Fort Benton, Montana

High on a windswept bluff in Big Sky Country, overlooking the Missouri River, my people are buried, including my dad’s parents, Logan and May Hazen, and May’s parents, Gustav and Augusta Bruesch. And now my cousin, Duane Allen Hazen.

Three years ago, we visited Riverside Cemetery, with my dad, who grew up near Fort Benton, then lived in New Jersey 63 years. When my dad died later that year, and his only surviving sibling, Uncle Herb, moved to Helena, I didn’t expect to return. Then Duane died unexpectedly. Jim and I were already planning to fly to Salt Lake City, so I bought a ticket for the Salt Lake Express to Great Falls. When I set my alarm wrong and woke up just as the van was leaving Salt Lake, Jim drove 80 miles to Tremonton, Utah, to catch it. The 15-passenger van arrived and I climbed into the only empty seat, which was sopping wet and directly under a leaky roof vent. Water dripped on me at every curve in the highway until the rain stopped and the vent emptied, but I was grateful to have a seat at all.

The memorial and graveside service were Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, I returned to the family plots and made a map. Wilbert Freddy Bruesch’s marker, flush with the ground, was covered with dirt, so on Sunday I borrowed a large stockpot and scrub brush from the church kitchen and returned once again. The red granite stone was hard to read: the raised letters are worn. They tell a sad story; my grandmother's younger brother, Wilbert, was five and a half when he died in March of 1913. Her son, Donald, died at age two in 1927. The club no one ever wants to join: my grandmother and great-grandmother lost sons too young.

Amadeus

              Months ago, Jim purchased tickets to the movie Amadeus at Boston Symphony Hall with the orchestra and chorus of the Haydn and Handel Society.

              The  stunning cinematography on a huge screen, coupled with the concert hall acoustics was nearly overwhelming.

Spoiler Alert: Mozart dies at the end. Yes, I knew that.

Near the end of Amadeus, a deathly ill Mozart dictates the Requiem “Confutatis Maledictis” (while the wicked are confounded) to Salieri. Mozart, too exhausted to continue, falls asleep. His wife returns to the apartment and confronts Salieri. When she finally turns to Mozart, she sees his open eyes lifeless and staring.

              After David died, I saw a movie character die on camera. It was such make-believe to me. How could an actor mimic a dead body?

              Tim Hulce could and did. His eyes in that death scene brought me right back to a certain August night.

              The following hearse scene transported Jim and me to our bedroom window, watching the taillights of a long, black hearse recede down the driveway. The amber turn-signal flashed silently a few times and the hearse turned towards the highway. Amadeus captures the anguish.

              Afterward the standing ovation, Jim and I sat back down, as the crowd buttoned their overcoats and moved slowly towards the exits. I nestled my head in the hollow of his shoulder and wept, overcome with emotion.

              Today, as I drove home from the Bedford Library, I realized that I would pass by David’s cemetery. I hadn’t visited his grave in months. The remaining ochre and brown leaves on the trees blended in with the dark pine boughs. I knelt on the damp grass and wiped away a few spindly pine needles and short blades of cut grass from the stone. Even now, it seems unreal.

Sunday, November 5, 1995

Thursday evening, November 2, my 39th birthday. I rode the ‘stake temple bus’ to the Washington, D.C. temple. Before the Boston Temple was opened in 2000, our stake (a collection of 10-12 congregations) sponsored a temple bus a few times a year. We’d board the bus around 9 p.m. and ride 450 miles, arriving at the temple around 5:30 a.m. After a full day of worship, the bus would take us to a motel and early next morning we’d be back at the temple. I’d get back home Saturday around midnight, sleep-deprived.

A dangerous schedule for someone who was hypomanic, but we hadn’t ever heard the term and certainly didn’t know it applied to me.

Sunday morning I was back in my head-lice-infested household. My long hair was at risk. Our dear Finnish friend, Maikku, offered to drop by and nit-pick.

Maikku and I stood in the warm autumn sun at the bottom of our kitchen porch steps. She gently combed out my long brown hair with a very fine-toothed comb. Although she was picking up houseguests at the airport, she took the time to help a desperate young mother.

By Sunday evening, I realize now, I was far gone. I believed that evil men were plotting to kidnap our oldest daughter. I’ve tried many times to describe my paranoia. It felt like certain knowledge, as if I had been in the same room with these evil men and was privy to their conversations. I think I knew I hadn’t heard a conversation, but I was certain of the danger and furious that Jim didn’t take me seriously.
No one took me seriously. They took me to the emergency department instead.

Half a Bubble Off Level

Halloween Day and no frost yet. Late October in 1995 was unseasonably warm as well. The trick-or-treaters love it: no coats over their costumes.

22 years ago was the autumn following my glorious Cross-Country Trip: 15,900 miles in ten weeks with six kids.

For the Fiske Elementary School Halloween party, I dressed up as the nineteenth century poet, Emily Dickinson. I donned a full-length dress and wore my hair in a neat bun. I probably ate orange-frosted cupcakes at the party.

Afterwards, I drove to Sears in the Burlington Mall to shop for a dress. The saleswoman watched me warily. She didn’t confront or even engage me, but I knew she thought I was acting strangely, Emily wandering among the Sears dress racks. She was right.

In the evening, I took the kids to a new neighborhood, on North Ave. I dropped my keys somewhere in the gutter and did a search and rescue: kicking up crisp dry leaves, listening for the familiar jangle of keys. Doesn't sound crazy, but in retrospect, I was “just half a bubble off level.”

          I love that phrase. Makes me tip my head sideways about 30 degrees.

          I was mostly sane, and what I did seemed within normal limits, but soon the squirrels in the attic would take over. (We once had squirrels. Saturday mornings we would lie in bed and hear them scamper after each other behind our bedroom wall.)

          Halloween 1995: in just five days time, I'd be psychotic.

Speared Like a Fish

This memory is from a visit to St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. For years my parents owned two condos on Sunset Beach north of Frederikstead and generously invited me (and many others) to share America’s paradise.

The flesh between my shoulder blades crawled. I was certain that I’d be speared like a fish at any moment.
When Dad suggested a night dive off the Frederiksted Pier, I was delighted: I’d never been on a night dive.
Diver Dan, our friend from the local dive shop, met us at the pier in his pick-up truck to drop off the heavy gear. The dive plan was simple: as dusk fell, we’d each prepare our gear (buoyancy vest strapped to the 3000-psi air tank, regulator screwed on, weight belt around the waist, mask and snorkel in place, fins on feet, and lights on wrists) and jump off the pier into the water. In an hour, Dan would return and be waiting for us in his boat. Climbing onto his boat, we’d be able to get back on the pier easily.
Dan hefted the tanks and weight belts from the truck bed and set them down near the pier’s edge, then stood expectantly. “Need any help?”
“We’re all set, Dan, thanks a lot.”
As we sat at the edge of the pier, a group of four or five teenage boys roughhoused toward us, horsing around, pushing each other and talking loudly. One boy slammed another towards Dad. The second boy’s arm flew out and hit Dad on the side of his head, hard. Dad shook his head slowly and looked dazed.
“Sorry.”
Dad turned to the first boy: “Whatcha do that for?”
No answer; they continued down the pier, jostling and jabbing each other, laughing as they went.
“Are you all right, Dad?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Let’s go.”
We jumped in the water and started our descent. The sandy bottom sloped gently down to a 25-foot depth at the end of the pier. Brown clawless Caribbean lobsters scuttled along the sand; boxy, improbable trunkfish with big bulgy eyes, honeycomb skin, and tiny fins navigated among the sponges; juvenile French angelfish, bright yellow stripes on black, fluttered past.
Usually during a dive I’d swim slowly, quietly taking in the scene. The beam of my light changed the grey amorphous shapes to bright red, orange, purple, and yellow mounds of sponge and coral. But that night I hardly noticing the beauty around me, obsessed with the space between my shoulder blades. I vividly imagined the pier above us, convinced that evil men with spear guns were waiting patiently for us to swim into range. We’d be easy targets. Usually I was proud of how well Dad and I conserved our air, barely moving our arms and legs, breathing slowly and deliberately to stretch out our time underwater. But a cold, black fear possessed me. Scuba diving was not worth dying for. The dive dragged on, but I was terrified of the moment when we would have to swim out from under the pier.
We swam along the north pillars, then turned around and headed back along the south. My depth gauge dropped from 25 to 20 to 18 to 15. At ten feet, I looked up and saw Dan, leaning over the stern, ready to help us out of the water.
“How’d it go?” Dan asked.
“The dive was wonderful.” Dad replied. “But there were some boys scuffling on the pier. One of them fell into me and hit my head, hard. I saw stars.”
“Who were the kids?”
“Oh, just some local teenagers.”
I listened silently to them, embarrassed at how my imagination had run away with me. The boys were long gone, and no evil men had ever been lurking on the pier.
For years I carried that night dive memory as a cautionary tale, that recreation is not worth dying for. Now, I understand the experience differently. Paranoia is a term bantered around easily. But the cold, black fear I experienced on that dive haunted me for years. Those spear guns were as real to me as the scuttling lobsters with their waving antennae. The skin between my shoulder blades still crawls when I think of that night dive.

Her Leaf Also Shall Not Wither

December 2003

Barefoot, I creep up the carpeted stairs in the dark

Drawn to the far attic corner.

I’m frightened, but am pulled forward.

Something draped in loose linen beckons,

Perfectly silent and still.

My trembling hand reaches out, my fingers grasp the cloth and pull,

Revealing a small, pinkish mass of many folds.

With tender curiosity, I study my brain.

Gently I wrap it in the cloth and cradle it in my arms.

I’m surprised how soft and smooth it feels,

Like a newborn, warm and supple.

Drowsy, I hold it close and lie down on the spare bed.

When I open my eyes again, 

I’m beneath a great oak in a large meadow.

My eyes trace the paths of the crooked limbs,

Spreading out and away into a thousand bends and branches.

Sap feeds every twig and leaf.

A warm breeze brushes my cheek and each leaf responds.

Peace seeps into me from the tree roots.

I close my eyes once more and drift asleep.

Concrete at Alewife

Back in my energetic thirties, every few years I’d get the urge to become a long-distance runner. One sunny day in February, I made a new start. I drove to East Arlington, for a replacement windshield. The shop is about a mile from the Alewife T station (subway), the end of the Red Line. The snow was brilliant in the late winter sunshine, the sky azure, the puffy clouds matching the snow, and the temperature about ten degrees above freezing. I jogged down Varnum Street to the commuter bike path, then past the wide expanse of empty playing fields and under Route 2. My end goal was to touch Alewife’s exterior wall. I crossed the final street with my fists balled and arms pumping. Focusing on a strong finish, I sprinted across the wide sidewalk. Only as I took my third step did I sense something was wrong. Glancing at my feet, I realized with horror that my ankles were embedded in fresh, wet concrete. Behind me were two deep footprints. I started to bolt in guilty panic, but looking up, I noticed, for the first time, three workmen, in splattered tan overalls, watching intently. I was trapped; the young one could easily outrun me. Police lights flashed before my eyes and I saw myself facing jail time, and a huge fine, for destroying public property. How much did a new sidewalk cost? I sheepishly squished back into the street.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” I grimaced and shook my head in sincere contrition.
“No problema, no problema. The back of the truck.” The smiling workman was pointing to a large tanker truck parked next to the sidewalk. Seeing my confusion, he pointed again.
“Water.”
I saw an old red hose wrapped around a steel wheel on the back of the tanker. Another workman walked to the truck and put his hand on the tap.
“No, it’s okay, I’m okay.” Mortified, I turned back toward the bike path.
“Water, water!” he said, helpfully.
Since they didn’t look poised to call the police, I walked over to the hose. The man turned the tap and I hosed down my legs; the concrete was caked halfway to my knees.
I admired my sneakers, whiter than they’d been in a couple of years. As I pivoted around to face the sidewalk, One of the workmen was smoothing the concrete with a long two-by-four, my transgression completely erased.
Blushing with embarrassment I apologized once more, then resumed my jog back toward my car. Feeling my ankles flex with each step, I gradually realized that by then the concrete would have been hardening around my sneakers and up my jeans. How would I ever have escaped the concrete boots? I was grateful for the kindness of strangers.