Glacier

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
-John Muir

Four years before Mark died he had stopped drinking. Over the years he had been drinking too much and it slowly started having an effect on all of us, and what an eye-opener to think you know the signs of alcohol abuse versus the reality of it in your home. Mark was never a daily drinker, he did not get drunk at parties or work events, he did not hide liquor, nor did he become abusive or a jerk when he drank too much. On the weekends, what started as relaxing with a beer became another and then another, followed by a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, and it took a long time for either of us to realize that he was a binge drinker.

Why Mark stopped drinking has always been his story to tell, but once he did everyone wanted an explanation from me. They wanted to know if he was okay, why he stopped drinking, was he an alcoholic, was he in treatment. It was such an odd thing to me that if this same guy had said he was getting up before dawn every day to go to the gym he would have been applauded, but stopping drinking in our alcohol obsessed society? People felt entitled to know about that decision. I got asked over and over and after awhile, I started saying, “He’s right there, you should probably ask him yourself,” because it felt disloyal for me to answer questions about something that was personal to him.

But it was a scary time for us. We didn’t know how any of this new lifestyle was going to go, Mark was afraid and I was afraid for him. He started seeing a counselor and went to a few AA meetings that he found terrifying and he never drank again. The most painful question to me after his death was, “So did he start drinking again? Is that why he killed himself?” He did not, and of all the things he accomplished in his life, not drinking had the most profound effect on everything. The work he had done for decades was taking off and he was in the best physical shape of his life. Once he stopped medicating himself with alcohol, the twinkle came back in his eye, and nothing he did made me prouder because I saw what hard work it is to choose not to drink.

Right after he decided to stop drinking we went to Montana for a meeting he had been scheduled to attend for an infectious disease conference. We packed the car and headed out west, full of uncertainty about the future. No glass of wine with dinner, no happy hour beer with colleagues, a remaking of habits into uncharted waters.

Many times over that trip Mark seemed fragile and I was so worried about him. He seemed jumpy, nervous, and lacking confidence which are words that I would have never used to describe him before. For three days on the road we talked about everything, and every day I told him that since we were in Montana I wanted to go to Glacier National Park. For a guy who loved nature, he wasn’t very agreeable to the idea. I think he wanted to go to this meeting, get it over with, and try to change his life within the four walls of our home. But I was in love with Montana and wanted to see more of it so I convinced him that after his conference was over that driving four hours north was a good idea.

We first drove to Missoula where we ate breakfast at a hipster restaurant based on the advice of a passerby. We wandered the town, bought some books at the local bookstore, and decided that maybe we should move to Missoula one day. From there we drove north through the Bitterroot Valley, stopped at Flatfish Lake where Mark announced that on the next trip back we’d stay there, bought ten pounds of Rainier cherries for a steal from a farmer on the side of the road, and found a very overpriced motel room for the night.

The next day we ate breakfast in Whitefish and then drove to Glacier. From the moment we entered, it was like the pressure of our current situation immediately deflated. We both were relaxed and excited and couldn’t believe our eyes. We stopped so many times to jump out of the car and wander off the road to a creek, a lake bed, a stunning view. One time we were so wowed by what was in front of us that when we were walking back to the car Mark told me to look up and behind us was even more spectacular. We compared photos on our phone and I said that when we got back home I wanted to plant ferns in my garden because the forest floor was carpeted in them. We made our way up Logan Pass to the Going To The Sun Road, which for a girl who is terrified of heights was no easy thing. There was snow on one side of the road and the daintiest flowers on the other and I couldn’t believe anything could grow that high up. We stood on the gravel alongside the road and stared for the longest time, and it was in that moment that I knew Mark was going to be okay. What had started as a tourist stop for us was, by far, the most healing thing we could have done.

We talked often about that trip, how shaky it started and how it put a bandaid on so much that was hurting in both of us, how one day we’d go back and stay for a week. Sometimes I wish that the weekend before Mark died, we would have gotten in the car and drove until we found a spot to land, a spot that would put a bigger bandaid on everything that hurt in him.

A friend asked me recently how I am faring in this quarantine life and the answer is not good. I started off with projects around the house and have accomplished many of them but am losing my mojo. I want my husband back, I want my old life back, I want the guy who could make me laugh until I cried back, I want the guy who introduced me to the woods, the creeks, and the rivers back, the guy who could make me stuff down my fear of heights for a view I will never forget. I want to have had this time with Mark to sleep in, to make dinner together, to walk to the grocery store, to watch movies, to pick his brain about this virus, to flirt all morning, have sex in the middle of the day, and a lazy nap afterwards because a monotonous stay-at-home order calls for all of that.

I can’t have any of those things and so every day I think about wandering off into the woods where I could scream and the canopy of trees would say, “You keep screaming. Look how tall and sturdy we are, we can withstand your pain.” I think about finding a creek and watching the tadpoles dart around while the hawks overhead circle in hopes of finding their next meal. I think about my boots getting caked with mud and sweat trickling down my back. I think about wandering a path that spills into a clearing where the pain and the trauma and the loss gets disbursed by the wind. I think about nature cleansing me like it did before so that I am brave enough to move forward in my life.

Anything less would diminish all that came before it, and I already know that would be a loss I could not carry.