I want my money back

(Written Tuesday, December 16, 2008)

Lately, I've been tracking my life according to a sequence of songs, and like in life, some are more relatable than others.  Just last night, I was sitting at a bar in Moab, Utah thinking of Craig when I heard the song "No I can't get you out of my head...Now my whole world is gone for dead".  Coincidence, I thought, since I haven' been able to get Craig - or Mom for that matter -- out of my head since the night he died.  Being in beautiful places like Moab makes the longing more palpable.  Memories of them, their lives, and their deaths, pervade my thoughts.  And though I can't get them out of my head, I realize I haven't written much about them, per se, in the last few weeks.  I suppose I don't know where to begin.  My mind is a jumbled mess.  Suffice it to say that I'm caught in the crosshairs between longing and confusion.  I still cry when I see their pictures.  Where this will lead, time will tell.  Until then, I'm trying to get on the best way I know how, and that is, to travel. 

After spending a few weeks in Stillwater with my dad, I decided to treat myself to a road trip last week, and have since been revisiting old haunts in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.  I used to cross these states on week-long climbing binges, but that was long ago and during somewhat happier times.  In a way, I thought making the same trek would allow me to relax, and would bring me closer to those carefree moments in life, when dying from cancer was a distant possibility.  Instead, this trip has reminded me of how much things have changed.  I'm no longer that 20 year-old climber without a care in the world.  Life has changed.  Perhaps like another song, I'm just trying to "take a sad song and make it better." 

In a strange twist, I decided to load up on books on CD for the road trip, including an audio version of Jarod Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steele - a book I bought long ago but never read - and Bill Clinton's My Life.  Diamond's book was clever and well put together; I can't say the same for Clinton's My Life.  Perhaps I missed something during the 1990s but I don't remember Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia being that brief.  However frustrating passing the national budget may have been, I was surprised to hear it dominate his "Life" so to speak, leaving other key events as scraps on the editing room floor.  Though the listening entertainment left much to be desired, it sure beat scanning radio stations, like we did in years past.

After spending a nice day reconnecting in Santa Fe, I spent the next day in Flagstaff.  One thing I've learned, I don't like to sit idle.  Unless I'm doing something, I'd rather move on to see other sights.  Craig and I were good travel buddies in that regard.  Though he enjoyed sitting for a coffee, or taking in beautiful scenery, he was also eager to discover.  So after spending a day in Santa Fe, and then another in Flagstaff, on Sunday, I treated myself to a hike through Sedona's back country, something Craig would have loved.  I was the only one on the trail, thanks to Sedona's warm-weather only tourist season.  The sun was out, despite having cool temperatures the day before.  It was just me and the sandstone cliffs as I climbed higher and higher.  As the wind rustled through the pine trees, I couldn't help but think of Craigy, and how much he would have loved such a hike.  He would have remarked in his journal, just as I have, the pine scents and the sound of the wind as it passed through the tall pines.  He would have enjoyed the panoramic view of red sandstone cliffs, and appreciated the squawking of a hawk as it dipped with the breeze along one of the larger cliffs.  He would have enjoyed the solitude, but at the same time, welcomed the company of others.  On beautiful days, I can imagine Craig there with me.  If given the chance, we would have shared the day together, like we had in the past.  Just one year ago, we were enjoying similar sights touring Southeast Asia.  To be standing on Sedona's sandstone cliffs by myself seemed especially lonely.  I wish my travels with Craig were not now permanently framed in the past.  I wish we had many more travels ahead of us. 

After spending some time in Arizona, and then a few days in Moab -- where I first learned to climb outdoors -- I'm now back in Colorado, though in Dillon, not Denver.  I decided to stay in Dillon a night to allow for bad weather to pass, and to revisit an area that will always hold a special place in my heart.  Before arriving in Dillon, I drove through Avon and Frisco, the two locations we had stayed just a few months ago with Craig.  Returning to the towns where we had spent some wonderful memories was important, if not a bit painful.  We stayed in the Dillon area not long after we learned that Craig's cancer had progressed and we were out of options.  A few of his friends offered their houses near the lake Dillon area for what would turn out to be Craig's last trip to the mountains.

To be back here so soon after Craig's death is a bit surreal, but I feel close to him, at the same time. Sitting now at a restaurant in Dillon makes that feeling all the more palpable, like I'm reaching back to those moments, to a time when six people gathered in a remote mountain town to support Craig as he welcomed his last road trip to the mountains.  I can still remember the conversation in Dr. Flaig's office that preceded the trip.  That was the moment when Dr. F. informed Craig that, like Mom, he too would die from cancer.  (I still struggle with how remarkably accurate science can be with predicting death, but so unremarkably accurate with predicting life.)  I remember sitting with Craig as Dr. F. broke the news, which came as a shock, though we knew it was coming.  I remember Craig crying.  I remember how one of the first things he said was how he was going to break the news to Steve.  Considering he had just been told that, at some unknown point in the future, Craig was going to die, he seemed to take it well.  (Frankly, I'm not sure where he mustered the energy.) 

After spending some moments coming to terms with the prognosis, Craig told us a few items on his To Do list, of which going to the mountains was high on the list.  His friends helped us do everything in our power to make his dream come true.  For one week, we were able to take our brother to the mountains, knowing all along that in days, or weeks, or months, Craig would eventually succumb to cancer.  In hindsight, we handled the trip with a strength and solemn maturity that, to this day, is remarkable.  The trip was something you read about in "On Grief and Grieving" books, or fancy fiction.  In other words, it wasn't our reality.  Craig was dying.  Every moment in the mountains was wrapped around that point, though we tried not to make it so.  We focused on being present, and on helping Craig with whatever task he wanted to fulfill, be it exploring all three levels of Leigh Flanagan's beautiful home, or sitting alongside Dillon Lake, with the mountains in the distance.  Though we were five independent people, our sole duty was to make sure Craig was comfortable, and that his trip to the mountains was a trip to remember.

Now, sitting by Dillon Lake, just four months after that trip of a lifetime, I can see Craig in his wheelchair as we strolled alongside Dillon Lake.  I can see him sitting at the dock on our last day here.  Being back is painful, yet cathartic.  I feel close to him here.  Being here allows me to confront buried emotions leftover from our intense journey with cancer.  It allows the memories to come in with abundance without refrain or prejudice.  To be here alone makes the memories of the last few months all the more palpable.  I prefer it that way.  I'm seeing the pain through my own lens, and am able to work through it without suggestion.  For me, it's helpful to confront the sadness, loneliness and pain.  To ignore it would simply secure more years of pain in the future.  Being in Dillon is hard, but needed. 

Some days, life is going along, and others, it just stops.  On good days, I get to experience the pine-smelling breeze.  On the bad days, I'm reminded of the fact that Craig and Mom are gone forever, and how my life is so drastically, drastically different.  On those days, I can't help but think of lyrics in Lenka's song "I want my money back, I want my money back, I want my money back...just enjoy the show."  Maybe I, too, need to let it go, and just enjoy the show. 

Like on the hike in Sedona, I feel alone, but at the same time, drawn closer to Craig and Mom.  Sedona and Moab, in particular, have always held a special place in my heart.  They encompass God's beauty, as some would say.  For me, they hold the promise of something more.  As the rocks have stood strong against the eroding wind, so too can I stand strong against the onslaught of loss and bad luck.  Sedona's formations serve as a reminder that strong foundations can withstand nature's fury.  In the desert, change is often subtle, like the slow rounding of a sandstone rock.  But other times, it's abrupt and wholly unpredictable.  I'm hoping for the former, or a slow softening of this otherwise jagged rock.  For people who come and go, the change will be almost imperceptible.  Like the rocks in Sedona, or the cliffs in Moab, my life will change, though sometimes, unnoticeably.  On some given day, whether it's tomorrow or some time long in the future, all this will give way to the elements, changing ever so subtly, but no less immensely. 

As I continue on with life after Mom and Craig, more songs seem to resonate.  I seem to hear Led Zeppelin more often, and the Beach Boys, two of their favorites.  I hear songs that at once held special meaning, whose meaning has changed in the last year.  For instance, earlier this morning, I sipped coffee at a Moab bakery while Tracy Chapman's "Promise" played overhead.  I remember hearing that song in Sweden.  At the time, the song held an entirely different meaning.  Now, the lyrics "If you'll wait for me, then I'll come for you" mean so much more.  Music and location bring me closer to them.  For a moment, I can picture them beside me singing along.  I miss them.  -- J

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That youre the one I want to go
Through time with

-- Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."  -- Marcel Proust