Saying Goodbye

Last week, my family and I said goodbye to Mark Herring, a boy that lived on the same floor at Misericordia as my brother, Michael. I don’t know how many years I’d known Mark. My memories of him blur into a collage of brief encounters, moments I spent with him while visiting my brother. Like the time Mark was reading a Best Buy catalogue and I asked him if he was buying a new flat screen TV. Or the time my dad and I were taking Michael to Easter Mass in the rotunda, and Mark asked if he could go along. So I walked beside him as he steered his powered wheelchair down the hall, my father pushing Michael in his chair next to us, and we sat together during mass.

I don’t remember the last time I saw Mark before he died. Lots of times it was in passing while I was visiting Michael. I’d see Mark down the hall and wave. Or I’d stop in the multi-purpose room where all the kids gathered to watch a DVD and give him a kiss or a high-five.

I was at Misericordia the Saturday before Mark died. Michael wasn’t feeling good, and mom and I stopped by for a visit. We spent a couple of hours by Michael’s bedside, talking to him, trying to make him laugh. I took a picture of mom and me holding Michael’s hands and uploaded it to Facebook. As we were leaving, we stopped by the nurses’ station to chat with the nurse on duty. The hallway was quiet, not filled with the usual kids hanging out playing, singing, or drawing. I peeked in the multi-purpose room, looking for Barb, Michael’s CNA, but I didn’t see Mark. If I had, I would’ve stopped to talk to him. Two days later my brother Chris called to tell me Mark died of a sudden heart attack.

I didn’t know a lot about Mark. I wasn’t even sure how old he was. Never met his family. It wasn’t until his funeral when I learned the answers to these questions. The laminated memorial cards told us Mark would have been seventeen in June. In the front row at the service sat his mom, sister, brother, grandmother and step dad. I’d never met them. None of us had. I gave his grieving mother a hug and told her how beautiful her son was. I was one of hundreds of strangers that came up to her that day. I wonder if she knew what an impact her son had on all of us.

Mark had impossibly long eyelashes. Dark and curled, like every woman’s dream. It was the first thing I saw as I knelt beside his small white coffin. I told him that I wished I’d spent more time with him when I had the chance, that I wished I’d seen him on that last Saturday of his life. We always regret the time we didn’t spend with someone once they’re gone. But it reminds us to cherish the time we have with ones who are still with us.