Thursday, March 27, 2014

Day Number 5 on the Road

Hi there everyone. This is Megan from www.refugeingrief.com. I’m filling in for Amanda today. My partner, Matt, drowned on an otherwise ordinary day in July 2009, the first sunny day after 6 solid weeks of rain. He was 3 months shy of his 40th birthday. Last fall, I packed up the place where we’d lived, said goodbye to all the familiar places, touched the ground, and hit the road. Here below is a post I wrote as I crossed the county without him, along the same path we’d traveled several years before:


Day number 5 on the road. I'd hoped to be there by now. But the road has what the road will have.

Today, leaving western Nebraska, a late start. My planning mind was off a day, and what I'd thought was the short day was, in fact, not. But it's alright.

This land is beautiful. So clear, the geologic record: I always feel like I am in a submarine, a submersible, not an over-land car. I am driving in the ocean, driving under the ocean. Saw my first herd of pronghorn antelope just outside of Elk Mountain, Wyoming. I stopped at the same rest-stop we did back in 2006. It wasn't a hard day.

And then. And then, the soil began to change. From yellow and brown to streaks of red. The land changed from ocean bottom to sand cliffs. The mesas rose in the distance. I switched the stereo from dance music (to keep me awake) to Robbie Robertson, because it seemed appropriate. I am singing Ghost Dance, thinking of our trip, of how we talked about the history of this land, what it's seen, what happened out here. And then.

And then, before I realize I am this close, I am on top of Flaming Gorge. I am here, where we were, exactly where we were, and Robbie Robertson's "Golden Feather" comes on the stereo. I am crying. I hear. I hear the stones you picked up, all those years ago, the ones beside your box of ashes here on the passenger seat. I hear those stones begin to sing. They do. They sing to be so close to home.

I do not want to stop. I do not want to stop. But they are singing. I have to give them back. They want to go home, and I have to let them go. I pull off the exit, crying, resisting. I do not want to go. This is wrong. Wrong to be here. But I drive. Past the place where we got gas. Past the place where we ate Mexican food, grouchy from too long on the road. I pull over as I hear (yes, I hear) your ashes beside me begin to speak. Ask to be released here. The stones have kept on singing. Your ashes, what is left of you, an excited impulse. I open the passenger side door. The pot of my one houseplant falls out, cracks on the pavement. I remove the stones. I remove the small bag of your ashes, and shake you out into the palm of my hand. Shaking. Shaking. There are big pieces here, not dust.

The stones are singing. We have been here. This is where we turned off. Where we drove off down into the winding gorge, where we cried over slaughtered skinned coyotes, where you drove the car over too-steep embankments. Looking for a place to camp. Where you spent hours the next morning finding just the right stones, the two heavy, white stones we took home, another 4000 miles back, to sit on the bookshelf, holding words.

And now - they want to go back.

I scatter you. A small handful, here on the grass between road and sidewalk. I scatter. And then I place a stone. Oh.

Oh, I see now. This is a gravestone. A headstone, a marker you yourself picked out, painstakingly searched for, the last time we were here. It is right. It is right. To scatter you here beneath a stone you chose yourself.

The other stone - offers to stay. To stay with me. One with you, one for me. A pair of matched stones, broken, but connected.

As soon as the ashes are sent, the stone placed, I am fine again. Calm. I feel you. For the first time this trip, my love, I feel you. I know you here with me.

And I drive down through the mountains, as rain begins again, down a road we did not drive. A path we did not take. You are buried here, my love. And I continue on.

18 comments:

  1. Beautiful. Thank-you.

    Kate

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  2. Amazing - I felt your everyword...

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  3. Megan,
    I'm on an Odyssey of Love around the country, scattering my husband's cremains at our favorite places, per his last request. I write for Widows Voice on Wednesdays and am just coming up on one year since Chuck's death. I knowingly set out to do this, and he knowingly set me out on this quest, knowing that I'd be driving the same roads he and I drove, meeting my grief head-on. I listen to music he and I listened to, and I make myself sing out loud because its exactly what I don't want to do. It causes the grief to rise up in me fiercely, so I do it.

    I feel what you wrote. Thank you~

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    1. I make myself sing out loud because its exactly what I don't want to do. - exactly, Alison! Exactly.

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  4. Beautiful! Reminds me of a trip to MT before kids. My husband took 2 big heavy stones out of a river bank. I thought he was a little nuts. Now I think about that trip every time I come across them in my garden and I'm thankful he did.

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    1. yeah - matt drove me NUTS with the endless searching for the right stones. And now, I am so glad he did.

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  5. Thank you for sharing such a touching story. Reading this has brought back wonderful memories of my wife and the times we shared together while she was alive.

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  6. Memories what we would do without them. There are places I like to go to that my wife and I shared, but also places that I don't go to, rather just to leave it there for the past.

    God Bless

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  7. Oh Megan, I felt Matt too as I read, goosebumps leaping to my arms, your hands shaking him into the palm of your hand, and two white stones now revealing their purpose...
    Big love, beauty and courage to you my friend.
    Karen

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  8. Just lovely, Megan. Your feelings, soul, being pour out through your words...

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  9. Thought I had commented on this. But Thank you Megan. I love you. I love Matt. They are here. *

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    1. yes ma'am, they are. Love you love you love you. Was just thinking about my beard dream from your 4 y r mark.

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