A year ago my mom passed away from a long battle of dementia/Alzheimer’s. That is a freaking awful way to go and she fought long and hard through it. Along the way, my dad was such a warrior for her. I didn’t write last year about my mom passing on social media. It was just so hard to wrap my head around it but yet I had been working my way through it since her diagnosis and I kept it very extremely private to me while I worked my way through. Alzheimer’s/Dementia is such a hard way to go, but those of you surrounding the loved one grieve along the way.
In the last 2 days I’ve experienced grief like nothing imagined and it came with a sudden force behind it that I feel overwhelmed and in a deep fog. But my dear amazing, handsome and warrior man, Mark Williamson passed away yesterday. I am overwhelmed with all the steps that will need to be taken in the next week or so. But, forever grateful to the surrounding of family and friends.
We are forever marked by a huge hole in our lives. For now, we are filling the hole with stories to tell about him and memories that we just don’t want to lose. We are lost and unsure how to move forward without him and I will be incomplete until I can be with him again. I have 2 specific reasons for this post. 1 give a little bit of the story just so it will help ease the how and why. and 2 for a greater bigger purpose than any of us can see right now.
1. Mark was diagnosed with melanoma in 2022. We were thrilled that his scans have all been clear since. However, we are unsure if the scans either missed something or if quite possibly the aggressiveness of a return of melanoma was so quick that we just couldn’t have caught it. For this part, I am going to be extraordinarily careful to not “what if” this. (I will but as Mark has always said, I can’t do anything to “fix” a past action, I can only always move forward into what God’s got for us.)
I told my dad when Mark entered the hospital last Thursday night that we were going to have to walk the story that God had written for us. I will move through anger and sadness and grief and everything as I wrestle with why we weren’t given a miracle because if anyone could have used one right then, it was Mark. The number of prayer warriors enlisted to reach the Lord on behalf of Mark, we were STRONG. Please know if you were praying for a miracle, I promise we all were.
Cause of Death
But, Mark’s miracle is in his everyday touches to all of you and his 3 beautiful children. As to the story of his passing, he was admitted to the ER on Thursday night and was passed along to the neurological ICU due to a bleed on the brain. His pressure was intense and they were doing all that they could to relieve the pressure. Every scan and everything that popped up between Thursday night and Saturday night, seemed to be going in the direction of ongoing care as the swelling decreased.
However, as Sunday morning came up, we were given the blow that changed the course of all of our lives. He got up with assistance to go to the chair to finally eat something and in moments of being there, he slumped over and was needing help breathing and more. We immediately brought the family in and so, for this we are thankful. He passed away yesterday surrounded by the most amazing set of humans God could assemble at that point. I got to lay with him as he passed on and for this I’m grateful. My life is torn and I’ll probably be off socials.
Please know I’ll read every one of your messages and your comments but I’m just broke. But that brings me to the second reason I am on here this morning. I want to capture this now because I fear in the story that is our lives here on earth, we all take in the story of him passing, we will be focused on it and then as it should, life gets going again, and you’ll be on to your next event in life, again as it should. So, I’m requesting a huge request on Mark’s behalf.
Mark Williamson always wanted to write a book
Mark always wanted to write a book. Leadership. Bible based. All the things. He’s written a devotion that is on Amazon called Stand the Watch. If you’re interested in the devotion, I’ll post a link to it. BUT, my beautiful daughter, the English teacher, is going to help me put together a book of Mark’s legacy. YOU. You are Mark’s legacy. If you were touched in any way shape or form, whether it be one instance or many, or just in who he was, I want this story.
I’ll set up a place where you can write and submit the story to. I don’t want to lose this part of Mark. It will bring healing to me and his children, to know who their dad was, who my husband was to others. I’ll post the link once I have that set up. Please don’t hesitate though to message me your story or email me your story. If you don’t have my email let me know and I’ll send it along.
I’m just broke. In true Mark fashion though he helped me this morning already remember something. I couldn’t remember our wedding song that we “slow danced” to – our first dance. Our true song that was ours was Hootie & The Blowfish, I Only Wanna Be With You. But we danced to an obscure little song that I just have not been able to remember. But this morning, Mark whispered it to me. PM Dawn’s I’d Die Without You.
As such, I have it on repeat right now and am just feeling the song so embedded into what I’m walking through right now. I feel as though a huge piece of me is gone, as it is. It’s cliche to say but that freaking stupid line in Jerry Maguire where he says, you complete me. That was my husband. I was strong. I was bold. I was everything, when I had him behind me, next to me and in front of me. He fed my soul in a way that I wish I would have told him everyday how much I was thankful to have met him. This year would have been our 29th anniversary. We had so many plans going forward.
