squeezed back in and the trap was empty and I let out a sigh of relief because that mouse must have up and left because it knew I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Hashtag blessed.

A few days later I was doing laundry, and the sticky trap for the jumping crickets (and that’s a whole other story) that was in the corner of the basement was flipped upside down. That seemed odd so I flipped it over and there was a tiny mouse glued to its death and I lost it. I got in the car, drove to the hardware store, and bought another Pesticator and more traps. I got steel wool and shoved it in every crevice I could find around the garage. I got the high school kid who mows my grass to come down and assess my basement for entry points. I handed him a flashlight and he Sherlocked Holmes the place like a boss. A friend of Mark’s came over and set more traps in the garage, and when Will and Nick came over this Sunday I asked them to check all the various traps. “Yesterday that one in the corner had two babies on it,” I said, and Will found it, picked it up, and said it looked like somebody had been eating them. “I think you have rats,” he said, and the beauty of having adult children is being able to honestly ask them something (without hurting their little feelings) like, “Why are you being such a shit and saying that when you know it’s going to freak me out?” He laughed maniacally and hadn’t even gotten in his car and pulled away when I was on the internet trying to find out who eats baby mice.

When I was a little girl and at my grandma’s house a mouse ran across the kitchen floor. I screamed. “Hand me my broom, honey,” my grandma said to me and she smoked that mouse out, gave it a good whack, swept its dead body into the dustpan and tossed it out the door. I thought she was the bravest person I ever knew. Now I think that after losing two husbands prematurely it had more to do with her goddamn nerves being shot than bravery.

As of today there were no dead rodents in any of the traps, and even though this mouse cartel may be on the run, what little that was left of my frayed nerves is shot to hell. I need to get back to my regularly scheduled tragic life, and so I am terminating my membership in the I Can Do Hard Things Club. I’ve got nothing left to give, I’m cooked, tired, done with all the hard things. I do love a group project, though, so I am starting the I Am Sick of This Shit Club where the mantra is whattheactualfuck which I’ve been saying daily for the last four years.

I am also going back to the hardware store for a good, sturdy broom because my grandma really was the bravest person I ever knew.

Whenever we would go on road trips, Mark was constantly scanning the landscape for hawks and eagles. He’d point them out, and when I couldn’t see them he’d start yelling at me, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT??!!!” I’d tell him that’s just how it went with me and dodgey birds and go back to reading my book while he’d mutter under his breath. When we would be close to the Mississippi River on the way to Illinois, he’d put me on high alert. “Pay attention now, Kath. You always see the big birds near rivers,” and I’d kinda, sorta, half-ass pay attention and he’d point something out and I’d turn my head that away and say “OH MY GOD IT’S HUGE!!!”, which satisfied him and saved the marriage for another day.

On a Sunday morning many years ago, when Mark and Will were on a weekend camping trip with the Scouts, I went out to get the paper. As I was walking back to the house I looked up to see several huge birds lurking in my neighbor’s tree. I was so creeped out that I stood there staring at them and then looked up and down the street for someone, anyone, to witness what I was seeing. There was nobody and I went inside and got my camera. I snapped a few photos and kept going in and out of the house to check on them until they mysteriously left like they came.

When Mark got home I told him about it. “They were the biggest birds I’d ever seen,” I said and he was like okay, yeah, sure, you-who-never-can-spot-a-bird. Then I got my camera to show him and he said, “Holy shit, Kath, those are vultures.” There were six of them and you-know-who captured it on film like a boss and I said, “Try to top that, Fisher.”

Mark liked all birds (except “those goddamn grackles“) and could easily identify them, and while he took care of them all year round, I feel like taking care of me is about all I can manage since he’s been gone. For months I’ve had a bag of seed in the kitchen and I cannot seem to be able to open it and fill the feeders. It was never my job and it feels like even the birds are disappointed when I show up to do what Mark did better and more consistently.

My biggest fear in life was for someone I loved to die suddenly and violently and then it came to be. There are details of Mark’s death that I have never told anyone, and even though my kids are adults, I will do anything to protect them from knowing all that I know of that day. But those details will suddenly slam into my consciousness and they carry so much weight. Crushing, horrific weight, and so I have to constantly refocus my thoughts on every other day of Mark’s life except the last.

A couple of weeks ago I had come home from work, left everything in the car, and went to the curb to get the garbage can to take to the backyard. As I was approaching the gate, I saw a hawk sitting on the lawn. I ever so quietly went to my car, grabbed my phone, and snapped a pic. That bird kept his eyes on me and I kept my eyes on him. He hopped a few feet back to the fence and it seemed like he was sitting on something and I couldn’t figure out what it was. All of this happened over the span of 2-3 minutes and then he flapped his wings and flew off with a squirrel dangling from his talons. I screamed like I was about to be the next victim in a horror movie. Then I ran around to the front of the house to see where he went but he and his dinner disappeared, and just like those vultures I’d seen years earlier, I needed somebody, anybody, to witness this murder in my backyard. “That was Mark,” my sister said when I told her. “He would never come back as a cardinal. That’s way too lame and everybody knew how he hated squirrels,” and we both laughed at the thought of him with beefy bird thighs vigilantly securing the perimeter.

As the days went on and I kept picturing that squirrel flying in the air, it circled back to Mark’s last day like it always does, how his mind convinced him that he had to leave, and how it was so not like him to ever consider let alone do something like that. In the thousands of days he has been gone there has not been a single one that I am not stunned by his death. Not one single day.

A week later I was on my way to Lowe’s when I noticed a hawk flying overhead. I watched it, saw the tail, and thought oh my goodness, look at me. I actually know that’s a red-tailed hawk, the hubs would be so proud. It was gliding on the air and it was such a peaceful sight to see it letting the wind tip his wings this way and that.

At the intersection of Mark’s horrific death and the aftermath, the details often sit like lead in my lungs. I fight to breathe, I fight to remember how it used to be. But I also think that unburdened by everything that caused him so much pain for so long, Mark’s soul effortlessly glided on air to the other side of life where it was tenderly scooped up by love and light, where he could finally set it all down and rest.

At least that’s what I think a Cooper’s hawk and red-tailed hawk were trying to teach me.

A couple of weeks ago I made a quick trip to Chicago to see my mom. I had not seen her since last April when she fell from an unlocked wheelchair and face planted on the ground. When she was admitted to the hospital, she had a UTI and a MRSA infection and I flew home for what we all thought were her last days. She looked like she’d been on the losing end of a bar fight but recovered, and my siblings moved her to a different facility.

I hadn’t been to see her earlier because of Covid, but those numbers got better and traveling got safer. Then I got Covid which took me longer to bounce back from than I planned. Those were all legitimate reasons for not going, but the real reason was because there was no Mark to call to give me a pep talk before I went into her facility, there was no Mark to talk to when I got home to say she didn’t deserve this outcome, there was nobody to hold me for a good cry. In the union he and I made years ago, I am now the sole emotional carrier of my mom’s current life when that used to be shared by two.

On Sunday morning I went with my sisters to the Shady Acres of the southwest suburbs of Chicago. “Look who we brought, Mom,” my sister said and I pulled my mask down for a few seconds so she could see all of my face. She had the biggest smile and those few seconds alone made all of it worthwhile. She’s declined a lot which I knew from talking with her every week but seeing it on a phone is different from seeing it in person. The chatty, vibrant woman who started her day with several cups of coffee from an old-fashioned percolator now needs someone to hold the cup to her lips so she can take a few swallows. Words come slowly and hesitantly, but she did manage to make us laugh, and what a welcome relief to see a bit of who she used to be left. We spent a couple of hours with her and then wheeled her back to the common area, and just like every time I’d leave her after my dad died, it was hard to turn away and walk out the door.

For many reasons the trip was stressful from start to finish and I ended up leaving after 24 hours instead of staying until the following morning. My younger sister drove me to Midway which used to be the chill alternative to O’Hare but is now busy all the time. In what might be a first ever there, I walked right up to security. Once through, I badly wanted to sit and have a glass of wine but my stomach was in knots and that didn’t seem like a very good idea.

My cousin’s wife died eleven years ago of breast cancer and Mark and I flew in and out of Midway for the wake and funeral. Her death was a sad and shocking blow to our extended family even though it was expected. A friend recently lamented about the older people in our families dying and how they were steadfast attendees of every wedding, baptism, graduation party, and funeral. “They were there our whole lives, sitting with their coffee and gossiping about the family, and it never occurred to me that one day they would be gone,” and I think that’s how we all felt about Carol’s presence in our lives.

Growing up my grandma and her cousin lived on the same block. If I was staying at my grandma’s in the summer and got bored I’d go down to Belle’s house to hang out. She lived on a second floor apartment across the street from the cathedral. The bells would chime and rattle the house and the view outside her windows seemed mysterious and magical. Sometimes you’d get a glimpse of a group of nuns gliding through the grounds as if they were on air – straight up The Sound of Music stuff. At the time her son, Hal, who was in high school, would sometimes let me hang out with him and his best friend, Frank. I was all of about twelve years old and enamored with Frank.

As the years went by and I met Mark, got married and had kids, I’d ask Hal and Carol about Frank who came to their house most Sunday mornings for breakfast. “I was so in love with him then,” I told them and always said to tell him I said “hi.” For me it was a long running joke until Carol died and at the funeral home Frank made a beeline straight for me. He hadn’t changed much and we chatted in the awkward way you do when you hadn’t seen someone in forty years and never really knew anything about them besides their looks. Throughout that day and the next he kept looking at me which was weird and made me uncomfortable. He saved his move for the luncheon after the funeral, and as I was saying goodbye to everyone, Frank came up to me, hugged me, and whispered, “You need to ditch your husband and be with me.” I was horrified and nothing came out of my mouth due to pure shock, and then my sister came along and rescued me so her and her husband could take Mark and me to Midway. It was far earlier than we needed to be there but we were okay with that. “Good people watching,” Mark said, and once inside and through security we decided to go to a bar and have a couple of beers. As one tends to do after a funeral, we were processing everything that had happened in the last two days, how Carol left such a mark as a music teacher, how much she’d be missed, how Hal was going to fare without her. And then Mark asked me, “Who was that dude with the dark hair that looked like he came off the set of Starsky and Hutch?” I told him that was Frank and filled him in on the backstory of how I had a mad crush on him before I even needed a training bra. “Guy said the weirdest thing to me when we were leaving. Told me I needed to let you go to be with him,” and the shock I had when Frank said that to me was times a hundred that he had the audacity to say that to Mark. “Oh god,” I said, “he said the same thing to me but, jeezus, I can’t believe he said that to you.” I felt sick to my stomach at the thought but needn’t have worried. When I asked Mark what he said back to him, he took a swig of his beer and said, “I gave him a long up and down and decided I didn’t have a thing to worry about,” and I burst out laughing because it was so absolutely perfect.

We spent another hour at the bar talking about life and how weird funerals can be, that maybe hitting on someone’s wife in the midst of the collective grief of a life gone too soon might win top prize. Then we got on the plane and both fell asleep, and Mark’s was the only shoulder I ever needed to rest my head on when everything got to be too much.

The day before the anniversary of Mark’s death, I had a yard sale. It was supposed to happen weeks earlier, but it kept getting postponed and my neighbor and I (whose life fell apart the same time mine did) decided it would have to be Labor Day weekend or never. We plowed forward which is kind of what we’ve been doing these last four years, and two former shop girls set up business on my corner lot.

The plan was for a one-day-only selling extravaganza, but at the end of it I said to Jen, “I’ve got nothing going on tomorrow but a day filled to the brim with sadness so if you want to do this again I’m game.” She was, we pulled our wares out of my garage on a late Sunday morning, and Jen got into merchandising mode. The garage door wasn’t open ten minutes when a friend of Mark’s stopped by with a bouquet of flowers. He has never forgotten the day of Mark’s death, and I somehow managed to keep it together while talking to him even though I wanted to sob out of gratitude. A neighbor down the street came to keep us company, another neighbor stopped by on her way to the grocery store, a friend decided she needed to shop again, another friend needed some advice on wedding attire from two pros. As far as socializing it was stellar, sales not so much.

We were starting to pack things up when a young guy on a bike appeared. “Aww, man, are you guys closing,” he asked, and we told him to shop away because we weren’t even close to our sales quota. “Is this your house,” he asked me and I told him it was. “I ride by here every day. What kind of flowers are those? I really like them.” “They’re hydrangeas,” I said and he slowly shook his head and said, “Word.” He then picked something off one of the tables, held it up, and said, “What’s a sham?” “It’s a fancy pillowcase,” I said. “Huh,” he said, “didn’t know there was such a thing as a fancy pillowcase. Learn something new every day.”

We learned that he was an art student, his name was Michael, that he rode his bike to a community college every day, that his goal was to get into the art institute. When he picked up a roll of cork and admired it, Jen said, “You can have it. It’s free for an art student,” and he smiled and said “Word.” The next thing I saw was him eating potatoes from a ceramic bowl with a plastic fork which was unexpected to say the least. “You guys have really good stuff,” he said, and when I asked him what was interested in he said, “Oh, I’m interested in everything.” I stopped in my tracks and studied that kid’s face hard. When I got my bearings I asked him what school he went to and where he lived. When he told me I said, “You bike that every day??? My husband biked to the med center but that’s about half the distance you ride. How long does it take you?” “Oh, it’s not bad,” he said. “Usually an hour but I like to take my time, stop and have some coffee, maybe get myself a snack,” he said as he ate another forkful of potatoes.

He picked things up, turned them over, admired them. “I wish I could get some of this stuff today but I’m supposed to be somewhere soon,” he said. “Here’s the deal,” I said. “This stuff is going back in my garage for who knows how long. If my front door is open that means I’m home so knock on the door and I’ll open the garage and let you look all you want.” To which Jen added, “When you’re done at Kathy’s house she’s going to walk you down to my house where you can do the same thing, okay?” And he took that information in, nodded, and said, “Word.”

The street that runs alongside my house is filled with walkers, runners, and bike riders. It starts before the sun comes up and it’s not unusual to see someone walking their dog at midnight. Everyone who comes to my house says the same thing. “I’ve never seen so many people out. This never happens in my neighborhood.” I know who walks every day, who runs. There is a woman who runs between 8-8:30 every morning. She runs on the balls of her feet. There’s an older woman who walks several times a day even in the hottest hours of the afternoon. Another woman who walked two collies for years and now only one. My neighbor with her two bassetts twice a day. I know the bike riders and the patterns. There’s two groups of retirees that meet twice a week and leisurely ride by mid-morning, after-school kids riding their bikes to the creek, the weekend riders, the after-dinner riders, the hard-core riders that fly by. I’ve watched a parade of people going by my house for decades, so how is it that not once did I see a young African American guy riding a bike past my house every day that looked like it came right out of the Wizard of Oz?

A few days later I was at Jen’s house and she said, “I drove by your house and saw the cork was still sitting by your garage door. Michael hasn’t come back?” “No,” I said, “I thought for sure he’d be back by now.” As we were talking about him I asked her if she saw him ride up to the house. She didn’t. I asked her if she saw him get on his bike and leave. She hadn’t. “I swear to god, Jen, if you weren’t there I would think I dreamt that whole thing. It was like he was dropped from the sky for a few minutes and then got sucked back up.” “When you asked him what he was interested in,” Jen said, “and he said everything I thought Mark Fisher was standing in front of us.” I had the same thought, it’s why I kept looking at him after he said that, and why it took me a minute to recover. We talked about Michael a bit more, about the potatoes that came out of nowhere, about his presence, and then she said something I already knew. “You know we’re never going to see him again, right? That he was just for that day.”

I smiled and nodded.

Word.