A Speckled Trout

When Mark died and I spoke to his mom that night, the conversation was not what I expected. She obviously was in shock as were all of us, but towards the end said, “You know how he was with me. Whenever I’d call, he’d only talk to me a few minutes and then turn the phone over to you.” Considering what had just happened it was a cold statement to make at the time. A week later she came to the church for the funeral and left as soon as the luncheon was over. After three weeks had gone by and I had not heard from her I called and she said she had been thinking of me and added, “But what are you going to do? You can’t sit and cry every day, can you,” which is what I was doing all day every day.

Everyone who knew Mark wanted to know what happened on the awful day he took his life. Had he been struggling? Had he taken something that altered his brain chemistry? Did he have an undiagnosed physical condition that may have caused this? I recounted the days of that Labor Day weekend and told what I was comfortable letting people know and protected Mark from the rest. All the people in his life who were stunned by what happened never included his own mother. She never asked about his mental state, his demeanor, or the days leading up to a decision that altered the course of our family. It was so unnerving to me that over time I stopped contacting her in order to protect my fragile mental health.

I’d get updates on her from the kids and when my niece got married we all went to Michigan to celebrate. There was my mother-in-law walking up the aisle – older, thinner, and walking with a cane. I cried when I saw her. Mark had her eyes and oh to see those again. After the ceremony she cried when she saw us and said she missed Mark and his sister so much and that this was a hard day for her. Later we all danced and I brought my mother-in-law out onto the floor with all of us to celebrate.

I missed her many times over the years as my own mom slipped further into the abyss of dementia but never enough to pick up the phone and call her. Her memories of her kids’ childhood had enormous gaps that she filled in with a Leave It To Beaver scenario that Mark and his sister would wildly dispute. I knew much of what she chose to leave out and in Mark’s retelling of many events from his early years I was often stunned by its cruelty.

Last summer Will and I planned a road trip to California and would be driving through Arizona where she was living. He said he thought he should see her and I agreed that we should both go. She had recently moved in with her niece after a series of falls and was using a walker. She was frail but mentally very sharp. We stayed a couple of hours and the anger I had for so long started to dissipate. Her connection to life seemed tenuous and she no longer had the energy to keep hold of it and stories of an idyllic family life that I didn’t recognize. When we left, she hugged me and said, “I know exactly how you feel,” and I felt the anger rise right back up to the surface. In the many years since her son had been dead she never once asked me how I was feeling.

This fall my mother-in-law had a series of health events and passed away in November. The expected arrived and I felt nothing and everything. When I married Mark she told me I was perfect for him. “You let him be exactly who he is,” she said. “You have never tried to change him.” When the kids came along she told me frequently that I was a good mother. I am grateful for those compliments. I am grateful for how generous she was to my kids. I am grateful that she was the reason I had Mark in my life for so long. But it wasn’t a fair trade and I was a mess of swirling emotions that I didn’t understand until I was talking to a friend.

“She just had to walk in the front door of our house for Mark to be triggered by her,” I said, “and I was always the buffer between them. Wherever he ended up is where she is now and I cannot protect him from her.” This dear friend who knows so much of the history of my life with Mark and his family said, “I don’t think you have to worry about them being in the same place,” and it was the most helpful thing anyone could say.

For decades I fiercely held the line of defense on behalf of a husband who lived successfully with trauma and depression until it collapsed one summer morning. When he died I still held the line. Now they are all gone and I don’t know how to let the line go, but I am exhausted and praying that resting in peace isn’t only for the dead.

Just before Thanksgiving, Michael and I bought a Christmas tree from the garden center at the hardware store I’ve been going to for many years. Over that time I have gotten to know one of the employees who always works the late afternoon and evening shift. This summer as he was loading mulch into my car, we had a long conversation and I found out that he was also the full-time groundskeeper at the university I worked at for five years. We got caught up on all the new and/or renovated buildings on campus and threw names back and forth of people we both knew. After that conversation, he became my preferred personal assistant for all things outside. On the night we went to buy our tree, though, he wasn’t working. Instead a younger guy was working the lot, probably college age, and even though he seemed well-versed in Christmas trees he wasn’t my guy and I immediately had trust issues. We circled the lot and selection of trees, Michael holding one up and me saying what was wrong with it which got repeated over and over. I have always bought a Frasier Fir but in the 7-8′ range they were much smaller than in years past. To go larger was an $80 jump in price which I thought was holiday blackmail. I asked about the Balsam Fir which looked full, healthy, and the perfect shape. Our tree consultant gave us the deets, and though I had my misgivings, we decided that would be the one. He sawed off the end and then he and Michael loaded it into the car while I went inside to pay. With a coupon for $15 off, our 2025 Christmas tree cost a whopping $35.

We got it home, cut the rope surrounding it, and put it in the stand. The branches relaxed and the following day Mabel and I decorated it. It was lovely, probably my best tree ever, but after a few days I noticed that it wasn’t taking in water. Every day I would get on the floor, scoot under the tree, and check the water level which never seemed to be going down. I became obsessed with our tree’s health. Was it turning brown? I couldn’t tell if it was the lighting or the fact that there were brown velvet ornaments on it but it seemed to be on life support. Michael suggested we get another tree but I had already decorated a tree and didn’t want to do it again. I went to a different nursery for some greenery for the pots on the porch and asked the guys on their tree lot if this tree could be saved. They told me I needed to cut some more off the end and immediately stick it in boiling water. “It opens it up so it can take in more water,” they told me. “It’s already decorated,” I told them, “can’t I just spray something on it?” Well, no, I couldn’t so I decided that this tree was going to have to do.

The first Saturday in December we had a party for Mike’s lab. Twenty plus people in the house and our tree shedding needles like a retailer with an abundance of Christmas sweaters. “It’s beautiful,” someone said to me and I smiled and said, “Thank you, it could go up in flames at any moment.” The next morning we assessed it again. Michael said we should bite the bullet and replace it which I still did not want to do until a few hours later when I read on Facebook that the Boy Scouts selling trees at a church nearby were breaking down their lot and everything remaining was free. I flew upstairs and breathlessly said, “We have to go get a new tree!! A FREE tree, spit spot, let’s go before they’re all gone,” and Jethro and I put on our galoshes and warm woolen hats and hitched up the wagon.

We drove over and I exclaimed, “There they are!!,” when I spotted them on the curb and jumped out of the car. The first half-dozen were too small and I thought we were going to shoot craps on a free tree until we spotted a Frasier Fir that was just the right height. A few dead branches on the bottom that needed to be trimmed but otherwise a decent tree. One of the scout leaders came over to offer his help and I said, “Thank you, this is so helpful. We already bought a tree but it is drying out so fast that we need to replace it.” Why did I feel the need to say this? Because I didn’t want him to think we WERE THOSE KIND OF PEOPLE who go around nabbing free stuff because we’re cheap even though that was exactly what we were doing.

We got it home and Michael sawed off the dead branches and a few inches off the bottom. I put the kettle on to boil water then poured it into a bucket, plopped the new tree in, and undecorated the original tree. When I finished and Michael had unscrewed it from the tree stand it popped out and you could carry it with one hand it was so dead. In went the new tree, with lots of water, and we stood back to admire our new tree.

After its grooming, our new tree was a dwarf that had a hole in the back and a gaping dent on the side. The kind of tree that sat on a Christmas tree lot for weeks because it was so ugly, so deformed, a dog of a tree. A few hours later when Will came over and saw it he said, “Just turn this side around so it’s in the back,” and I said, “This is the good side.” My sister said I should stick a stuffed animal in the dent, “Something Christmasy like a polar bear.” Michael suggested we fold some of the branches over to fill in the holes like a bald man with a combover then proceeded to demonstrate. “Or we could just go buy another one,” he said, but I had faith that lights and ornaments might make this dumpster fire better. It didn’t.

The next morning I went to the curb to bring the garbage cans in and in the gutter was a lone silver ornament – a castoff from our original tree that had just been hauled away. I brought it in and hung it on the tree, stood back, and said, “You are by far the ugliest tree I have ever owned,” and 2025 Christmas Tree said, “Hundred percent, girl, but I drink water like a camel.”

Merry Christmas to you and yours. May it be an oddly shaped mess of light and love.

If you are like me and on social media too much, then you have likely seen your share of influencers (a.k.a. people who have made a career out of shopping) sharing their Christmas shopping guides. It runs the gamut from beauty products to age appropriate gifts for every person you could possibly know including your kid’s hamster. If gifts are your love language, Instagram has you covered for the holiday season.

After the Thanksgiving break when I went back to work, my coworker and I compared notes about our dinner. Mostly about how stressful it is to get several dishes done and hot at the same time with a kitchen full of hungry family and friends. I told her that it seemed like I was standing at the stove forever and about to lose my ever loving shit because the gravy wasn’t thickening. It eventually did, and hours later when everyone had left and I was laying in bed, all I could think about was whether or not I had seasoned it. I couldn’t remember. Was it bland? I ate it and it tasted fine but was it? Or was I so glad it finally was the right consistency that I called it done and never paid attention to how it tasted? My last thought before falling asleep was that next year I needed to pay attention to that as if that was something I’d actually remember.

I crashed the next day and did nothing until the weekend and the kickoff to the holiday shopping season where I mostly deleted hundreds of emails. The overload was intense and I’m not sure how to get off the rollercoaster of accumulating stuff. I often dance between cutting back and a running movie in my head where I am sitting on the sidewalk of a Paris cafe wearing the perfect outfit. So perfect the French say mon ami where did you get that and I say at Loft for 40% off. Can you believe it? And they say, “Oui oui, of course, isn’t your Loft always 40% off?” Then we chuckle and I sip red wine and run my fingers over my faux pearl necklace layered on top of a polyester sweater that’s supposed to mimic cashmere.

At the start of the new week a front had moved in and it snowed all day. I was off and Mike worked from home. As is typical of the first snow of the season, the roads were a mess and drivers forgot that this is what happens in the winter. Though I have no qualms about driving in the snow I never left the house, never made a Cyber Monday purchase, never saw a reason for a mad dash to the grocery store. I did some writing and laundry and looked out the window a lot like a true Midwesterner and said, “It sure is coming down.”

At 10:00 that night I leashed up Ernie and took him outside one last time before we all went to bed. Michael had spent hours cleaning off the driveway but the dog stopped on the threshold of the garage and froze. He was freaked out even though he’d been in the snow multiple times that day. We stood there a few minutes until I stepped out and coaxed him into doing the same. It was so quiet – the snow and darkness blanketing everything in an unmatched calmness that was the antithesis to the previous few days. As if it was a scripted movie, an owl started hooting and this dog who finds a reason to bark at nearly everything stayed as silent as the night.

Reluctantly we had to come inside and break the spell but those few minutes of winter magic live inside of me now. For too many days too many unimportant things were holding out their carrot sticks wanting my undivided attention. Then nature showed up and said, “Mon ami, nice sweatpants. The bleach that discolored them when you were scrubbing the shower are especially striking. Now hold my Pinot Noir I’ve got to give you something.”

What a love language.

Prior to Mark’s death we would drive to Chicago for Thanksgiving. It was easier than going during Christmas and less chance of dealing with snow or icy roads. After he died, I didn’t have the energy or desire to repeat our traditional trek to see family and pretend that any of us were okay. We were not and for the first time in many years I made a turkey dinner for the kids and me.

It was a very hard day for all of us. We were still in shock and the idea of celebrating Mark’s favorite holiday without him was absurb. At the very least I thought he should make an appearance, and if he had to go back to wherever he now resided, I’d let him go after he ate. So goes the magical thinking of grief.

Because Mark’s death was so new and fairly close to the holidays, we got a lot of support. The day was quintessentially fall – chilly, sunny, and gorgeous. Neighbors stopped by all morning, we got many phone calls and texts and felt wrapped in care and love. While grateful, we were heartbroken, trying to be brave, and attempting to eat a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with a lump in our throats that refused to budge. It was a painful day and collapsing in bed at the end of it was the highlight.

Last year Mike and I celebrated the holiday in a new house that was full of family, friends, and several of my coworkers who couldn’t make it home for the holiday. What a difference six years can make. While gathered around the kitchen island with glasses of prosecco, Mike welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming and I made the toast. “To all of you who have filled our home today, to those we wish could be here, and to those who watch us from the other side. Happy Thanksgiving…..let’s all meet here again next year.” The last part less a toast and more of a plea to the universe to keep everyone we loved beside us.

This week there will be many people like me and my kids during that first horrible Thanksgiving. People who are bereft, lonely, heartbroken, and in shock. To walk into a room and know you are accompanied by the dark cloud of loss, the one nobody knows what to say to, the one who can only manage a weak smile with fresh tears in your eyes is so very hard. Life may go on but it doesn’t go on smoothly or easily. It takes an enormous amount of guts to show up which is something only the experienced can appreciate.

If you follow me on social media you have heard this advice before but I think it bears repeating every holiday. If you are in the room with someone whose loss is fresh and painful, please do not turn away. There is nothing worse than putting yourself out into the world after a death and feeling like a pariah because it makes people uncomfortable. Will it feel awkward? Yes. Will it be hard? Absolutely, and so maybe this will help. Ask them what their person’s favorite part of Thanksgiving was, what they most looked forward to eating, if they had a tradition that they never swayed from. It’s a neutral question that brings to the surface more happy memories than sad and everyone who has lost someone dear to them loves to talk about them.

This doesn’t mean they won’t cry. Everything makes them cry but they are tears of loss combined with gratitude for days that are gone but not forgotten. Hold their hand, hold their gaze, hold their loss. Stay with them and for the briefest of moments make them feel less alone in their sorrow.

Mark’s loss is no longer new or as brutal and I can recall with fondness the memories we made around Thanksgiving. He loved pumpkin pie. I hated it so he learned how to make it and patted himself on the back every year for how great it turned out. He’d try to convince me to try it, I’d tell him no and he’d tell me I was missing out, that he couldn’t believe anybody could actually hate pumpkin pie. I can still see his smile, his vibrant eyes, his joy at being around a table full of family. My mom, who hosted Thanksgiving for years, would tell you that you need to buy several bottles of cold duck and to crack one open before anyone arrived.

Showing up for the holidays when your favorite person is missing is incredibly brave. Loss loosens its grip ever so slowly, you relearn how to breathe, and how to live your days not terrified of the future. It is a profound, holy journey that is only made less painful when you can feel the hands on your back of family and friends propping you up.

And since it turns out that those we love are still hanging around, while you’re on the phone with your sister and brother-in-law asking them (again) how to make the dressing, some of them are whispering in your ear that you really should give that pumpkin pie another shot and that a glass of cold duck makes for a more relaxed hostess.

Bless their missed hearts.

xo

My siblings and I spent our childhood going to wakes and funerals. Every year someone in our extended family would die and we would make the forty five minute drive to the city my parents grew up in for the wake. Back then this was a two day event followed by the funeral on day three. As young kids we were more familiar with funeral parlors than parks.

We watched all methods of mourning (or stoicism) and the influence this had on us was life long. The toughest death of all was our thirteen year old cousin and a room full of people in collective shock. When my grandma’s brother died and it was time to take the coffin from the funeral home to the church, my grandma threw herself on top of it and started wailing. My mom and dad scurried us out of there and later I would overhear Dad say how mad his mom’s behavior made him – the message being that you could mourn but for god’s sake keep the drama to a minimum.

A few years ago I was having a conversation with a close friend who had an uncle who was not long for this earth. “Remember,” she said, “how every time you’d go to a family function all the aunts and uncles would be sitting at the same table? They’d have their coffee and watch everything going on and comment amongst each other about everyone.” “Oh yes,” I said and could immediately picture every one of those people in my own family sitting together. “Now we’re those people,” she said. “We’re the older ones at all the family events having our coffee and saying do you remember so-and-so? Whatever happened to them?” It was as if I had never considered this for a single minute. What do you mean we’re the older aunts and uncles now?

My grandma’s niece was named Belle. I never knew the connection when I was growing up other than that they were related. They did everything together and were more like sisters. My dad once said that Belle was the kindest person he knew and Mallory has her middle name. Belle and her husband had one son, Hal. Hal was ten years older than my oldest brother and for us the ultimate cool guy. He was an architect and after he got married and we went to he and his wife’s house for the first time we were in awe. Up until then everyone decorated with whatever Sears was offering but this place was different than anything we had seen before.

For the entirety of our lives, Hal was there for every event – first with Carol who died from breast cancer and then his later in life partner and wife, Cindy. At some point a third cousin a few years older than you becomes your equal but every year when we would go back to Chicago for the holidays the first thing Hal always said to me was, “Hey, kid.” After our uncle died last year and then our mom, my sister and I would joke that we needed to protect Hal at all costs, wrap him in bubble wrap, and put him in a secure location because losing the last person in our parents’ extended family was too much to consider.

But this spring something did happen to him. He fell, was seriously injured, and for six months his wife moved heaven and earth to get him better. Cindy didn’t get the outcome she and the rest of us prayed for but she did get time with him and on my side of loss that is immeasureable. Last week I flew home for the services and was okay until the cemetery when in unison we repeated after the priest, “And may perpetual light shine upon him.” I knew if I let out a single sob it wouldn’t stop so I dug a fingernail into the palm of my hand and made it through to the end where we all walked away from an urn that held Hal’s remains as if that was a perfectly normal thing to do on a Tuesday.

In my life I don’t think there was anyone who opened up my eyes to design, gardening, and less is more (but make sure the less is good quality) more than Hal. He was an older brother to all of us, the last tie to everyone we grew up with, the ones who shaped our lives, the table full of relatives at every event.

My brother wrote some thoughts down to make at the funeral home and asked me to look them over. I wanted to add something but had no confidence in saying it out loud without my voice shaking so I said it was great and handed him the piece of paper back. Maybe it wasn’t the time or place to say that when Hal called someone a son of a bitch you believed it to be true even if you had no idea who he was talking about.

Now the aunts and uncles table has gotten turned on its head once again which is how life unfairly goes. But, oh my, were we ever the lucky ones for all those years when it was full to the brim. As for you, Hal, may perpetual light always shine upon on you. I don’t think you ever knew all the ways we adored you.

*Hal read everything I wrote and frequently commented the same thing every time – a single red heart.*

The past seven years have been the longest stretch of time in my life that I have not had a dog. A few months after I moved in with Michael he had to put down his dog, Izzy. In his old age, Izzy, never really took to me as he had many health issues including limited vision that made him wary of everyone. It was like living with a cranky old-timer at the nursing home that you would tiptoe past in fear you’d startle him causing him to bark at the wall.

Through my dogless years, my oldest daughter, Maggie, made it her mission to find the perfect dog for me. On a regular basis she would send me pictures of dogs at shelters that she thought would work. I looked at a few and once brought my granddaughter with me to look at one who was perfect but already adopted by the time we got there. When they asked me the kind of dog I wanted, I said, “Chill, not too barky.” They said they had the perfect one and brought out a chihuahua who didn’t get the barking memo.

After Izzy was put down, Michael and I talked regularly about getting a dog but we were traveling quite a bit. It never seemed like the right time until a few months ago when we started searching on a more regular basis. We mostly used PetFinder which has listings from all of the shelters nearby. We went to see a terrier mix – a sweet dog they told us, the perfect pet. It was clear this dog was very recently pregnant and nursing puppies which was not revealed in the listing or until we asked. “But we’ll get her fixed before you adopt her,” they said and we declined.

We went again to the same shelter a short time later and I’m going to climb on a soapbox here and shout to the wind WHAT IN THE NAME OF SARAH MACLACHLEN IS GOING ON WITH ANIMAL SHELTERS? We had to be buzzed in, surrender our drivers license for photo copying, fill out a questionnaire (again) as the last one was only good for thirty days, then get put in the queue to wait to see the dogs. In this case, two brothers surrendered by an elderly owner who could no longer care for them. When our name was called we had to meet with a pet consultant and go through another grilling as if we hadn’t just answered the same questions. Yes we own our house. Yes we have a fenced yard. Yes we have a vet. Yes we have owned dogs before. Yes we have a plan for when we’re at work. No we don’t have small children in the house. No we’re not sure about owning two dogs but here we are and there is a whole buildng full of pets that need homes so….. Finally we got to meet the dogs who could have cared less about us and by that point we’d been there so long I thought we were going to end up on their adoption site.

Not to be deterred for long, Michael spent his lunch hour looking at pets and sending their info to me. One was from a smaller rescue group and on my lunch hour I started filling out the adoption paperwork. Have you ever put a dog down? Why did you put the dog down? What was the date you put the dog down? Would you agree to having the dog meet your other pets? Would you agree to having a home visit so we can see the environment the dog would be in? I declared I was done. The hoop jumping trying to adopt a rescue dog had gotten too crazy for me. Michael pivoted and turned to Craigslist and next thing I know there’s the dog of my dreams in a text. A sweet, white terrier named Ghost whose young owner was moving and couldn’t bring him to their new apartment.

The next day we put the address in our phone and headed towards rehoming the dog I knew would be perfect. He was except that he barked at us nonstop the entire time we were there. I whispered sweet nothings to him and held my hand out and he never stopped barking. “He seems really afraid,” Mike said. “To be honest,” I said, “I think my big hair is scaring the shit out of him,” which would not be the first time that happened.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Ghost and the next day said maybe we should try again. I went to run a few errands and Mike found a dog at a different shelter and drove out to see him while I was gone. He thought it was a go and called back when I got home to make sure he was still there and I could see him. He already had a hold on him as smaller dogs are the Labubu(s) of the pet adoption world – everybody wants one.

Michael found another one on Craigslist – a very specific kind of doodle that goes for thousands of dollars and yet could be ours for the Very Low Price of $250. He sent me the link. He was cute all right but a few minutes later the link had been removed. “Just a misunderstanding with someone,” the seller said and after some back and forth we went the next day to look at him at a remote parking lot thirty minutes away. “We’re either coming home with a dog,” I said, “or we’re going to end up dead. ” We waited a bit in the empty lot, and I thought of every show I’ve watched on Netflix where some dumb shmucks end up in the wrong place and are held at gunpoint until they agree to be drug runners.

I may have exaggerated a wee bit because we met a very nice woman with a dog she couldn’t keep. She had three dogs and a new granddaughter with a heart condition that she needed to help her daughter manage. The youngest of her pack needed to be rehomed. I walked him and he didn’t pull, he immediately rolled over on his back when I went to pet him, he did not bark at us. We closed the deal and put him in the car.

A week later Michael said, “I think that woman drugged the dog when she introduced him to us because he is not that mellow.” No, he is not. He thinks the minute he leaves the house everybody can’t wait to meet him. He loves a cool, refreshing drink from the toilet bowl. He terrorizes the cat, running so fast into him every time he comes in from the backyard that he ends up tackling him. He eats his food, drinks his water, and gets in his face constantly. The cat loathes him and looks at us in contempt for bringing this buffoon into his otherwise quiet life.

But on a cute scale he is a solid 10++++++. He is so happy to start the day he can’t stand it. He loves when our grandkids come over because they run him ragged. Some days he’s good on his walks but more often than not he’s a shit. He likes to jump on the couch and knock every pillow on the floor. He pulls every toy he has out of the basket to the point that it looks like we’re running a daycare. He follows us everywhere as if we can only be successful with his input.

My criteria all along when we were looking for a dog was that I wanted a female and not a puppy. Meet Ernie – our seven month old puppy. 50% some kind of doodle, 50% unmedicated attention deficit disorder, and (not anytime soon) our good boy.

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