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loss

Seven sunsets

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March13, 2016

Florida is pretty this time of year. Not too hot, not too cold, and the biting bugs are at their tamest. I finally broke down and took Vergaard’s advice. I’m here. Ready to paint. Let’s see if my shrink has any shitting idea what he’s talking about. One week in one of the world’s biggest swamps. This part of the Okefenokee is pretty empty. I haven’t seen anyone since I turned off the state road onto this old single lane dirt one. Not counting my subject, of course. I hear lots of sounds, but none of them are being made by humans. Not counting the muse I brought with me. Doc told me that the sunsets this time of year are spectacular. I can’t wait to see that for myself. Maybe being in this place will bring me back to life.

January, 2011

My name is Caleb Marks. I’m 54 years old, and I was an average middle class American until this year. On the first damn day of the year of our lord twenty-ought one one, an asshole drunk driver killed my wife and baby girl. Rebecca and Ava.

I was working. Construction is like that. You’re at the job site all hours. I used to be a project manager, and one of the subs, the electrical contractor, put in the wrong light fixtures for this 11-story hotel reno I was working on back then. Fuck me. The usual story, someone not paying attention to what the plans called for. If I had to put money on it, the guy responsible was a boozer too. Probably had too many fingers the night before and misread the spec. The globes were supposed to be frosted, not clear. That’s the kind of mistake that can suck all the profit out of a job.

I had to get down to the site pronto.

“Sorry honey,” I said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I gave them both a kiss, like always, and headed to the site. Rebecca texted me a few hours later to tell me she needed a couple things from the grocery store. Later, I learned she had been planning to make me Boom Boom meatballs. My favorite meal.

Dwayne Tucker, an unemployed sheetrock hanger, and a guy I’d seen around a couple of my job sites in years past, was going down the road past the Kroger when they were turning out. In his lifted Ford F-150 with the LED ground kit. Fuck me.

Dwayne had been drinking, as usual. At 6:32, he blew  through a red light in his Ford F150 and hit the front driver’s side of Becca’s Lexus IS250 going 67 miles an hour. The speed limit on the stretch of road where this happened, at the intersections of Beecher and Broad, is 35 miles an hour. Becca died instantly, so they told me at the hospital. Why the fuck they take corpses to the hospital is something I still don’t understand. Dwayne’s engine block replaced the space where Becca’s body was supposed to be safe and sound inside a steel and glass bubble.  The cast iron and aluminum block caused massive trauma to her entire body. We had to have a closed casket funeral for her. Fuck, I hate funerals. They’re so morbid. I was glad it was closed casket. I got Sue, her best friend, to do a photo collage of when Becca was at her happiest.

Ava hung on for seven days in the ICU. She missed the funeral, which I was grateful for. At one point, the doctors thought she was going to make it. She opened her eyes and told me she loved me, asked where Mommy was, and then went back to sleep. I didn’t have the heart to tell her Mommy was just ashes and memories. I told her Mommy was going to be back soon. She slipped back into oblivion and the machines they had hooked up to her started beeping like crazy. I got kicked out of the room. I raised hell but the staff got security and security got me out despite my best attempts to fight them.  Later, they eventually let me sit in there with her. My dear Ava. When it became clear she wasn’t coming back, they gave me time to say goodbye.

I talked to her for a whole day. Told her how much we both love her, and how Daddy was going to make everything right. I hate lying. I hate it more than anything. Except maybe than my family dying.

I didn’t cry. I’m not that kind of man. Instead, I had a quiet, extended nervous breakdown. It started a few days after the second funeral. I poured a lot of Maker’s Mark down my throat and cursed god a lot.

Still had bills to pay, so I climbed out of the bottle and went back to work. Numb and full of hate for Dwayne. After a couple weeks of shitty performance, the boss told me to take some time off, and I did.

I drank some whiskey. Then I tried to make sense of what happened. Then I drank some bourbon. Again. And again. My new cycle, sans family.

I failed. Soon, I was on a permanent vacation from work. It was filled with a burning throat, numbness, and dreams. Terrible, clearly focused, horribly vivid dreams. I was in the movie Groundhog Day, except reimagined as a shit show redneck numbly killing my family. Over and over, I watched Dwayne’s blue eyes look down into the passenger side compartment, to the floor where his remaining Budweisers sat in a tightly noosed grouping, held together by a white plastic hangman’s concoction. First Dwayne burps loudly. Then he farts. It’s a real ripper, one of the ones where you lift one leg to let it out. He sighs contentedly over the country song playing too loud out of the shitty base model factory radio. The speakers are humming with distortion. Dwayne peeks at his treasure trove again, then leans down to grab another one. That’s when he blows through the red light and kills my family.

Dwayne Tucker appeared in court two weeks later for a hearing. I was there. I wanted to kill him. They have metal detectors at the doors, or I would have brought my .45, and that would be it for good ‘ole beer lovin’ Dwayne.

I sat through the whole trial, silently squeezing my right hand, feeling the trigger pull and then release. Daydreaming something good. Vengeance is mine, saith the lord. I intend to steal from god.

Judge Connor, that cowardly bastard, sentenced the man who murdered my family to three years in the lockup and five years of supervised parole. For killing two innocents.

I felt numb when the words came out of the fat, black-robed fool’s mouth. I didn’t think, I just acted. I even managed to get my hands around Dwayne’s neck. I’m six five, and he’s about a foot shorter. The deputies didn’t give me enough time. He was coughing by the time they pulled me off of him. His face was red, and his eyes were bulging. Then they pulled him up and got him out of there. Got that murderer into a holding room where I couldn’t crush the life out of him. Connor gave me a lecture. Two deputies held me while he did. Then they drove me home. The shorter one told me he understood why I’d done what I did during the ride. “I don’t need your sympathy,” I said through gritted teeth. “I want my goddamn family back.” They shut up after that.

At the front door, they warned me to keep a lid on my temper, and told me I would be getting a call from the county. A referral to talk to someone. “Good head shrinker,” the shorter one said. “He helped me get my head back on straight a couple years back.” The cop shrugged like that said everything that needed saying.

March, 2011

The insurance money came through. A silver lining. One million dollars to replace my wife and my child. At least I’ll have a roof over my head while I figure out how I’m going to balance the scales.

April, 2015

I sort of respect Vergaard. He’s the kind of man you almost have to respect. One of those self-starters that comes from nothing and makes it into something. The guy is smart. I’ll give him that. He says a lot of things that make me think twice. Likes to quote folks. Here’s an example. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” That’s supposedly from a guy named Lao Tzu. I looked the guy up. Ancient Chinese philosopher. I think there’s good and bad people in every time, and in every place. I’m not sure how you tell them apart while they’re alive though. It seems to me like history decides all of that for us. I’m not quite sure I trust history, whatever that means. It’s just something deep down in my guts.

Anyhow, Vergaard is a patient guy. He’s been helping me “channel my rage” and “redirect it into positive force.” I know, it sounds hokey, but hey, so does church, if you ask me. I believe everyone has something to teach us, even if that just means they teach us how not to do things. But Vergaard, he’s alright. He listens. Then he gives me ideas about how to be better. I think I’m slowly getting better. I don’t dream that Dwayne killing my wife and daughter dream as much. Now, I dream about sunsets and solitude. We’ve been talking a lot about letting go, and forgiveness. Sometimes we talk about Dwayne. He’s getting out of prison in a few months.

“What do you think you’d want to say to him, if he were in this room with us?” Vergaard asks me.

“I’d ask him if he forgives himself for what happened,” I say. We’ve had this conversation before, and I’m still not ready for forgiveness. Maybe though, I’m getting closer.

“That’s a good question to ask,” Vergaard says. “Often, those who unintentionally harm others struggle with it for the rest of their lives.”

I don’t say it out loud, but I don’t believe this statement. In my opinion, Dwayne Tucker is getting better quality of sleep than I am. And he’s damn sure getting better quality of life than Becca and Ava are.

After the session, I go out to where my family is buried, and I talk to them for a while. I like Vergaard, but what they tell me makes more sense than some of what he does.

March 14, 2016

I’m not a great painter. I took a few classes before I planned the trip down here. It’s fascinating, how you can take a bunch of colors and swirl them all together to make a picture. This swamp is called blackwater. There’s so many pictures here. I’m close to a place called Billy’s Island. I have no idea who he was, but I like this place he left behind. Going on my second day, I’ve seen otters, sandhill cranes, ospreys and even a water turkey. Those things are kind of ugly, if you ask me. The centerpiece I set up is looking good. My goal is to paint the center piece with sunset overhead seven times. Wish me luck. I think this experience is going to be cathartic.

March 15, 2016

A few mosquitos bit me when I was painting while the sun fell last night. Oh, and the centerpiece fell over. The ground is pretty marshy, so that’s no surprise. I called the Doc when I was back in the RV for the night. I promised him I’d check in. “How are you Caleb?” he asked. “Is the vacation treating you well?” I told him about the water moccasin I almost didn’t notice because I was so caught up in getting the colors just right. “You be careful,” he said. “Lots of the creatures that live down there bite. Some of them are venomous. I wouldn’t want you to get into any kind of a situation.” I’m in a situation all right. I didn’t say that out loud. What I said was, “I’m OK Doc. The sunsets down here are just like you said. Spectacular.” Doc asked me about how the RV was working out. I paid for it out of the insurance settlement from Dwayne’s company. Two million dollars. It’s what I’ve been living off since what they call an accident happened. Blood money, if you ask me. Blood money that’s paying for these amazing Florida sunsets.

“Will you send me a painting?” I think Doc Vergaard is genuinely curious. I told him that I would. I promised him I’d mail it from the closest post office in the morning.

Florida is pretty this time of year. I think its proving good for my soul.

March 16, 2016

I mailed off a canvas to the Doc. Had it packaged up in one of those roll up tubes they used to deliver blueprints to the job sites. I’m sure it will get to him in time. I wonder what he’ll think when he sees my sunset. Maybe he won’t like the style. I’m pretty sure he might not. The center piece fell over again tonight. It was a little harder to set the scene back up this time. The swamp critters are more interested than when I first pulled up in the RV. Maybe they like the smell.

March 17, 2016

The sunset tonight was just amazing. It was full of reds and purples, and some lightning! I made sure I took a digital photo so I could get all the details. I shot about 100 frames and then went through them. Frame 18 was a really big spike. It went all the way down to the ground and blazed up. I got every detail of the tree on fire at the bottom. My center piece almost seemed irrelevant next to the glory of that strike. I have to admit, that sometimes, I wonder if there isn’t a god directing the show. But then I think of Becca and Ava. Strike. You’re out. Nah. It can’t be. If there is something, it or them doesn’t or don’t care about what happens down here.

March 18, 2016

The center piece is starting to look wilted. I’ve been watering it, but not enough. That’s all part of the plan though. Still life in decay.

March 19, 2016

I haven’t been eating enough, and when the center piece fell over this time, it was really hard to set everything back up. I had to re-asses the plan and take a break. I missed the sunset, but it was necessary. Thank goodness for digital cameras. I made myself Boom Boom meatballs and felt better. I finished sunset six around 2 a.m. and fell into a deep sleep devoid of dreams. I haven’t slept this soundly since the “accident.”

March 20, 2016

On the road. The project is complete! I’m so glad that Doc Vergaard encouraged me to come down here. Something about this week has felt right from the beginning. I left my still life scene feeling serene. I think it died sometime last night. That was the plan. Start with seven ounces of water and then reduce it by one ounce a day until we reached zero. Dwayne made a perfect centerpiece for those seven sunsets I painted. I feel so much better. At the end, his desiccated body made me feel like everything under the sun was in its right place. Most beautiful sunset of my life.

My painting is dry, rolled and ready to mail from Okeechobee. I wonder what Vergaard will think of it.

Smoke and butterflies

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The day the forest caught fire I was out looking for butterflies. The ones that hide in the deepest, oldest parts. It’s been so many years now. I can’t remember anymore. Not clearly. Not like I once did. I used to remember every line in your face. Especially around the eyes where the wrinkles all came together when you smiled.

I saw the swarm of butterflies only moments before I smelled the smoke. In a clearing deep in the old forest. I watched. Mesmerized. They danced for me. Only seconds. It was the most beautiful thing.
Then I caught the smoke in my nostrils. It’s weird how time changes the reality of things. It’s weird how immediate danger changes the nature of time.

I ran for my life. For all I know those butterflies continued their dance until the smoke blotted out their warm patch of sunshine. Maybe they were still dancing when the sparks off the trees began burning their delicate, impossible wings. Do butterflies have souls? If they do I hope there is an afterlife where they continue to dance in lovely, impossible kaleidoscopes.

I met her close to home. The fire raged all around. We tried to look for you. There was no time. We called out as we ran. Hand in hand. I thought about pauses. The pauses turned into commas. Commas make me impatient. It was hard to breathe from all the smoke around us. Our calls grew weaker. Our hearts beat too fast. There was nothing left but the desperation of our need to find cooler air. We stopped calling and tried to outpace the fire. Somehow we did. We didn’t see you along the path that day.

Home. That place we all loved so much. Burned to the ground. Nothing left but memories and the feel of her hand in mine. We stood at the edge of the forest where we had lived and cried together. It was hard to talk. So many years ago. I wish I could remember the sound of your laugh. I know it tinkled sometimes. I close my eyes and try to imagine exactly how your shoulders arched when you were amused. There was something in that stance you had. Something as beautiful as the swarm of golden butterflies.

In the days after our disaster I talked to the old man who lived over the ridge. He lost everything too. His family, his livelihood, his sense of humor. He told me that he’d been out looking for medicinal plants. Said that when he smelled the smoke and began to run back towards home he saw you. He told me you were floating like a wraith through the smoke. He told me you looked at him and continued into the heart of that horrible, all consuming maelstrom of flames.

We rebuilt eventually. In a barren landscape that was already beginning to renew itself. Life is strange. It builds itself out of the bones of death. Always. A cycle that repeats over and over. I suppose it will continue until the universe itself decides the time to end has come. I look for you still. Over every trail I’ve worn through the young forest that grows around us indifferent to the past. Trees don’t remember. So I’m told.
Sometimes I think it would be better to be a tree.

I could shelter a swarm of golden butterflies under my leaves during a gentle rain. I wouldn’t struggle with the question of what happened the day of the fire. Or why you would ever want to do a thing like that. Things would be simple if I were a tree. I would be born and die in exactly the same place without ever worrying about why I can’t remember exactly what your smile looks like anymore.

Sometimes on my walks with her we come upon more butterflies. It makes me happy that they still dance. The trunks aren’t as tall or thick as the ones I remember from back then. But the butterflies are just as golden and their dances are just as magical. I look at her and I am happy. But both of us miss you and the way you used to dance. It was like you could fly. I hope somewhere you are still dancing.

They say a mischief maker started the fire that day. The ones who investigate such things. I sometimes think it was you playing with matches. You used to be fascinated by flames. We had to warn you not to sit so close to the hearth on cold nights. You would stare sometimes. Into the flames. In a way that made me think you wanted to touch them.

What makes a butterfly different from a moth. Which one were you? It doesn’t really matter. We both miss you.

The memory of storms

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There is only the memory of a storm. Lingering on my skin, haunting my dreams. Baghdad, Iraq. In the year 2006. Sounds and smells come back the most. I try to suppress them because of the panic attacks and the way those have crippled me at times. I haven’t had one for a while.

Now, when the memories come unbidden, it is usually an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss. The awareness of my own fragility. The death of innocence. The inevitability of endings and an understanding that the privilege of memory is not granted to everyone.

All the fragments came together in the storm my last night in Iraq. I slept eventually but first my brain forced me to travel unwanted pathways. Made me ask why my life was intact when so many others had been shattered. When so many souls had leaked out onto the ground or been dispersed into bits and fragments inside the concussive blasts of hatred that I felt many times. Those punctuation marks only frayed my mind. They failed to shatter my body.

It doesn’t rain often in Baghdad. In a year we had perhaps a half dozen storms that actually contained life giving water sent down from the skies. My last night in Iraq I experienced one of those. The air became heavy with that smell of impending wet while my unit shuffled from line to line suffering the endless insults of modern war. The wind picked up as we finished our checklists and winded our way through the endless t-walls, machines and tired soldiers to take our sustenance. By the time we returned to our tent to retire, the sand was blowing into our faces. Stinging our skin.

The tent walls moved and sang to us in harmony with the angry air outside that night. As the storm’s fury mounted, I wondered why I was lucky enough to be alive. My overwhelming sense was that I wouldn’t make it through the night. That the storm had been sent as a last cruel joke. I felt that since none of the mortars or rockets had taken me out I was due to die in the tent that night. If a sniper didn’t have my mark, then surely the tent would fall in on me and finish the job.

I finally drifted off into a troubled sleep thinking about all the things that hadn’t killed me. Some men and women can fall asleep anywhere after being exposed to war. I haven’t mastered that skill. I was probably the last one to fall asleep that night.

I woke up to the sound of thunder crashing. The tent walls were moving so much I was certain they would collapse in on me at any point. I could hear vehicles grinding by and see lightning through the entrance flaps as the wind played games with my worldview.

Instead of waiting for the tent to collapse and end the nightmare I’d been living, I did what human beings do. I fought my way through the chaos and uncertainty to relieve my bladder. The memories of that short journey are burned into my brain.

Endless convoys of sand colored armored gun trucks moving through the darkness sometimes illuminated by the sodium lights that seem to be omnipresent inside U.S. forward operating bases. In the rare moments between thunder crashes, shrieking gusts of wind, the sound of rain hitting sand and the grinding, rumbling noises of convoys the closest thing to silence was the constant hum of diesel generators powering the camp. War has a very distinct set of sights, sounds and smells that I cannot forget.

That storm, on that particular night, added a level of surreal to the backdrop. The storm ensured I will not lose the tableau of that night until I am dead. It burned in the significance of my fragility, the randomness of man’s hatred towards man and the fact that I was supposed to go home in the morning.

The tent survived nature’s fury. No mortar landed on me during my fitful sleep. The chartered jet we flew across an ocean to return to our world did not go down in the ocean as I suspected it would.
But that storm is still raging in my head. Reminding me that one day I won’t be able to escape an ending to my story. Storms remind me that I shouldn’t waste time. Remind me that the routine always holds the potential to become life changing.

What am I doing with my time? How am I spending the moments between storms? I lost a friend yesterday, long before I expected it. His storm came in a different form but it had the same net effect as the one I experienced on my last night in Baghdad. His tent fell in on him and became a burial shroud.

The memory of storms reminds that I should use the moments I have left intentionally. That I should live mindfully. That I should choose my relationships carefully. That every moment is an investment in becoming. Connectedness and love mean everything. I wish I’d understood that lesson better the night I was waiting for my plane out of Baghdad.

To my friend who just passed, I want to say, thank you for allowing me to know you. Thank you for letting me use the memory of your final storm to reinforce lessons I believe will cause my life to resonate more richly. Thank you for serving as an example of kindness and love that will allow me to be better for the people around me.

My final storm is coming. Yours is too. The only question is what will we do with the time between this moment and that one?

In memory of Dan

Dust

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This place was once my home. It is a cold, empty shell now. I remember, though. The windows used to be filled with glass. The front door was green. Our porch was always filled with barking dogs. That was before. When I thought time was on my side. That happiness was a permanent state of being.

She used to bring the oldest dogs out here. Into this same patch of sunlight where I am standing. The oldest of them all was named Gonzo. He had no teeth. She fed him baby food for humans. He loved it. He loved her. Years ago, in this patch of sunlight that is warming my shoulders. She carried him here, and put him down in the grass. Such green grass that year. It still rained back then. There were dandelions growing among the blades of Bermuda. I framed Gonzo against two of the white puffballs, hanging there in space above the verdant plain. He was so tiny. So decrepit. His snout hung down like a piece of deflated black balloon. It waggled when he moved. He always moved to follow her movements. He couldn’t walk much. But he would try to shuffle and follow her wherever she went. Next to him in the frame of my digital camera with its amoral, cold eye, the dandelions appeared huge. They looked as big as Gonzo’s head.

Those dandelions blew away in the wind a few days after I took the picture. And then Gonzo’s life blew away in time. She cried when he died on the couch. Wrapped up in a little blanket as she cradled him. He looked into her eyes lovingly, in pain. Then he made a sad noise and he died. We both cried for Gonzo. I dug a little grave for him. Planted a tree over his head in the rocky soil of our hilly home. The tree grew, for a while. She and I were sad, but our lives went on. For a little while longer.

My lips are bleeding again. I don’t have any more water.

It must have been three years later when the rain stopped. Everything dried out. The smells in the air changed slowly. I didn’t notice at first. But they did. I think the creek at the bottom of the property was the first thing to dry up. The lichen growing on the smooth, polished rocks died. I wasn’t worried then. We had dry summers all the time. It was the second year without rain that got us worried. The politicians were praying publicly by then.

I should go inside.

We used to sleep in this room. The air conditioner was always on. Its wet hum comforted her. She loved the room cold. It had to be under 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I liked that too, but sometimes it got too cold, and I overslept. Back when being late to work mattered. Now, the torn mattress is inches thick in dust. This house is filled with dust. The wet red clay has all dried out and been carried into the air in the dry winds that are killing me. That are killing everything.

It hasn’t rained in seven years. When I realized what was happening, I built a cistern at the bottom of the property. Drained the well at the top of the property into it. Covered it. Sealed it. We stockpiled food before the panic set in. Before our drought covered the world.

She used to sleep on the left side of the mattress. I was on the right. The dogs went wherever they wanted. Sometimes between us, and sometimes burrowing at our feet. She would often reach out and touch me in the night. In the cold. Her hands seeking the warmth of my body. Sometimes, when she touched me, I would wake up and look at her. Love her with my eyes. Her touch was gentle but needy. Soft but strong. She would ask me a question with her fingers. Are you still there? Do you still love me? The answer was always the same.

Until she killed herself last year.

In this dust covered bed. With the pistol I bought her for protection when I was away on business trips. She couldn’t shoot a snake or a rabbit or a wild pig with it, but she was able to put it in her mouth and pull the trigger while I was down the bottom of the property checking the water levels. By then everything except us was dead.

The trees were all skeletons, brown, brittle and dried. Their leaves long since dust. The dogs were all gone. I told her we needed the water, so they dried up and died. She resented me for it. With the power out, we laid in bed sweating in the heat and dust, and her fingers never reached for me anymore. I sweated. She sweated. But it all dried up in the dark and we would wake up thirsty. I would go out looking for life in the dust. By then the neighbors were all gone too. It was just her and I, in the bed, waiting for the dust to fill our lungs. But she didn’t want to wait.

The photos on the walls are filled with happy versions of us. She is smiling at me still from years gone by. Her green eyes shining, with crinkles around the corners.
There is a dry, dusty blood splotch on her side of the bed, barely visible under the thick dust. No one ever tells you that you might have to dig your wife a dry grave in a world empty of life. If I had known that back when we got married, I might have made different choices.

The water ran out on Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday. My mouth is so dry. And I’m dizzy. It’s hard to think. I’m going to lay down on this dry mattress. On my side. I won’t look at the bloodstain under the dust. I’m just going to look at the pictures of us. When we were young and happy. Before the world dried out and everything died. I’m going to close my eyes and think about the wet humming of the air conditioner. I’m going to sleep a while and hope that when I wake up, she’ll be right there with her fingers reaching out to touch my skin again. I want that back. The dogs snuggling at our feet and the touch of her delicate fingers reassuring me that everything will be OK. I wish I could have that back.