“Okay. All right. Thanks.” I glance at her and alternate looking at my shoes and checking whether the cashier is ready.
Back in our Whistler home, I pull on a pair of Jim’s jeans and his fuzzy sweater and slump on the blue couch that has been in Jim’s family for decades. When I look up at the clock, I am surprised that two hours have passed. Every movement echoes in the empty house. I look at the book titles on the coffee table: On Death and Dying, Facing Death and Finding Hope, The Healing Journey through Grief, The Courage To Grieve, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, The Resilient Spirit. I pick up one and anchor it open on my lap. My eyes water after a few minutes of reading. I read a sentence, and as soon as I pause on a word, my mind wanders so that I have to go back to the beginning. It takes me 10 minutes to read one paragraph.
The first stage of grief is shock and numbness. The shock and numbness insulate you from the intense pain until you can cope. As I read and reread, my inner dialogue pulls my train of thought: Yes, that’s interesting. Shock. Okay. When is Jim coming home?
In my wilderness first aid training, I learned that one treats shock by reassuring the patient, laying her down and keeping her warm, hydrated and oxygenated. I’ve treated shock before.
There was that young woman, my first call when I worked ski patrol at Whistler Mountain. She was screaming when we arrived. I looked down over the side of the run, through the trees and saw her in a heap on the snow. No blood. The lead patrol crouched beside her.
“C’mon!” my ski patrol mentor ordered as he plunged into the deeper, ungroomed snow. I froze. He turned and looked at me, “Sue, come on. I need you.” I followed. The radio talk sliced through the air. Young woman, about my age, maybe 23, lying almost completely flat on her back but slightly propped on one elbow, curled protectively to one side, arm reaching toward her leg and her neck muscles straining, yelling, “Help me. Ow, it hurts. Oh, help. Please.” I knelt down and invited her to lean her head on my thighs. She slowly relaxed back.
“Hi, I’m Sue. What’s your name? Where are you from? How long have you been here? Are you with friends or family?” Use a calm reassuring voice. Stay close so she feels your body’s warmth, so she won’t feel alone.
She stopped yelling to answer my questions while the patrol team scuttled around stabilizing her fractured femur, dislocated hip and broken ribs. As we lugged her in a stretcher through thigh-deep snow to the waiting helicopter, I explained that they would fly her to a hospital and the doctors would care for her.
“Are you coming with me?” She raised her eyebrows.
“No, but a patroller and a paramedic will fly with you.” I patted her hand. When the machine was out of sight, my legs wobbled and I sat down on the snow.
I close the grief book, slump on the couch and encase myself in a blanket. I wish I had Jim’s warm body beside me. I wish I did not feel so alone.
FIFTEEN
DAY NINE
SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1999
It is the weekend, and I know this because Susan and Terri have come to stay with me. They buy groceries and make dinner. I mash the food slowly in my mouth, like a cow chewing cud. The three of us fall asleep holding hands.
Susan and Terri snap out of bed at the first sign of sunlight to make breakfast. I move in slow motion and stay in the same sweats and T-shirt I went to bed in. I can’t remember the last time I took a shower, and my hair feels heavy on my head. My eyes are half-lidded, as if I have not slept.
“Let’s walk into the village,” Terri suggests as she fills bowls with granola, yogurt and fruit, the same breakfast Jim and I shared each morning. I sit down at the kitchen counter, my jaw clenched.
“Why don’t you two go? I’m just not up to it.” My body is exhausted, and the smaller I shrink my world, the less energy I’ll spend trying to contain my grief. Terri and Susan would bravely hold me up if I crumbled in the middle of the crowded village. But openly displaying such emotion terrifies me.
“Okay,” Terri stammers as she pushes a bowl toward me. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“Oh, sure.” I squeeze out a smile.
As soon as the front door clicks shut, I lumber upstairs, close the blinds, crawl into bed and draw the duvet up under my chin. Curled in a fetal position, I cry for a few minutes and stop. I cry some more, until my insides wring dry. There is a zone between wakefulness and sleep where my mind hovers, neither thinking nor feeling. When I snap out of this no man’s land two hours later, I feel more tired.
The doorbell rings and I burrow under the covers. The front door scrapes open.
“Hello? Anybody home?” I recognize Glyn’s voice. Terri and Susan’s husbands have arrived.
“I guess they’ve gone out,” Ken adds. Heavy footsteps on the stairs and a pause.
“Oh, man, look at this place.” They roam the main floor.
“Look at that photo of K2. Beautiful.” Glyn’s voice and footsteps work their way upstairs toward my bedroom. I breathe quietly and close my eyes. The footsteps stop on the stairs, followed by shuffling and heavy sighs. I picture both men sitting down.
“What is she going to do, Kenny? I mean what the hell is she going to do? This house … what is she going to do with this house they built? She can’t stay here. Too many memories.”
I tense when I hear how scared they are for me.
“I don’t know. Sue is a thinker. She’ll think her way through it.” I imagine Ken nodding his head to emphasize his opinion. Yes, I am a thinker. I think to know and I know to understand. I make decisions based on information and experience, instead of reacting instinctively, so I can avoid the unknown and feel in control. As humans we have this luxury. But now, faced with my greatest unknown, all I can think is “why?” And any answer brings me back to that same circle of why, the same black hole of uncertainty. I cannot fix death or make a different decision now to bring Jim back. I am Ayn Rand’s protagonist in Atlas Shrugged: “He saw for the first time that he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act … not an assurance of victory – who can ever have that? – only the chance to act, which is all one needs. Now he was contemplating, impersonally and for the first time, the real heart of terror: being delivered to destruction with one’s hands tied behind one’s back.”
But if you think too much, you don’t get anything done.
My leg muscle cramps. The front door opens again.
“Hi! We’re home!” Susan and Terri’s high voices float up the stairs.
“Hi!” Glyn yells down and whispers to Ken, “Wait a second. That sounds like just Susan and Terri. Which means Sue is here. Which means she heard every word we said.” Silence. Glyn and Ken pad downstairs to meet their wives on the main floor. Glyn confirms, “Is Sue here?”
“Yes.”
I sigh and push myself out of bed, creak open the bedroom door and thump downstairs.
“Hi,” Glyn moves forward to hug me. “You heard everything we said.”
“Yes, it’s okay.” I have no energy to pretend I was asleep.
Glyn works his hands together. “I figure you’re on a five-year plan, Sue.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s going to take you five years to get back on track from this thing.” Glyn nods his head slightly and looks right at me.
“Hmmm.” Five years. I can’t keep this up for five years. I’ll go crazy or die of exhaustion.
SIXTEEN
DAY TEN
SUNDAY, MAY 9, 1999
“I’ve made an appointment for you with a counsellor I know.” Jim’s close friend gives me an address over the phone. “She’s a wonderful woman. Don’t feel any pressure to go, but she’s there if you want it.” I stare at my handwriting on the paper: time, date and place.
In the parking lot of the counsellor’s apartment complex, I sit in my car and breathe. When I stop crying, I open the door and tiptoe to the pavement, half expecting a tornado to rip my legs off. Looking over my should
er several times, I shuffle to the address on the paper.
The counsellor asks to see the eight-by-ten photo I clutch to my heart. I hold it out to her as if it is a baby bird. Jim and I slow dancing at our wedding; his eyes are closed and his lips caressing my ear.
“This photo speaks volumes of Jim’s feelings for you.” She cradles the frame for a second and leads me by the elbow to a soft chair in her living room. Her townhome reminds me of being in my grandma’s apartment. Dark wood. Floral patterns. And it smells of talcum powder. A cozy cluster. She sits opposite me on the couch, elbows resting on her knees. The way she looks at me with her deep brown eyes seems to say, “It’s okay.” I talk about Jim and she listens. That’s what I want to do: talk about how wonderful he was.
“Would you like to tell me about Jim’s accident?” She leans forward, hands clasped together.
“Okay.” I fidget in my armchair and look past her at the painting on the wall. “They were in Alaska, climbing. And they went up this chute they thought had already slid.”
“Hmm, hmm.” She reaches out and lays her warm hand on my forehead. Her other hand hovers over my stomach. I gulp for air. My grief rushes to her hands as if they are portals. To be touched when I am in the abyss of pain, a leper to the normal world, is overwhelming. I feel human and just for a second believe that I am doing okay.
“Do you feel guilty?” She keeps her hands in place.
“I wonder whether Jim was meant to have children. It was my idea to have a baby. I wonder if he died because of that.” My face contorts and I hold the edge of my chair. It must have been my fault. Please tell me it wasn’t my fault.
“Survivor guilt,” the experts call it. But this is also my way of keeping my world together and always has been. I make myself responsible regardless of whether I am the cause so I can pretend to be able to “fix” mistakes in life and make sure they never happen again. Be in control. If I am responsible, then I can “fix” Jim being dead.
“In the scheme of life and destiny, you are a pretty small player.”
I nod and hold back sobs.
“It’s so soon after Jim’s death. Really, too soon for counselling. But one of the first stages of grief is denial, and I don’t think you are in denial. Trust yourself. Trust your feelings.”
I bite my lip and nod to let her know that I will try. I have so many doubts and fears. My biggest fear is that Jim is really dead.
SEVENTEEN
DAY ELEVEN
MONDAY, MAY 10, 1999
I get up quickly from the park bench when I see Patti approach and hug her. Her presence reassures me. The fact that she has survived gives me hope that I will too. We walk along the beach together. It has been six years since Dan was killed on K2.
I hug myself and look at Patti. “I just feel like I was on the highest, most beautiful mountain in the world, and then I came crashing down. And I’ll never be able to climb that mountain again.”
Patti leans around to look me in the eye. “You and Jim did share a beautiful mountain. But there are other mountains, not necessarily better or worse, just different. You’ll climb other mountains.”
“I don’t know how to do this. Sometimes I think of how Jim would handle it if the situation were reversed, if I had been killed. He would know what to do.” I feel insecure, sorry for myself.
Patti stops and grabs my arm, “Jim would have been devastated.” Somehow this makes me feel better.
“It has taken me a long time to realize it, but I am angry at Dan, and at Jim. I am angry that they chose to mountaineer. They didn’t have to. They could have done something else.” Patti looks set in her opinion, and I have no idea how to respond nor do I want to. I don’t feel angry with Jim.
That afternoon, Patti and I go to see a well-known channeller, someone who communicates with spirits, in one of the Vancouver hotel ballrooms. I’ve just finished reading Journey of Souls, in which grief-struck people are reassured and relieved by contacting their dead loved ones through hypnotism.
There must be over a thousand people in the bright, white-walled room. We sit in foldout chairs and wait. A microphone stands in the middle of the two sections of seats, and a large platform is set up at the front of the room. When the plump middle-aged psychic with permed long blonde hair with dark roots walks onstage, the applause bounces off the ceiling and walls. I can see her mascara from where I sit near the back. She talks of life and the afterlife rather than death. The spirit prevails. Death is not to be feared. I listen. I fantasize about walking up to the audience microphone and telling her about Jim. She would cry at the depth of our love and call Jim back. His voice would resonate in the room: I love you, Sue, and I’ll never leave you. I am okay.
I choke back tears at the thought.
Question time comes and the first brave soul approaches the microphone. My palms sweat. She coughs and sputters her words. I want someone to hold her hand, cheer her on. A month ago, her husband and son were killed in an automobile accident. She grips the microphone with both hands. She wants to know if they are okay. She waits, crying.
The psychic asks rhetorically, “They died of chest wounds?”
“Yes,” the widow cries.
“They’re fine,” the psychic says, “just fine. Nothing to worry about. They’ve gone to the afterlife. No limbo for them. All good.”
I tense and expect the psychic at any moment to say, “Next.” The widow mumbles a thank you and stumbles to her seat. I don’t hear the rest of the grievers. Do I feel uncomfortable because I don’t believe the psychic or because she accepts death so easily? I want to believe anything that will bring Jim back to me. I want her to bring Jim back to life. Applause fills the space when she is finished. I drive quietly back to Whistler.
That night, when I watch the evening news, there is a special about the hypnotist Dr. Michael Newton, the author of Journey of Souls. The interviewer asks him how he contacts the deceased, and he explains. The next interview is with one of his clients who performed on his television show. The client admits he was planted in the audience and told what to say.
The final interview is with the author of the book Why People Believe. We believe because we are human. We need something to believe in. And sometimes we believe because we are terrified of losing who we are.
EIGHTEEN
DAY TWENTY
WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1999
The phone rings many times a day. Sometimes I answer it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is Jim Haberl there please?”
I stay silent and wonder if this is a joke.
“Hello?”
“May I ask who is calling?”
“My name is Bruce, and Jim very generously agreed to talk to me about photography.”
It’s not a joke. He just hasn’t heard. “Jim was killed in an avalanche on April 29.”
“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
After I hang up I press the button to listen to the message recording. “You have reached Jim and Sue’s place. Please leave a message and we’ll get right back to you.” I press the button over and over to hear Jim’s voice until I am bawling. I take out the cassette and put it in my drawer of memorabilia and record a new message on a different tape.
I gather my courage to drive to the post office to pick up a package that has been sent to me from my childhood friend Heather who lives in Chicago. I brush my hair, but I wear the same clothes, Jim’s jeans and shirt, that I’ve worn for days. As I stand in line waiting, my body odour seeps through my sweater. Whistler is a small town. I wonder if everyone there knows that I am a grieving widow. When it is my turn, the clerk gives me my package and says in a hushed voice, “I’ve been thinking about you.” I mumble a thank you and keep my head down as I leave so that people won’t see me crying.
The outing has left me exhausted, so I curl up in bed with the new book Heather has sent me, Living When a Loved One Has Died, by Earl Grollman. The four chapters cont
ain a series of poems with just a few words per line, and my brain is able to digest the information without feeling overwhelmed. By dinner I have read all four chapters: Shock, Denial, Recovery, A New Life. I do not feel so alone in my grief, because the author acknowledges how death has shaken my faith, how there are no answers, how I feel numb, panicked, guilty, depressed, utterly lost and that all of these emotions are normal responses to grief. For the next five years, I read the book over and over.
Some evenings I watch sad movies to unleash my tears. In Ghost, when Patrick Swayze’s character returns from the dead to visit his widowed wife (Demi Moore), I can almost feel him caressing her skin and kissing her neck. I want more than anything to feel Jim’s touch. In Truly, Madly, Deeply, the dead husband comes back to live with his widowed wife, and she is over the moon with happiness. But he brings his dead friends, and they stay up all night and keep the house temperature unbearably warm. His goal is to be such a pain that she will move on and let go. I don’t like the ending because my dream is to have Jim back, forever. I wonder how I will recover.
One day the phone rings. “Hello.” I clench my teeth and grab a pencil to finger.
“Hi, Sue, it’s Marti Henzi, from Whistler Heli-Skiing. How are you?”
“Hi, Marti. Fine.” I tap the pencil on the counter.
“Look, I’m so sorry about Jim. He had that very rare ‘star’ quality. I feel honoured to have worked with him. I wanted to tell you that our black lab, Solo, just had puppies. And you know in times of trouble, I’ve always had a dog, and that has really helped me. Solo has seven pups and one of them is white. The white one reminds me of Jim; he’s so kind and gentle. I believe he is special. We would like you to have him.”
I stop tapping the pencil. “Wow, thank you very much. I don’t know, you know, I’m having a hard time just looking after myself these days. I don’t know about looking after a puppy.”
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