Chapter 39

    They sat down to dinner and considered the idea of wine. His mother had known some of John’s complex history with alcohol, and she hesitated before ordering for the both of them. In the end it was John who ordered a bottle of chianti for the two of them, as he instinctively felt he needed the social lubrication the alcohol could provide. He knew it wasn’t a good coping skill given his history, but forged ahead in spite of this. There was a lot of water under the bridge to sift though here.

    Eventually they settled into an easy patter about his trip, the places he had been recently, and some of the things he had experienced. They shared a love of travel, and both had the same kind of wanderlust for new places and experiences that often runs in families. He told her about the Grand Canyon and the ocean at Big Sur, and they both laughed and reminisced about travels in another lifetime.

    By the second bottle of wine he could feel a shift in his mother’s presentation, and knew they were going to have to address the very heavy subject matter that lay before them.

‘Look John, I don’t have any magic words, and I don’t know any of the right things to say to people who are grieving. I never have. I know you don’t believe in a life after this one, but I do. And I’d like to believe my daughter and granddaughter are happy in it. I’d like to believe that and it gives me comfort. I also know that you have to live in this life, and how incredibly painful that must be right now. I know that. You’re my son and I love you, and I know how happy you were. I know because your happiness made me happy, and I’m forever grateful for the time you let me share with you and your family. It gave me a chance to start over too. To love unconditionally and relish in other people’s happiness. 

And with that she began to cry, and John for the first time contemplated the magnitude of her loss from having lost a new family that had in turn loved her without conditions. His grief had been his own. He had made sure of that when he turned on his car and hit the highway, but now he was beginning to see his own part in connective tissue in a much more complicated and complex web. There was value in sharing a burden, and no man could do it alone, although he had certainly tried.

“Thank you mom. Thank you for saying all of that. I’m just now seeing how much you were hurt by this, and for that I’m sorry. I realize now how much you were changed by your time with Stephanie and Kim, and I get it. I don’t mean this to sound cruel, but I’ve never seen you like you were when you were with them. It was like you had channeled a lifetime of experiences, all your hurt, all your loss, all your failings, and decided you were going to carefully and gently do it right this time. I marveled at it actually. You were a wonderful grandmother and they loved you very much.”

’Thank you son. It’s liberating for me to hear you say that. I always thought you carried a kind of anger at me for the way you were raised, and its’ something that has bothered me my whole life. I’d like to believe people can change, and I know the only way you can really do that is to let people get close enough to where they can hurt you. It took me a lifetime to realize this, and I suspect it’s a lesson that you’ve wrestled with yourself.”

He looked down at his glass of wine and pushed it away from him.  She was right. Right about all of it. Love needed vulnerability to thrive, and vulnerability means you can be hurt. The lesson was clear to him with his wife and daughter, but now he realized that maybe she was also talking about them he and his mother. Right here and right now. We the living.

‘I love you mom’ he said as his eyes drifted towards the ground.

‘I know son. I love you too,” she replied. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you say it before though. You make an old woman very happy.’

Sometimes a lesson presents itself until you get it right.

Chapter 38

    The last portion of this particular drive was familiar to John in a way that had made him smile. He and his friends would often drive from their home in the Tri-Cities across the border into Oregon to drink beer, gamble, and just generally feel like they were somewhere besides their home. He flipped through his music and found an old Bon Jovi song ‘Never Say Goodbye’. It was their song back then, and it was strangely appropriate again now. It somehow energized him for the last leg of the day’s journey.

     As John crossed into his old hometown, Bon Jovi continued to provide the soundtrack, this time serenading him with ‘who says you can’t go home,’ which was again strangely appropriate given the circumstances. By the time the song got to ‘just a hometown boy, born a rolling stone’ he was pulling into his old driveway. Once again he had that strange sensation like he had traveled back in time. He was becoming more and more convinced that time was a flat line.

     He saw his mother standing in the doorway and he stopped a moment and took her in. She was not the young woman he remembered, at least in appearance, although he found himself thinking about that time and that place.

     They had been poor growing up, and the quality of their relationship had varied a great deal over the years. Still, she had relished the role of being a grandmother, and had doted on Kim in a way that made her feel very special, which John had always been grateful for. It was a pleasure to see someone’s best self. His mother had found that in the role of a grandparent.

   They stood there awkwardly for some time, until finally his mother broke the ice and pulled John into a deep embrace, which had a certain uncomfortable quality to it given their usual exchanges. Affection had never been easy between the two of them, and there was always the weight of matters past keeping them ever so slightly apart.

"My son, I'm so sorry. That's all I'm going to try and say right now. I'm happy to see you. Despite the circumstances I'm so happy you're alright and still here.”

"Thank you mom. Despite everything I wanted to be here. To come home to something that was familiar. I'm glad to see you as well."

     And with that they dropped their embrace and John came inside. It wasn't the house he grew up in, but a lot of the artifacts of his past remained, and John felt the now familiar sensation of being dislodged in time. He felt young again here. Like his life had just opened up another narrative where he was 21 again, never married, and with a chance to reconcile with his mother before he said something he couldn’t take back.

    He gathered himself and looked around, realizing that he was in fact the older man with all the scars. His mother was still here though. That was something. He could at least do the best he could to create memories with her that were good. To let her comfort him in his hour of need and to let her be the loving and kind mother she was trying hard to be.

He could at least do that.

Chapter 37

   John woke up with a clear head and a newly defined sense of purpose. He felt proud of himself for resisting the drink last night, and decided that morning that he wanted to take a detour. He wanted to see his mother. To see his old house and his old school and the river where he used to sit and dream about a life that was bigger and better than his own. He wanted to go to his first home.

     He crossed over into the state of Washington later that morning, stopping briefly at the mouth of the Colombia River Gorge to take it all in. It was a place that was important to him in another incarnation, and he felt like the stop might help him to continue to regain clarity. It was a windy day and he felt a chill in the air as he walked down to the river to take it all in.

     John had decided to purchase his grandparent’s farm as a way of reconnecting with a happier time in his own life, and being back in Washington reminded him of this original instinct. The whole idea was based on sharing this piece of his past with his wife and daughter, and for a wonderful and fleeting time, his wish had come true. They had found the rarest of things. A happy ending. While it lasted, a happy ending. He wondered if we only got to experience this for a few fleeing moments. It was certainly true for him. Yet somehow he felt his story had more chapters, however dark they might become.

     He called his mother and let him know roughly when he would be home. Despite everything, he wanted to be a good son. He realized that whatever emotional crisis he was in, there were a lot of other people in the world that cared about his well being. It was something he had forgotten during his long trip across the country, and his mother had not-so-gently reminded him.

     There was a certain kind of selfishness in grief that is a hard thing to quantify. People want desperately to share their condolences, say the right thing, make you feel better, but for those truly in mourning these things are of very little use. This kind  of sorrow was a solitary road to follow, and he knew that when he did return to his work as a therapist, it would be with a deeper understanding of this idea.

      As he continued to take in the river, he found himself thinking of a book that had sustained him in his youth, and in particular a scene where one of the characters described a longing to come back to the very place where he was standing on the Colombia River Gorge. It was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and he found himself flipping through a pdf online to read it word for word, although he remembered most of it from memory. 

‘I might go to Canada eventually, but I think I’ll stop along the Columbia on the way. I’d like to check around Portland and Hood River and The Dalles to see if there’s any of the guys I used to know back in the village who haven’t drunk themselves goofy. I’d like to see what they’ve been doing since the government tried to buy their right to be Indians. I’ve even heard that some of the tribe have took to building their old ramshackle wood scaffolding all over that big million-dollar hydroelectric dam, and are spearing salmon in the spillway. I’d give something to see that. Mostly, I’d just like to look over the country around the gorge again, just to bring some of it clear in my mind again.

I been away a long time. ‘

So had John. Been away a long time. Not so much in years, but in emotional loss.

He started the car and headed east.

Chapter 36

    Getting back on the road, John felt a new sense of purpose. He had reached some kind of deeper understanding during his time in Monterey, and he felt some missing pieces in his life were beginning to slowly reassemble. He still had a long way to go though, and he knew there was something he still needed to do.

     He pointed the car north and began to drive, no longer as a tourist adrift in the world, but a man with a place to go. In another life and in another time he would have stopped in San Francisco, drank some wine and taken in the sights, but for now, those kinds of urges had passed. For now he wanted to do nothing but drive.

     It was a long, fast burn up I5 in California, and on a number of occasions John looked down and realized his speedometer had reached 100 miles an hour. It was too fast, and he reminded himself to slow it down. He knew for the moment he wanted to live and a car crash would be anticlimactic. He put on his James Taylor CD and slowed it down. Sweet Baby James was good like that.

     As the sun went down, John realized he was approaching Bend Oregon, one of his favorite little ski town in the northwest, and a great place to stop for the night. He checked in to a little hotel named the Riverbend hotel, and stopped and took a look around. In the distance he saw the sun going down over Mt. Bachelor and a passing truth ran across his mind. Life was beautiful. At least some of the scenery anyway. He was hot, sweaty, and tired, but seeing the mountain rise up above him gave him hope. For all its many and massive travails, life could be beautiful.

    He checked into his room and took a long look in the mirror. He was actually appearing grizzled, which is a look he had never been able to cultivate throughout his life. Perhaps the combination of travel, alcohol, and pathos was toughening up his appearance a bit. He made a mental note to shave in the morning. 

     He wandered down to the bar and out of habit ordered a tall Maker’s Mark and coke. He had driven nearly 1000 miles since his last real refreshment, and he felt like he had earned a nice drink. And yet, a little voice inside of him urged caution, and John stopped for a moment and considered his options.

     He wandered out to the deck overlooking the Deschutes River and thought about his current dilemma. Although he was no longer comforted by platitudes, he thought about a handout he used to give his clients who resisted taking positive actions in their life. The quote went back thousands of years, and read, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not you, then who? If not now, then when?” It made him laugh out loud to think about how he was attempting to use his own therapy on himself, and yet the point stood. If not you, then who?? 

He took his untouched drink back inside and set it back on the bar.    

If not now, then when?

Chapter 35

   There are few drives as beautiful as the 17-mile drive on the Monterrey Peninsula. The mountains crash into the ocean in such a way that would make even the most hardened atheist wonder if there wasn’t some grand design to the universe. The place was that beautiful, and John found himself thoroughly enjoying the ride. He felt the joy rising inside of him as the wind whipped through his hair. Some places were powerful like that.

     He made his way to Cypress point, and hiked down to an area famous for a lone Cypress tree overlooking the ocean. He thought it was a fitting spot for him given the current circumstances, and for the moment he realized there was no place he would rather be. He had contemplated bringing a bottle of wine down with him, but was able to resist the urge, he wanted to read his book and experience the sea air with a clean mind, and for today at least resisted the impulse.

     He opened his book and remembered the familiar opening,  

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen" and he would have meant the same thing.” 

     It was, in John’s opinion, one of the finest opening paragraphs in American literature. He remembered the first time he had read it as a young man so many years ago. He hadn’t been anywhere at that time, and the description of Cannery Row provided John with an escape from the banality of his hometown existence. He had finally made it there a few years later, and when he did, it was one of the most exciting things he had ever experienced. He had something back then. Passion, insatiable curiosity, wanderlust. This trip had proved to John that he at least hadn’t lost the urge to roam. He was starting to believe in the restorative nature of travel again.

     He continued to read, and was amazed how so much of the book seemed to mirror his current state of mind. One passage in particular stood out,

 “It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.”

     How many times had he been the one trying to guide someone through the darkest days of their lives? Over and over again he had repeated some of these same platitudes, and now he had come to realize they meant very little. Empathy was what worked, not trite words and empty phrases. He made a point to remember this passage if and when he ever got back to work again. He took it as a good sign that he was at least contemplating a return.

     As he was reading a gust of wind came and nearly blew him off the rock that he was perched on. He chuckled as he did, and thought of an old movie he enjoyed called Windy City where a pivotal moment came when a gust of wind blew the main character’s hat off, which he took as a sign from his recently deceased friend. Was this gust some kind of sign? He looked up and took a long look at the ocean sprawled out in front of him. Maybe his wife was sending him a sign. He didn’t believe in these kinds of things, but all of a sudden he was filled with a feeling of understanding. He also knew in that moment that he had to return to work again one day. 

It was a feeling that overwhelmed him, and he knew that whatever power there was in the universe was leading him back gently to this idea.

It was a fundamental part of who he was.