How quickly I again, was brought back to that place, where I began almost two years ago.
Tuesday afternoon I was home, getting ready to meet my “muse” who was in town for a short stay, and the message sought me out.
News that my mother was very ill and that she was being admitted to the hospital. Three hours away in Idaho Falls.
All at once that war with loss and death and fear that I have been fighting against, returned and raised its angry head and with one motion, carried my breath from me.
The last two years were suddenly sucked from beneath me and I was once again standing at the top of the staircase in Summerwood, hearing the words “he is gone.”
Soon I found myself driving that lone stretch of highway that leads to Idaho Falls. Dull flickers of light that illuminated the faces of strangers as I passed them by watching their headlights be swallowed in the darkness.
The sins of that road to Idaho: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of things in my life that cannot be changed, a night sky heavy with the last words of Alan’s life……..and perhaps that of my mother’s.
I thought my body should have adapted more quickly to the cry of probable tragedy, but it was wrapped in fear and my mouth shook as I tried to hold the screaming in.
I use to once love that ride, as you love a familiar friend, who once again finds their way into your life. I loved how on a clear day, you could swear you could see into forever. The curves and bends of the road, beautiful like a woman back, winding hidden in the bluffs that carried you into Idaho. I knew every mile, every slumping hill and every reaching tree line. Yet, the familairty that once held me, now rejected my impending advance, as three hours held me prisioner in a steel box.
I spoke my words aloud and then watched them as the hung in the darkness about my head. Words filled with a soft wash of fear and regret and promises made to God, anything to get me to the next mile marker which in turn, closer to my mother.
She is resting now. I can close my eyes and remember the familiar sound of her. Almost as if I were once again tucked inside her womb, carefully under her heart, where her gentle rhymythic breathing once soothed me to sleep.
