When someone is really unwell, expectations drop, but as a person reaches their potential, we demand more from them. I guess my Mark should have taken it as a compliment that I expected so much of him.
My farther-in-law, Mark, spent about forty years as a heroin addict and, when he finally got clean, he worked hard to stay there. “Change the channel,” he’d say, when an unwelcome thought came along, and he’d drop and do fifty pushups or jump on ol’ hateful, his elliptical. Recovered addicts like to say that their disease is doing pushups in the parking lot. Mark was doing more. He looked like that ripped old guy in the in-flight magazine, without the white hair. He did a burpee for each year of his life when he turned 73. His fitness was a phenomenon, but the real miracle was that he was alive at all. How many times did he overdose? Drive like a maniac? Get shot at? For most of Mark’s life, his family never expected he would outlive his addiction. Mark’s first wife, Sandy, left him finally when she could no longer tolerate sharing a home or a future with someone so wholly unreliable. My husband, Jeff, and his siblings got a second chance at a stable home through their new-step dad, Gary, but never stopped wishing for Dadio to be there for them in the way they needed and deserved.
The curse spared Jeff and Jana, but their big brother, Jason, was not so fortunate. It may have been genetics, or maybe Jason took the brunt of the broken home, but he had a hard time. He struggled to hold down a job, a relationship, or money, and he was often in trouble. When Jason’s fiance overdosed and died, everyone was heartbroken- and also terrified for Jason’s safety. Thirty-five years after the nuclear family broke apart under the strains of addiction, it assembled again in hopes of arresting its spread. Mark, Sandy, Jason, Jeff, and Jana were together again, trying to pick up the pieces of Jason’s troubled life. Mark was uniquely qualified to help navigate the recovery community, and Jason was admitted to the very rehab center where Dadio worked.
But Jason checked out early to attend our wedding and to cash a big check he had coming, and he never went back. We watched and waited for the savings to run out, hoping he would outlive his disposable income. Maybe then he would hit bottom, maybe then recovery would stick. But the same day Jason called Sandy begging for rent money, he took a fatal dose of heroin: a different kind of bottom.
Once again, Mark stepped up. He made the brutal medical decisions, handled Jason’s meager possessions, and arranged a natural burial. There was a bitterness in Mark’s helpfulness. If only Jason could’ve outlasted his demons, too.
Jason’s death was a tragedy, and it revived so much of the unresolved pain from the years Mark spent in the wilderness. What chance had Jason had with a dad like that? Mark lamented: “I told Jason to never use alone!” Pretty good advice, but he could’ve done without the last word.
The Mark that beat his addiction was the Mark I knew: the evangelical health nut; the helpful handyman; the hilarious-toast-at-the-wedding guy; the somber and sobered survivor. Dadio. Mark had a charm about him. He could talk to anyone, and would. He had more original turns of phrase than anyone I’ve ever known. His ability to genuinely appreciate things- mostly food- is rare in adults. The way he would celebrate an ice cream cone or a perfectly ripe avocado was downright charming.
And he was so thoroughly recovered that our expectations crept up, my own in particular. I expected him to help out when he came to visit. I expected him to listen to my responses in conversation. I expected him to ask before he came to visit. I expected him to refrain from extensive monologues on Roundup-ready grain or resistant starch or Manuka honey. I expected him to notice when Jeff was busy instead of demanding his full and immediate attention. I expected him to put his phone down when we were having a family dinner. I expected him to stop sending me crazy propaganda from deep in his social media feed. Ok, so, I was kinda bitchy. I had a stick up my ass. We’d have our laughs and our “I love you’s” but every time he left, I’d be overcome with regret and wish I had done better to appreciate him as he was.
Mark came all the way up from his much warmer sauna-furnished-home in Tennessee to our big old freezing home in Detroit on January 2nd because he missed Jeff, and wanted to see his grandkids, and because that’s just how much he loved to be with us.
It was an exceptionally weird week. We were adjusting to the return to work from the holidays. There was my great-aunt’s funeral and Grandma was in the hospital. Jeff and I were obsessed with a family drama that kept us up late. I got the flu, and then our 1 year-old got it too. And Dadio was here! There wasn’t much quality time. He was often sitting in front of the fire reading (he hadn’t finished a book in decades, but this was going to be the one). He played with the kids, flipping them in the air and patiently reading books with them. He put many hours in the kitchen, normal k-p (kitchen prep) plus a quadruple batch of spiced pecans swimming in a hundred dollars worth of Manuka honey. We went to the Y and added Mark to our family membership. He and Jeff managed to get in a morning workout. In the cracks of the chaos, Mark dished out an extra heavy dose of unsolicited nutritional advice because he was terrified of the flu.
Mark came home from a day of grocery shopping and visiting an old friend. He saw how sick the baby was, and figured he was going to be next if he stuck around. Time to go. Next thing we knew, he was packing and organizing and still somehow managing to give food lectures.
We were bummed he was leaving so soon. There were books to read, burpees to belch, field trips to take. The auto show was in town! We were worried about him driving through the night with no sleep. Jeff assured him that if he were blasted by a semi, we’d get an autopsy to confirm if he’d had the flu. I told him sleep was the best medicine. He left anyway. With a hug and an “I love you,” he was off into the night.
When I came downstairs the next morning, I could hear Jeff on the phone with his Dad, checking in to make sure he made it home alright. He had. Mark was just unloading the cooler and getting ready to hop into bed, when he noticed that Jeff packed the bag of avocados Mark had just bought. “Damn it, Jeff!! Those were for you!”
That night, when I came downstairs after putting the kids to bed, Jeff was on the phone again. This time, I overheard a voice on the other line that I didn’t recognize. It was Deb, Mark’s ex, calling to let us know Mark was dead. Not sick, not dying, but cold-to-the-touch dead. Deb had found his body by the bed and a needle in the bathroom. Next thing we knew, Deb handed the phone to a medical examiner who used the words “your Dad’s body” and “autopsy” inside of the same sentence.
It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem real. He had just been here. The next morning, our son heard a door open and said “Is that Grandpa Zim?” We felt that way too. The disbelief was intense, but as the reality set in, I was hit with a massive dose of that post-visit regret I always felt.
When Mark was alive, it was so easy for me to focus on everything he wasn’t. When he died, it was obvious how much we lost. My husband had a father he could call anytime, who would pick up the phone and chat for hours. My kids had a grandpa who would live with us for weeks on end, who would roll around on the floor with them, and climb to the top of the slide. I had someone to learn from about nutrition, someone to talk to about recovery, someone who could, every once in a while, cut through the noise and say something so sweet and sincere to make me feel truly seen. We all had someone who was funny, original, and genuine. Someone who understood the preciousness of life and was doing something about it. I’m sorry I didn’t see it all more clearly. I’m sorry I was focused on the wrong slice of the pie chart.
I can apply this lesson to all aspects of my life. There are so many gifts that I fail to hold in proportion with what I lack. Last night, in my bedtime prayers, I found something new to be thankful for: “Thank you God, for my life.” I’ve prayed for people, things, opportunities, and hopes, but it never occurred to me to place gratitude on the simple, incredible fact of my life. I am seeing it a bit better now.
I see, too, how my narrow lens made me miss Mark’s humanity. I saw his fitness and assumed he’d live another twenty years; I didn’t see his delicate mortality. I saw his recovery and assumed he was safe; I forgot about the years of suffering before them. I saw my own irritation at his constant state of alarm and assumed it was something he could turn off; I never thought about how many intrusive thoughts he was battling.
When he was awake, he was moving, busy, talking. When he went to sleep, the TV was on. When he woke in the night, he exercised. I don’t know if it was sorrow, or guilt, or desire, or all of it, but I know now that he was a haunted man. I never invited him to a meeting, or a prayer. I didn’t know that he needed help too.
One surreal week after Dadio died, we were in Tennessee to bury him. We sat in his kitchen eating the still-fresh avocados that he had been in our home just days before. Why did he drive home that night instead doing 100 pushups? Why did he tell Jeff everything was alright instead of saying “I’m about to do something really stupid?” Why didn’t he wait til the kids woke up to say goodbye one more time?
I think it’s because Mark was guilty of focusing on what he lacked too. He worried about his body and mind getting old; he didn’t focus on how amazing it was to be so healthy after everything he’d put his body through. In the end, he focused on what he didn’t have- that feeling- instead of what he did have- a full life with many many promising years ahead. Wherever and whatever Mark is now, I believe he is ok. But I also believe that he wanted to be here a lot longer. Even if that meant being sick or cold, or, eventually, weak and forgetful. Even if it meant having to face the humility of recovery all over again.
If I make it to the place where my bones ache and my body weakens, I hope that I don’t just focus on all that I’ve lost. I hope I’ll be able to retain that gratitude for my life, for my body, for all that I have. Not in a sarcastic “I’m still on the right side of dirt, haha,” kind of way, but in the way of true gratitude. I hope I have the wisdom of seeing what I have and not what I lack.
Mark was obsessed with the ingredients of everything he put into his body right up to the moment that he injected a fatal dose of poison directly into his veins. We could conclude that he was full of it. We could focus on his hypocrisy, but I would rather focus on what he knew, not what he forgot in a moment of weakness. I want to focus on what he was, and not what he wasn’t. I want to be grateful for those six wonderful years we got with a man whose life could’ve ended so many times before. I want to marvel at the perfectly ripe avocado in this kitchen where my son’s artwork is displayed on the fridge, while my daughter, whose eyes look like her Grandpa’s, plays with his dog, as the voices of my husband and his sister telling an old story murmur in from the other room. I want to open my eyes more clearly to see all that I had, and all that I still have.
