(Official) Letter of Resignation

On Friday, April 6, I submitted my official letter of resignation to ABC. I loved working there, but I have a lot of work ahead of me and need more time to grieve than would be allowed for a leave of absence.  It was difficult to write but needed to be done for my sake, and theirs. Below is a copy of that letter.

I have spent the better part of the day trying to craft this letter. I am bereft of the proper language to express my gratitude and haplessly keep returning to an online thesaurus, which has proved to be of no help.

It was with great pride that I took the position at ABC. The hours were odd, but as David Muir would leave, I would enter and after some time, learned about “the Diane Sawyer break room” and would start my nights, as I liked to put, “drinking David Muir’s coffee.”

Two years is not a very long time but it was a sensational time as, after years of freelancing for Esquire, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, et al., I finally had a desk job my mother could brag about.

In that time, Ebony and I were living with her cancer diagnosis. She had an anaplastic astrocytoma, a brain tumor that has no cure and even after surgery to resect the mass, it was guaranteed to recur. An astrocytoma is a mass that has splinters; you resect the mass and the splinters go off and become their own tumor. It’s like a goddamn alien weed.

Ebony had brain surgery and aggressive radiation and chemotherapy in 2015 and in 2016, they – “they,” the doctors – said there was “no recurrence.” With this cancer, they don’t say, “you’re in remission,” because they know the tumor will come back, so they say “there’s no recurrence.” Until there is.

And like Ernest Hemingway wrote in “The Sun Also Rises,” when the guy talks about how he lost his money, we were blithely living with her cancer and she went from being fine to not being fine, “gradually, then suddenly.”

The last six and a half months were beautiful and terrible. I would go to work, take the train home – the MTA is the worst, by the way – and I would get home between 3 and 5 depending (we live out in Jamaica)  and then I would get up at 8:30 and make coffee. Ebony’s mother came to live with us in our one-bedroom apartment, so she and I would sit and have coffee and then we would get Ebony up (she was usually up to the smell of the coffee) and clean her, change her, bathe her and feed her breakfast. I swore that I would never put her in a fucking facility and I worked hard to give her a life and not an existence. But I had to work and after breakfast her mother would take over and I would go back to bed for three or four hours. Then I would get up and deal with all the shit: bills, Medicaid application, her insurance, Visiting Nurse Services (who are terrible) and pay bills and order a bunch of stuff from Amazon (diapers, Shea Butter wipes, mattress liners, etc.) and then around 4 I’d start dinner and then after we fed her, would change her and put her to bed.

Every other day I played her favorite music and whenever we could, would take her out in her wheelchair to the park over by Archbishop Malloy. On her birthday, I moved Heaven and Earth and took her to Nobu and fed her sushi and sashimi. I ordered a ridiculously expensive glass of red wine and let her sip some. She loved red wine and the movie “Sideways” and I was not going to let her miss out.

My entire existence was for her and like the first thirty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan.”

When she passed, I was holding her hand. I could not bear the sound of the monitors and all the beeping and the noises in the hospital, so I put on “Legend” by Bob Marley & The Wailers, and put my phone on her shoulder. She was still warm when people were coming in the room. I wouldn’t leave her. Finally, they told us we had to leave and I wouldn’t go until Winnie, this nurse from the Grenadines, came in and sat with her because I didn’t want my last memory of Ebony to be leaving her in a room alone. She looked so peaceful, like she was sleeping.

To say that I have been grief-stricken and inconsolable is an abuse of vocabulary. Ebony was my rock. She was my salvation and she was a total badass and she was hotter than Hell. She was glorious and while it comforts her family to say “she is with God now,” I can assure you that Ebony is, in fact, drinking with Motorhead.

It has been a little over two weeks since she went to see Motorhead and I have singlehandedly bumped the second quarter earnings of whoever manufactures Kleenex. I still have to go through all of Ebony’s things, return medical equipment, donate all the “stuff” and then leave the apartment. Right now I have a lot on my plate. To add to my American melodrama, my mother – I am her only living relative – blacked out one night at the end of February and hit her head on the vanity in the bathroom. She has been recovering from a concussion and needs my help.

Oh, and by the way: I turned 50 on March 30. Me, and my arch nemesis, Celine Dion (we share the same birthday/month/year) are both candidates for AARP.

I am overwhelmed.

There is nothing I would prefer better than to set the clock back and return to bitching about Arie Luyendyk Jr., but I know that I cannot. I want to drink David Muir’s coffee and I want to find Kickers and I want to listen to Nick Legasse yell about sports…. But I cannot. I want Ebony back. I want to hold her again, I want to text her and tell her stories… but I cannot.

As such, I find that I cannot return. I am going to move home, take care of my mother and keen like an Irish widow. (It’s in my blood, I kinda have to.)

I will truly miss working for ABC because it is and will always be a highlight of my life. The courtesy and kindness that you have shown me during my struggle, you showed to Ebony as well and I will never forget that. If I get my shit together and you want me to come back, I’ll come back. If you ever need someone murdered, I’ll do that, too. Of course, I’ll have to invoice you, but whatever you need: I’m in.

I don’t know how to write a letter of resignation and I hope that this is sufficient. I really don’t know what else to say or write, but you made my life better and I hope someday I can return the favor.

In the meantime, I am going to be going to some dark places, I think, before I find the light. I guess you can find me on Facebook or Twitter and I hope that you do.

I just want to say thank you. I loved the job but more, I was supremely grateful to be a part of something so special, made all the more so by the special people that you are.

Thank you.

With the highest regards,

Mark Andrew “Mick Stingley” Mullaney