Remembering Mark

It is Halloween. I never have liked Halloween much but now I have another reason to just be glad when today is done. A year ago today, my sweet nephew was found dead in his home. He was only 45. It’s been a whole year since we’ve had lunch. A whole year since we shopped the cute stores in Southern Pines. Mark and I had a unique relationship. I was just 17 when he was born and being the nurturing person that I am, wished so much that he was my baby. So cute, so blonde, such big blue eyes. He grew up to be a smart and handsome man with many talents. But skin and bone are not see-through and lying deep within this precious human being was a horrible disease. In his early 20s, Mark began to have terrible mood swings. And way too much later, he was finally diagnosed with Bi-Polar disease. I often think of what this smart and talented person could have been without this disease. He did the best he could and after years of prescribed drugs (some of them experimental) his body just wasn’t up to the task of living. He had a massive heart attack in the spring of 2007 and then a little more than 6 months later he hadn’t recovered enough to withstand a second heart attack. He died alone with his little dog Sheila. Mark, I love you and still miss you, and I cry when I think of how things could have been.

“When he fell in a whirlwind he went down as a tall and lordly cedar, green with boughs, down with a great shout upon the hills leaving a lonesome place against the sky.”- Edwin Markham

Yes, Mark, you leave a lonesome place against the sky.