Wild and Precious Life

by Deborah Ziegler

  Brittany graduated with a BA in psychology. She wore a different color stole because she graduated with honors. Her hair was almost waist-length, red and copper tints glinting in the sun. Her dazzling white smile made her easy to spot in the crowd. As soon as the ceremony was over, we hugged her and left her to party with friends. I had offered to take Brittany to France for her graduation gift, but she’d accepted an entry-level sales position with an insurance company. I’d lived the life of a saleswoman and wondered if it was right for her. She would work out of a beautiful office building in upscale Walnut Creek. It appealed to her because she could remain in the Bay Area without having to drive to downtown San Francisco. It was a plum job for a fresh-out-of-college kid. France would have to wait.

  19

  Living in the Moment in Alaska

  May 2014, Fourth Month After Craniotomy

  Death twitches my ear; “Live,” he says . . . “I’m coming.”

  —Virgil, Copa

  Brittany and her college bud Maudie were immersed in getting the details of their portion of the Alaska trip lined up. Brittany had twisted her ankle in Yellowstone, and it wasn’t completely healed. Her plan was to ignore it. I was meeting Britt in Juneau on May 21, when Maudie flew home.

  On May 15, Brittany and Maudie did a moderately strenuous hike to Mount Healy Overlook in Denali National Park, starting along the Nenana River near the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. The climb ascended seventeen hundred feet in 2.5 miles, the trail twisting back and forth using switchbacks. As they climbed, they left behind spruce, alder, and aspen, and entered alpine tundra, consisting of moss, lichen, and wildflowers. They saw moose, caribou, and big-horned sheep. They kept a close eye out for bears and wolves.

  Outside Denali, Britt and Maudie went ATV riding in bush country. Splashing through mountain-fed creek beds and driving over tree root—rutted trails, they watched for moose, fox, and Dall sheep. They also saw a mother black bear and her cubs. “Nature is my happiness,” Brittany wrote on Facebook.

  Days seemed to never end, with the sun shining brightly until eleven o’clock at night. In the evening, the girls sat on their cabin’s deck and clinked beer bottles as a pair of bald eagles soared in a thermal over the lake.

  Because Maudie had a medical degree, she and Brittany were able to talk about the brain tumor and death openly and scientifically. These days in nature shared with someone not afraid to discuss death and what it would look like were exactly what Brittany needed.

  The next adventure was the 8.2-mile round-trip Harding Icefield Trail. Starting on the valley floor, the toe of Exit Glacier was visible before the trail wound through cottonwoods and alders. Finally, they broke into heather-filled Marmot Meadows. Here they saw chubby marmot squirrels popping their heads out of burrows. Britt said they had to fight the urge to yell “Riiiiiicoooolaaaaaah!” at the top of their lungs.

  The climb got much steeper, and there were patches of snow and ice. Brittany said, “This hike at one thousand feet of incline per mile is not for candy-asses like you, Momma.” I could hear the pride in her voice. “Not too shabby for having ‘less than 6 months,’ ” she wrote.

  The girls kayaked Kenai Fjords National Park. Paddling through ice-cold, turquoise water, they saw sea otters, gray whales, and a pod of orca whales eating a seal. On the rocky shore, Brittany posed with ice chunks that looked like they’d been carved into sculpture by wind and sun.

  The evening of the twenty-first, Brittany and I relaxed at our no-frills B and B. Our first morning together we drove to the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center and took a mile trail called the Trail of Time. We felt that we were indeed walking through time as we trudged past willows, alders, and cottonwoods on what used to be barren glacially carved terrain. The trail dumped us on a sand spit where Nugget Waterfall thundered in an icy veil near the toe of the glacier.

  The next morning, we drove into Juneau to catch a helicopter ride up to Mendenhall Glacier. Soon we were lost in the view as we choppered over the rain forest, along alpine ridges, then past rock sentinels that soared thousands of feet in the air. Our first glimpse of the deep blue rock crevasses elicited gasps. We descended and made a gentle landing on the glacier. At the mushers’ camp, the dogs’ names were painted on their doghouses. Brittany laughed and pointed at dogs named Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis.

  I wanted to be in the moment with Brittany. I wanted to feel the thrill of knowing that we were moving in a sled pulled by dogs, on top of a huge moving chunk of ice pulled by gravity, on top of a huge ball of rock and water called Earth that was also spinning and moving through space.

  I wanted to feel unadulterated joy as my daughter insisted that I be the driver. I wanted to burn this moment into my brain, freeze it in time. In fact, I wanted to stop time. I was able, for seconds, maybe minutes, to forget that my daughter was dying and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. I wasn’t able to manage my terror for long, though. I felt anxious in all my waking hours and many of my sleeping ones. There was a never-ending feeling of ultimate loss. I was on a glacier trying to pretend I was happy, when fate was stealing the person I was most attached to. The fact that Brittany was the child and I was the parent made it the ultimate injustice.

  During the helicopter ride back, I found myself daydreaming that it would go down and explode in a fiery crash. This seemed better than trying to live without her. I wanted to go with her instantaneously.

  I had just spent one of the best and worst days of my life with my daughter.

  For our last adventure in Alaska, I’d signed us up for a Tracy Arm fjord boat ride captained by Steve, a Merchant Marine officer. The notes I read about Captain Steve made him seem like the ideal guy for Brittany. He was skilled, highly rated, and viewed as a bit of a risk-taker. His boat trip was aptly named Adventure Bound.

  Steve took his passengers right up to the face of Sawyer Glacier, past the research boat that was anchored there for observation. He bumped through floating chunks of ice until we were tantalizingly close to the glacier.

  On the floating ice, we saw bald eagles, harbor seals, leopard seals, and seabirds. The captain turned off the engine and we floated in silence. “This is an active tidewater glacier, folks. So keep watching the half-mile face of the glacier for movement.” We watched up and down the blue ice. “This phenomenon is known as ‘calving.’ Pieces of ice anywhere from the size of a Volkswagen to the size of a cruise ship fall off.”

  I heard a buzz as someone spotted ice movement. A thunderous roar sounded as a chunk of ice hit the water. I had imagined the ice breaking and quietly floating away, so the deafening roar made me scream. Brittany thought it was hilarious that I hadn’t factored in noise. We watched giant hunks of ice float past our boat. Farther up Sawyer Glacier, the ice was a lighter robin’s egg blue.

  It was icy cold, and I began to shiver uncontrollably. Brittany took off her orange climbing jacket and gave it to me to wear. We were two of the few people who stayed on the deck rather than go below to the warm compartment.

  When we came inside, people were interested in seeing Brittany’s close-ups of the glacier calving. We passed the camera around as we chugged away from the glacier. Without even thinking, my daughter and I were holding hands across the table.

  A lady next to us asked where we lived. “I’m from Southern California,” I said.

  “I live in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Brittany told her.

  “Oh. I thought you were a couple,” the woman said, looking pointedly at our hands.

  Brittany and I started laughing. “Um . . . no. This is my mother,” Brittany said. “She’s taking me on a bucket list trip. I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska.”

  “Bucket list?” The woman looked confused.

  “I have a brain tumor and less than six months to live,” Brittany said in a conversational tone of voice.

  I saw the woman’s husband flinch, and tears sprang to my eyes. He looked at me and tears welled in his eyes, too.

  Someon
e overheard the conversation, and the next thing we knew, the dozen or so passengers on the boat all knew Brittany’s story. Later, the captain came down to meet everyone. Apparently the news had gotten to him.

  “Heard this is a special trip for you.” He nodded his head at Brittany. “Trip’s not over. Not by a long shot,” he told her. “We’re on our way to a waterfall and a spot where we usually see bears. So keep that camera ready.”

  “It’s been a magical trip for everyone,” Brittany said, as he turned to climb the stairs. “It is without a doubt my favorite day in Alaska. In fact, of all the traveling I’ve ever done, this day is epic.”

  “More to come,” he said gruffly, as though there was a catch in his throat.

  Brittany and I conversed with various people on the boat. It turned out quite a few of them had thought we were a couple. We all became friends as Brittany shared herself with this captive group of intrepid voyagers. There was a back-and-forth of humanity at a level that people don’t usually reach. Brittany spoke of her impending death, of her plans to move to Oregon, with clear eyes and not a quiver in her voice. I saw complete strangers gazing at her lovely face, their heads nodding in understanding, their watering eyes giving away their instant feeling of intimacy with her.

  Brittany shared herself although her head was beginning to pound from the sound of the engine. I think that death, whispering in her ear as he did, gave Brittany the potential for immediate intimacy with strangers. She let down the barriers and allowed people to see her without her normal defenses. At precisely the same time, the tumor, death and his infernal murmuring, was making it hard for her to remain intimate with those she was closest to. She had started distancing herself from me. She was even less able to tolerate my sadness, my tears, my feeling of loss. It was easier to be open with people who would go their way in a little while, who didn’t cling or cry.

  The engine throttled down, and suddenly we heard a loud crashing noise and water splashing the observation windows. “We’ve arrived at the waterfall,” Captain Steve said in his understated way. People were on their knees looking out the window. I took off running, Brittany close on my heels with the camera. The water pounded the front deck of the boat. We were so close to the rock wall, it was terrifying. Anyone who has ever stood under a waterfall knows that rocks often come with the water. Our captain was definitely bringing on the adventure.

  Brittany and I were laughing and screaming. “Who does this crazy shit?” she yelled over the noise.

  “Captain Steve does!” I shouted back.

  We had barely sat down when the engines throttled up and we were off again. Captain Steve showed us black bears eating mussels and a pod of orcas. Something about the rhythmic huffing of the whales soothed me at a moment when I’d have taken anything I could get.

  As the boat pulled into Juneau, Britt laid her head on my shoulder. “This was the best day ever,” she said. “I know you’re looking forward to seeing Victoria, but nothing will beat this day.”

  “No, sweetie, there will never be another day in my life as exquisitely beautiful as this one.”

  As Britt dozed on my shoulder, I thought about the myriad emotions that I’d just experienced. I’d never found more kindness in strangers, more love in their faces. I’d never seen sadness etch faces faster as fellow travelers comprehended that my vivacious young daughter was going to move to Oregon to die, so that she would not suffer the indignities her brain tumor held in store. I’d never seen Mother Nature in a more overflowing exhibition of her wonder, wildness, and power. I’d never felt such disappointment and sadness in the face of overwhelming evidence that mankind had altered the ebb and flow of ice on our planet. I’d never felt such oneness and love for my child as a part of creation. I’d never felt time and fate pull her away from me more certainly than I did as I watched Brittany talk about the path she planned to walk toward death. I had never felt such joy and anguish about our little lives. I’d never seen such a sharing of love and sorrow, hope and despair.

  On this beautiful day, on this brave little boat, I’d felt the highest highs and the lowest lows a mother could feel. Now my child, weary and with an aching head, seemed to disappear into her sickness on my shoulder. Passengers caught my eyes above her precious head, and spoke volumes with nods or the dashing away of a tear. No one left the boat unscathed by the beauty of our day.

  The next morning, we flew via Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia, where I had reservations at the Villa Marco Polo Inn. We unpacked, had tea, and went to bed early.

  Our first day-trip was to the gorgeous Butchart Gardens, a National Historic Site of Canada. Each year, more than a million plants in nine hundred varieties bloom there uninterrupted from March to October.

  Although Brittany was getting more and more reluctant to have her photograph taken, I was able to get one photo approved. It was of her under a tree with profusely dripping yellow blossoms above her head.

  On the way back to the inn, Brittany told me that she needed to make a phone call to a film company in London. “One of the physicians in Oregon was contacted by them. Parliament’s House of Lords is debating a bill to permit physician-assisted death,” she explained.

  “I know that 20 percent of the people who use the law at clinics in Switzerland are British.” I hadn’t talked to Brittany at great length about Switzerland, except to say that if she couldn’t meet the criteria in Oregon, Gary and I would get her to Switzerland, no matter what.

  “The British are interested in doing a program that shows the lives of at least three people who are going to use physician-assisted death—except they call it ‘suicide,’ which drives me crazy.”

  “Physician-assisted death should not be confused with suicide,” I said.

  “Well, they tell me 70 percent of Britons want the law to change, should they become terminally ill. But Parliament is stodgy and adversarial.”

  “Brittany, please make sure this is a reliable crew and that the news program is a really good one. The British press has an awful reputation. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt or your words twisted.” I pulled our rental up to the curb.

  Britt promised that she would be careful, and our hostess gave her the best room for Skype service, closed the double doors for privacy, and the phone call took place. The British crew would meet Brittany at our new home in Portland and film there. We needed to get moved in beforehand.

  The next day we drove the forty-five minutes out into the countryside and along the coastline. We parked in Sooke Potholes Regional Park and hiked the trails. Brittany bent to examine every flower, insect, and creature. “Momma!” she would call, and I’d run to see what she’d found next.

  On that morning, late in May, the light shone down on us with just the right amount of warmth. We felt calm and bonded. If I could have bottled that day, I would have. Never before or since have I felt such blissful peace with my child.

  Next we drove to Adrena LINE, Vancouver Island’s only canopy ziplining tour. I had booked this activity to please Brittany since I knew she loved adrenaline-pumping activities. At one point on the two-hour adventure, we would zipline a thousand feet and walk across two suspension bridges 150 feet above the forest floor.

  Brittany had ziplined in Costa Rica and Southeast Asia, so this would be child’s play for her. Atop the first tower, I hugged the tree while listening to the instructions. One by one, we were clipped to the cable by a harness that attached to a movable trolley pulley. It was thrilling and nerve-wracking at first, but after a while I relaxed.

  Brittany was subdued on the way to the car. “I was nervous up there,” she said quietly. “I started thinking how easy it would be for me to get dizzy and fall.”

  I stopped and took both her hands. “Oh baby, why didn’t you tell me? I did it for you.”

  “It’s okay. I really wanted to go with you. The fear came out of nowhere.”

  I looked into her stricken face and hugged her, but she pulled away.

  “I don’t w
ant to mollycoddle fear. I’ve got too damned much to be afraid of.”

  We got into the car and pulled onto the road. Only a few minutes had passed when Britt touched my arm. “Something’s happening. I don’t feel good.”

  I pulled off the narrow highway, dirt swirling.

  “It tastes like metal in my mouth. I’m tingling.”

  One of her eyelids listed and fluttered wildly like a trapped butterfly. Her face on that side rippled beneath the skin.

  “I’m right here, Britt. It’s okay.”

  “I’m trying to talk while it’s happening. I’m so scared.”

  I saw her hand curled inward at an awkward angle. “I’m right here. You’re doing fine.”

  “Ummmm . . . uhhhh . . . feels so bad.” Britt’s head lay back on the headrest.

  I said, “It will pass in a minute. You’re all right.”

  Time is hard to monitor when you’re witnessing suffering. I would estimate that Britt’s eye was fluttering for a minute. It felt like forever.

  Eventually she said, “We can go now.”

  I started the car and pulled back onto the road. I blamed this on the ziplining. What kind of mother ziplines with a child that has a brain tumor? How stupid could I be?

  “I’ve had some little weird incidents before. But this was like an electrical malfunction. So much for taking antiseizure meds,” she said.

  I thought, What would it have been like without the meds? Would it have been worse? “Just lay back and relax, sweetie. Sleep if you can.”

  “I’m so fucked,” said Brittany. “I’m getting sicker every day. I can feel it. I’m actively in the process of dying now. Let’s get moved up to Oregon, Momma.”