Through the oval portal on the 737, I see that our destination is dawn. Stars overhead fade and from 37,000 feet, I see a clear and elegant distinction between night and day -- dense dark gray clouds beneath us, and morning’s clear blue promise rising above them at the horizon. Our north-south trajectory takes us out of the darkness and into the light.
Smooth sailing with a strong tail wind, the captain says on the intercom, only two hours, forty-nine minutes to Seattle. So far, so fast -- I arise from my warm bed, memorize the look and feel of Roxy and Walter, get on the plane, and really just moments later with no real sensation of moving, I am hundreds of miles away. It is almost like time travel; but more like life; so far, so fast, without any real sensation of what the journey requires.
I am headed to Vegas to see my cousin Mavis. We are double cousins really, because a few generations of two families, one in Canada and one in the US, made a habit of marrying each other. Her Dad Perry was my Mom Lois’s uncle and he married my Dad Lawrence’s sister Ora. I even once married Mavis’ husband Dave’s brother. This entwined family tree is another story but to sum up, we come from the same stock -- if I had a sister, I suspect she’d be like Mavis.
I don’t have a sister, and at this point, Mavis doesn’t have a husband. While our hearts and minds were preparing for the imminent departure of our mothers, mine in Saskatchewan and hers in California, her husband, Dave sat down in a chair one day at work, smiled, and went to sleep. Sixty-eight is not too young to die of a sudden heart attack, but it still caught us off guard.
I didn’t make it to any of the memorials. The call came the night I arrived in Louisiana to visit my new grandson, Zen. I had just attended Mom’s final hours in Saskatchewan, and I couldn’t make myself get back on the plane to fly west. I am celebrating Dave’s life by helping Mavis close out their home in Vegas, and driving with her to Sacramento to begin her new life surrounded by their children.
I’m not sure what this trip will hold, but I recall a conversation we had over twenty-five years ago while walking down a narrow dirt road carved out of tangled alders. We talked about what we’d do when our then-tween girls left home. Our lives as we knew them would be over, we imagined, and we should think of new things to do. As it turned out, this change in our lives took different paths. Her daughter married young, but continued to live in the family home for many years. My daughter left for college and made a life thousands of miles away in Louisiana. At 40, I found a career, got divorced, lived alone for many years. Mavis stayed the course, working side by side with Dave. They were what I call a ‘traditional’ couple, sharing everything.
I don’t imagine that one road trip will set a course for a new life for either Mavis or me, but it seems right that we will again spend time talking about transition. I too can feel myself changing. I’m still a year away from retirement, and I’m already starting to live differently. I once had such a strong connection to Anchorage that I wrote about feeling like I was tied there at a molecular level. When I was away from home, I got homesick and hungered for the view of the water out my front window. Too much travel in the last few years, for work, family and even a few vacations, has cured me of this homesickness, and left me self-contained, free to move without regret. These days, I do not consider it odd to think, ‘let’s see now, where am I?’ in the moments between awakening and opening my eyes.
So driving 300 miles to and from work and flying to Canada and back and then to Louisiana within the first two weeks of December didn’t feel like a crisis and being with my grandson, Zen right after Mom died was perfect. We humans learn so much about life through observation and mimicry. I watched my Mom, and I saw the grace and ease of dying. I watched Zen, and I relearned the beauty of being.
Under the covers one morning, I extended my right arm and one leg at the same time, stretching the right side of my body, and realized I was mimicking a gesture I’d seen Zen do the previous day. He stretched, and then he sighed with pleasure; I’d just done the same.
“That’s why people love grandchildren,” I realized. Not because they remind them of being a parent, but because watching a person who is too new to be cluttered up with complexity reconnects them with the pure pleasure of being. When we stretch, he becomes more like me, and I become more like him. In that few seconds we celebrate the verb ‘to be,’ and we are both new.
While Mommy and Daddy are still asleep in the morning, Zen and I wrap up in blankets and swing on the porch. His gaze settles on the edge of the camellia bush and only wavers if he catches sight of Katherine’s blue and green prayer flags that flutter above us. He contemplates these two things only. True to his name, I suspect he does not overanalyze; he just loves the sensations -- warmth, movement, sound and the elegant distinction between light and dark.
Some would say he hasn’t yet learned to think. I believe what Socrates said: we are born knowing everything, immediately forget it all, and spend the rest of our lives trying to remember. There is a light in his eyes that shines on a the future I will not see. I wish Mom and Dave had met him.
Instead like Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit movie, they found themselves poised to begin the ethereal journey described by the poet Van Dyke:
Parable of Immortality
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
" There she goes! "
Gone where?
Gone from my sight . . . that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
" There she goes! "
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .
" Here she comes! "
After thinking, “let’s see now, where am I?” I’m guessing Dave looked around, said, “well, what d’ya know?” took Mom’s arm, and smiled as he guided her on board. They knew the journey, so far so fast, would pick up on the Other Shore -- not sequentially from the end of an earthly life -- but eternally in the clear promise of memory.
Smooth sailing with a strong tail wind to you, Dave and Lois. We loved the moments we shared with you. You are gone from our sight, but we have memorized your touches, smiles, and kisses. In our hearts, your beauty of being will always be forever new, forever young.
