But this time, I am thinking, illness is joining forces with aging, and I know that is a combination we cannot beat. I see the changes in our family room. Foreign maps and “Let’s Go” guidebooks that in the past were strung across the room are replaced first by tour and cruise brochures, then camp directories, trip insurance forms, and vacation rental photos. Criteria for destinations change from “adventurous” and “exotic” to “nearby” and “comfortable.” For the first time, we seek familiar places, rentals where we know the reading chairs and lamps are good, where the walking paths are flat and the small grocery store is just around the corner. Where once we would inquire if the vacation rental was near mass transit, now we want to know if there is an elevator and if the walk-in shower has grab bars. I see the transitions on our packing lists. Cross off “walking boots,” “walking stick,” “day pack.” Add “cane,” “medicine chest,” “sleep apnea machine,” and eventually “walker,” “portable oxygen,” “wheelchair.”
More than once we have said “last trip,” but this last time I mean it. Two emergency room visits in a two-week vacation tell us it is time to stay home. Correction: they tell one of us.
Rudy, pushing his walker, finds me in the kitchen putting finishing touches on a cranberry salad. We are home for the Christmas holidays, after only briefly considering a fourteen-hour train trip to Seattle, where the family will celebrate brother Dick’s eightieth birthday and niece Cindy’s victory over the Wheel of Fortune. Rudy has been thinking.
“I have to go, Mare. I have to be part of this.”
I voice concern. A lot of concern. He was released from the hospital just two weeks ago, after facing down another powerful attack of pneumonia. He had often said that travel was just too hard now. And the train route goes in high mountain altitude and he will need oxygen. What’s more, the day after Christmas the train will be packed.
In the end, I find it impossible to argue with Rudy’s own logic.
“But I’m so proud of Cindy,” he says, “and Dick has always been there for me. I owe him. And I can see the whole family again, and . . .” The blue eyes are watery and fixed squarely on me. “Besides,” he says, “it will be my last hurrah.”
The next day, I am in Penney’s menswear section at the mall, at the after-Christmas sale, buying the last warm scarf for Rudy to wear on his train trip, when my phone rings.
“Say there, pick me up a fedora-type hat, something brown to match my coat. No ball caps this trip. I’m changing my style to more gentlemanly, more dignified. Don’t worry about the cost.”
Who is this man? I say I will do what I can here at the end-of-season sale. As I make my promise, I turn around to the next nearly barren counter and there it sits all by itself— one brown plaid fedora-type dignified hat, price no object.
Two days later, at three a.m., on what has to be the coldest, darkest morning in recorded northern California history, the train sounds its arrival. It takes every able-bodied passenger in the Amtrak station to lift Rudy with his walker and oxygen tank and our luggage into the small compartment for the disabled. This time Rudy does not protest the label. His daughter Day and nephew Tom board this polar express at other stations, buoying up my courage.
And courage I need. That night there is a record-setting storm, one of the fiercest in years in the Cascade mountain range. As we approach one particularly daunting peak, the train slows more and more, coming at last to a complete stop. All we can see is white land, gray skies. Tom brings news that the train must wait here until a federal avalanche inspector arrives through the storm and approves our moving forward. One or two hours into our wait, I walk through the narrow corridors of the sleeper cars, reaching the dining area. I buy a bagful of snacks, favoring nutritious protein bars, then as nonchalantly as possible inquire about our future.
“And so, I suppose you have a lot of backup food, like enough for a lot of extra meals? I suppose these little layovers happen all the time and you’re always prepared . . .”
I tell myself to relax and take those breaths, beat down those thoughts of the Donner Party.
We sit in the snow for seven more hours awaiting clearance to move. I try to find the user’s manual for Rudy’s oxygen tank. Is there enough oxygen for a snowstorm? Enough for an avalanche? There are grumbling, fearful, sometimes tearful passengers in all the compartments except one.
“These things happen in travel, Mare. Just look how beautiful the snow is. You should be enjoying it.”
Slightly after three a.m., our train moves quietly into the deserted Seattle Amtrak station. There, struggling to stay awake in their cars, is our family. They have brought a wheel-chair, and for once Rudy sits in it without protest.
“Do we dare ask how the trip was?” one niece ventures.
Rudy is the only one of us who replies, and his voice has vigor. “It was really great. I mean, we got here, didn’t we? And you should have seen the snow.”
Our three-day visit passes quickly, filled with the stuff of Seattle family reunions—stories, teasing, laughter, wine, mounds of fresh crab. Rudy is king, presiding over the crab and the wine and the stories. As we pack to go home, the family presents him with a black T-shirt with white lettering, a souvenir from Pike Place Market. He wastes no time putting it on.
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely, in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “‘WOW, what a ride!’”
TWO months after the train trip, in early spring, Rudy sits propped up in a hospital bed in the intensive-care unit, chairing a meeting about the end of his life. Somehow, the school principal persona is back.
“Is everybody comfortable in his chair?” he asks. “Who would like to start?”
The three doctors are clear: his body is shutting down, organs are failing, one by one, the pace quickening. Does he understand that, they want to know. He does, he says, but if there is any way they can get him two more years, he has five projects to complete. They leave the room shocked but not really surprised.
“He’s a warrior,” one says. “He’ll never really give up.”
Once we are alone, Rudy motions to me to shut the door and come closer, to put my ear to his mouth. He has that intent look I know so well. I recognize it even through the cloudiness of his now-soft blue eyes.
“I made a mistake. I should have asked for three years.”
A week after Rudy (or Rudy’s body) leaves us, I ask the counselor, “What do you think death is?”
“I think about it a lot,” he says. “I think death might be a series of transitions or stages. At first it can seem that the loved one is very close, near at hand. Gradually that sense of closeness seems to fade for most people.”
“And do you think stronger personalities are any different?”
He smiles, apparently remembering Rudy. “I’ve wondered about that, wondered if they seem present longer, if they exert influence longer. Why are you thinking about this today?”
“Because he’s sitting in his favorite chair right now, but he never sat for long,” I answer. “I just don’t know what to expect next. I always like to be prepared.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TEN MONTHS AFTER THE TRAIN TRIP AND EIGHT MONTHS AFTER Rudy dies, in early fall, I make a phone call to a tour agency. I tell myself I can do this. I can travel a distance alone. I can stop crying. I can stop crying if I just get out of this house.
It has been awhile since I have been through security at an airport. I hand my boarding pass and driver’s license to the TSA agent, and she gives them a cursory look and says, “You’re on your own. It’s up to you.”
How does she know this? “I’m on my own. But what’s up to me?” I ask.
She laughs loudly; apparently this is very funny. “No,” she explains. “I was talking to that new agent standing behind you. You’re not on your own.”
“Oh, but I am,” I say.
&nb
sp; I do well for the first hour on the plane, burying myself in a South Dakota guidebook. I am, after all, on a family-roots trip, ready to see the land that seduced Grandfather with promises of gold and gambling, that sustained my parents until, after the Great Depression, it could no longer. I have traveled the world, but I have never spent time in South Dakota. In the quiet, my seat mate, a grandmotherly woman, looks at my wedding ring and asks, “So, are you alone? Your husband didn’t come?”
“No,” I say, “He couldn’t make it this time.”
There is much to recommend this tour. Flying over the Badlands, I find strange comfort: this destination mirrors the starkness, the stillness in me. My room at the lodge has a balcony looking directly across to the presidents of Mount Rushmore, who surely will share wisdom with me. My tour companions are well read and polite, and the excursions are interesting, almost interesting enough to distract me from the full-time occupation of grieving.
One evening, some of the group have seen a weather report that warns: “Put an extra blanket on. There may be a little drop in temperature.” It was eighty-seven degrees earlier this week, so we are not afraid. It is barely October, after all.
The first hints of trouble are the absolute stillness of the morning and the absolute darkness of my room. In the five nights I have been at the lodge, cars outside have predictably awakened me by six o’clock, my nightlight offering a compass to the bathroom. This morning there is only quiet and darkness, and when I at last find the drapes, I open them to white—mounds and mounds of white, rising high above my windowpane, covering every surface, blocking any escape.
I curse my desire to have a quiet room, isolated far at the end of the lodge, with stone presidents my sole, mute companions. It is cold already without power for the electric heater. In the dark I struggle to find clothes, dress in all of them, layer upon layer, quickly realizing fall season tops and pants and tennis shoes are not cold-weather ready. My too-small flashlight is only slightly helpful, shining a narrow beam on merely one object at a time. Brushing my teeth involves focusing the beam first to find the brush, then back to locate paste, trying to remember where the brush is, connecting the two, finding molars. Once brushed and mummified, buried far down in the slightly warm bed, I wipe tears, waiting for the breakfast call, trying to imagine what Rudy would do. I get two pieces of advice from my meditation: “Cover your tennis shoes with something—even plastic bags maybe. Don’t let them get wet. And remember your deep breathing.”
My cell phone rings and rings, and in time I uncover it from beneath my bedding. My older brother has been following my search for “grandfather clues” from Deadwood to the Homestake mines, calling each day to see if there is anything more I have discovered. I know he really calls to be sure I am surviving my first trip alone. This morning he takes no time for light conversation. He spent much of his childhood in South Dakota before our parents moved to California, and he remembers storms.
“I have the Weather Channel on. Tell me you’re not still in the Black Hills.”
I take a deep breath, giving it a try, but my voice wavers. “Okay, I’m not still in the Black Hills.”
His voice is softer. “Tell me the truth this time. Where are you?”
“Still at the lodge in the Black Hills, near the National Park, with a whole tour group. We’ll be fine.”
“That’s not what the Weather Channel says. And say, you still have electricity, don’t you? You can’t trust electricity in this kind of storm. How much charge do you have on that phone?”
In the deep, cold darkness, I check the cell phone battery. “Twenty percent. I must have forgotten to recharge it last night.” Then I lie again. “I’ll have to recharge it right away. I guess I’d better go now. Love you.”
“Love you too. I won’t call often. It’s best to save that phone battery. You call when you need to.”
“Right.”
I don’t buy that ignorance is bliss, but I do agree it can be helpful. Our group does not know at first that we are stranded without a working generator on an impassable road, in an unseasonable blizzard with mounting seventy-mile-an-hour winds, a storm violent even by Dakota standards. One thing, however, is clear: if you are going to be captive for days in a record-breaking storm, be captive with the South Dakota Rural Women in Agriculture. The women, here for a conference, stoke the lone large fireplace, help staff inventory supplies and plan food rationing, charge our cell phones in their trucks, shovel relentless snow from walkways, and find board games. We naïve non-ranchers realize only gradually that while the women support us, their cattle at home freeze in ice-covered fields.
Two days into the storm, our luck changes. A catering truck is stranded in a snow bank while it tries to deliver a wedding feast to the lodge. The driver stumbles through mounds of snow only to learn the wedding has been cancelled. No guests could possibly reach the destination, so the bounty is ours: shrimp, stuffed salmon, tri-tip, twice-baked potatoes, wines, and the most delicious cake any of us have ever eaten. Someone carefully lifts the bride and groom figures from atop the cake and wraps them in tissue for the next wedding date.
I am tolerating the days of card games and fireside companionship, but the dark, cold nights only get harder, lonelier. Almost everyone is traveling with a spouse. At night I am on my own, just as the TSA woman said. These strangers, my tour mates, seem to know my coping skills are marginal, getting frayed. They watch me rather intently. They must wonder what possessed me to take this trip so soon. So soon after. I wonder too.
At noon on the next day of captivity, as blue sky emerges above white, we have word that the road seems clear enough for well-equipped jeeps to try to reach Rapid City, the town below. A bus will “likely” come tomorrow for the rest of the group. There is one seat left in the Cherokee that will leave in five minutes. I do not like the word “try” as in “try to reach the town,” but I don’t much like the word “likely” about the chance of a bus coming tomorrow. I have an association with Rapid City: my parents, who had lived in a miniscule town, spoke of the city as Mecca. Perhaps it will be for me too. At the very least, it has an airport. More to the point, I am not sure I can face one more night here. But leave in five minutes? I have never made a decision in five minutes. As it turns out, I don’t have to make a decision—it is made for me by my new friends, who say, “You know you have to get out of here.”
There is the matter of packing. Three of my card-playing buddies rush with me to my room and throw everything in the suitcase, then find my jacket, give me gloves and a hat, and I am on my way. The trip down the mountain takes a skilled, calm driver and we have one. The beauty of the ride fades as we see cows and calves lying frozen in fields, cars on both sides of the road fallen into ditches, barns collapsed. Later we learned that at least 75,000 cows had perished in five feet of snow.
As we come into Rapid City, we notice there are no signs of power in homes or on the streets. The hotel we approach has dim lighting, perhaps from a generator. More importantly, one room is left, for me. I hear the catch in my voice as I thank our driver, say good-bye, and realize I am alone again. The desk clerk assures me I can stay until the airport reopens. The airport has been heavily damaged, so my dream of flying home tomorrow flies away.
“You know, it’s just too bad you couldn’t have been here with us last night,” the clerk says. “The Red Hat ladies are here for a convention. The jazz band they hired got stranded on the Interstate. Then the town’s Oktoberfest had to be cancelled. So the jazz band never showed up, but the oompahpah band came here and played polkas all night. It was a great night, people polkaing everywhere. You would have loved it. You’re from these parts, aren’t you?”
I think of my roots. “Yes, yes, I think you could say I am. I’ve just been gone a long time.”
The laundry is open, she says, the coffee shop has some food left, and I am in time to attend a wedding, if I wouldn’t mind helping two kids whose family and bridal party are stranded on Interstate 90. He is in
the military and has to report to base; they can’t wait for their guests to dig out from the snow banks.
“You don’t happen to be a minister, do you?” she asks. “A lot of people carry those little cards that let them be ministers.”
I shake my head.
I stop in my room before the ceremony is due to begin. This room has luxuries—a television, a heater, a shower with hot water, lamps, and electricity to charge my cell phone. After a very quick wash, I head downstairs where a Red Hat lady escorts me to a seat in the coffee shop that doubles now as a chapel. Group singing begins as the bride enters: “Love, look at the two of us . . .” I needn’t have worried about the state of my outfit, as the bride and groom’s wedding clothing is stranded on the Interstate along with the family. The couple is in jeans and plaid shirts. To add a touch of dignity, the Red Hat lady volunteering as matron of honor removes her hat and places it on the bride. At the end of the short, sweet ceremony, another takes off her own hat and passes it through the misty-eyed audience.
In the coffee shop day and night I find people to talk to. I am feeling at home in this place. Everyone has a storm story to tell. One local woman is interested in genealogy and in my pre-storm search for family in the hills of South Dakota and Czechoslovakia. I carry three small photos taken in the 1920s, two of my parents, one of our Bohemian grandfather. It is the photo of Grandfather that catches her eye.
“Have you noticed his complexion is darker than the others? His eyes are large and very dark too. Have you noticed his elegant jacket and bow tie?”
“No, I haven’t seen all that, but, yes, I see it now that you point it out.”
“I shouldn’t say just from this photo, but if you’re researching this man and your lineage, dear, you might want to read about the gypsies of Bohemia.”
Rudy's Rules for Travel Page 15
