Last week Thursday I had just sat down on the couch with Matt to watch the CMA's and look thru a new cookbook I had just gotten in the mail. I was drooling at really yummy looking cake when a friend I use to work with called me. I hadn't heard from her in a long time so was really excited to talk to her, but a little reserved when I saw what time it was. As soon as I heard her voice I knew something wasn't right. A good friend of ours, Mark, had died earlier in the afternoon of a massive heart attack. It took me a few minutes to grasp what she was telling me. At first I didn't believe her (she would never joke of such thing, I just couldn't wrap my mind around it).
This is the first death of someone I've been close to that had been unexpected. And I'm the kind of person that needs answers. Old people die... why? Because they are old. I get that. My 51 year old friend died... why? Heart attack... I know, but why? With the medical field where it's at now... why? I don't get it. Why did God chose him? Out of everyone he picked him?? He has a wife and daughter....
Mark left behind a beautiful wife of 30 years, whom I have met a few times and in those few times I can see how great of a wife and mother she is!...And a 19 year old daughter in her first year of college. It was just the three of them and in my eyes they were like the perfect family. Mark absolutely loved his family and no matter what conversation you were having with him most of the time he would start talking about his family. They were his world. He absolutely loved his wife and adored their daughter. It warmed my heart to see that kind of emotion that he would carry about his family. If you would ask him how he was doing he would respond Good... my daughter did this... my wife did this... There just aren't many men out there that talk a whole lot about their families or display that kind of affection. They also have a dog that is "spoiled rotten" and Mark acts like it annoys him, when you can really tell he loves the attention that his wife and daughter give that dog and would always come in with pictures of him!
My heart breaks for his wife and daughter. I can't imagine being in there shoes. This past weekend I was just in a funk over this news. Totally shocked and sad to spread the news to some other friends that use to work with Mark. All weekend long I kept thinking of different conversations we had, or how he would always pat my back and say "How's it going, Amanda Marie??" (He always used my middle name!) Or the time when I had just gotten contacts for the first time and lost it in my eye. I was freaking out, had no contact solution. Mark handed me some of his contact solution, told me to look better in my eye, threw me in the bathroom and said "Good Luck"! A few mins later I went back to my desk and sat. No contact found, Mark was with a customer. Soon I heard him walk over and say... "Good Grief Amanda Marie!" He bent over and picked up my smashed and rolled over contact off of the floor. "Now ya did it!"
He was such a good guy. I am SO lucky to have known him, even if it was for a short time. I worked with him for 5 years and knew when I left that we would be in contact forever. I lost someone that could always make me laugh, sort thru my troubles, help me get thru a bad day of work, tell me if I was right or wrong, be brutally honest with me, and someone that was a good role model.
Matt had left that next day to go up north and go hunting, leaving me with this news so fresh. The news just put me in a bad funk that I just couldn't shake. My husband wasn't by my side, and I couldn't help but think of all the widows out there that don't have a wife or husband anymore. Oh my mind just spun... I was just sad.
Now that everything is over I'm feeling better about the situation. I'm just realizing how I have some pretty incredible people in my life, he happened to be one of them, and I'm so happy to have known him. His family still wears heavy on my heart...I have been praying non stop for these two and will do so for a long long time.
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