Road Trip

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TLCgiver
TLCgiver
713 Followers

One morning, about a week after Anna left, I stood in front of a tall mirror and studied my nude body after a shower. I desperately needed a haircut. My eyes and face were gaunt; I had circles under my eyes. My body was pudgy and fleshy, and not a muscle showed when I flexed my arms or shoulders.

Since I'd left the military, I'd had only desk jobs in front of a computer, the kind of jobs that make you flabby and soft. A week before Karen had died, I'd quit my work. I didn't know what I'd do, but I knew I couldn't stay there.

Each evening when we'd come home from our jobs, Karen and I would compare notes about how our day went. She knew enough about software development and websites to be more than appreciative about what I was doing at work; she'd even give me great ideas to try on the company's clients. I'd been a nerd – a behind the scenes, inconsequential geek.

Looking in that mirror, I felt another burst of pain, only this time about how I had allowed myself to deteriorate. During the eight years in Army Special Forces, I'd had a hard and muscular body. I resolved to get back in shape, partly because I knew it would improve my outlook on life and help me get through some of the grief.

I developed a routine. I'd wake up just after dawn and run. I made some makeshift weights; an exercise bench, exercise bars, and installed a sparing bag in the garage. I'd workout there for another hour when I got back from my run. At first, I could barely run around the block, and ten pounds seemed like a strain to lift three-times-fifteen. I willed myself to improve every day. By the end of the first month, I could run two miles without stopping, and by the end of the third month I could knock off seven or eight or more miles nonstop, and I'd started pressing a hundred-and-forty-pounds, and doing two hundred sit ups with a twenty-pound medicine ball. My weight plummeted and revealed biceps, pecs, lats, and other muscles that had been hidden by my bad habits. I cut my own hair, keeping it short, neat, and manageable instead of the unruly mop it had become.

After my exercise regime in the morning, I'd work on the motorcycle. The Harley became the project in which I bestowed my sanity and salvation from the grief over Karen's death. I felt driven, not by haste, but by careful thoroughness to restore the bike to its pristine condition. I believed that if I could rebuild the motorcycle, I could rebuild my life.

All day, every day, I worked on the motorcycle in the garage. I created a near sterile work area in one bay of the garage where I lovingly disassembled the entire bike, carefully laid all the parts out, and assessed how I could rebuild.

A few parts cleaned up well, but many were beyond repair and needed to be replaced. I scoured eBay and Craigslist for parts, and I also discovered a market for used Harley parts in the area. I spent over $5,000 at a mechanic's shop that specialized in re-chroming. Other money went for a new seat, sissy bar, luggage rack, new struts and shocks, and new chrome rims and tires.

After disassembly and restocking parts, I started the reassembly process. I suspended the bike frame for rebuilding with a home-crafted sling from the garage rafters. I rebuilt the engine, replacing every ring, gasket, filter, and slightly worn part. On a test stand, the engine ran better than new when I finished. Day by day, a new motorcycle emerged from the mass of parts carefully laid out on the floor and workbench. The frame, fenders, and gas tank received new high gloss paint and pin striping. A new instrument cluster, light bars, handlebar, and roll bar took their place amid the chrome front of the bike. I added safety lights and a strong luggage carrier to the back. Last, I added new chrome exhaust pipes, and then rich leather replacements for the destroyed saddlebags.

I considered it a monumental day near the end of April when I carefully lowered the bike to the garage floor and declared the project complete. With high expectations, I got on the bike, put the key in the ignition, and cranked the engine. The motor caught on the second crank as the new gas finally reached the carburetor, and the Harley rumbled into life after its fifteen-year repose. I rode up and down the street a few times, testing the gears and brakes for any signs of malfunction. Everything worked perfectly. I might have smiled for the first time in months.

* * * * *

Throughout my work on the Harley, I'd brooded about Karen. As I disassembled some part of the bike or polished a hidden cog or spoke, I retraced every step I could remember about our meeting at a party, our on and off again dating, the first time we made love, becoming engaged, and marrying. We'd lived together for seven of the eight years we knew each other, and learned the rigors and joys of patience, forgiveness, gratitude, and our love of being together. We were married for six of those eight years. We'd used the term 'Soul Mate' to refer to each other.

I recalled some of the arguments we had with each other, starting with the one about my leaving my smelly socks around the bedroom. None of our arguments were relationship threatening. We tried to never go to bed mad at each other, but there were exceptions when one or the other of us would stomp around and decide to sleep on the sofa.

Six months before she died, Karen got sick for a couple of weeks, a malaise and weakness that made her miss work. We tried various treatments including prayer and meditation, but suddenly the symptoms went away. Six months later they came back with a vengeance. Karen awoke one morning and went to get out of bed. She felt weak, couldn't stand, and fell back on the bed with a confused look on her face. One hour later after an ambulance ride, the doctors at Mass General were examining her; four days later the doctors put her in the ICU; and then she never left that room until the hospital nurses moved her body one last time so the men from the funeral home could take and prepare her for cremation.

At first, I couldn't believe she would die. She was only thirty-two, and no one died at that age. You live forever. But then, halfway into her hospital stay a doctor near my own age pulled me aside and had an earth-shattering talk with me. He started, "We're out of options and treatments. All we can do now is palliative care. Lacking a miracle that we don't expect, your wife has about three to seven days left to live." He seemed genuinely apologetic and sympathetic. I was speechless. This couldn't be happening to Karen.

I quit work that afternoon. I went into shock and determined on my own that he must be wrong. I raged at the hospital and doctors. In a fit of anger I insisted on other opinions, yet all they did were validate the inevitable – she wouldn't last past mid-February. I could do nothing to help her. I prayed and used every device and promise I could think of. Nothing worked; Karen got progressively worse.

Karen's parents and Lauren came down from northern Vermont; they stayed nearby in our apartment while I stayed every possible moment at the hospital holding Karen's hand. Towards the end, Lauren joined me in being with her sister around the clock. We learned a lot about each other during those trying days. Lauren taught nursing in northern Vermont at a teaching hospital, and knew things that made Karen's life easier. I felt so grateful that Lauren had come.

Karen and I took a few moments alone one night to say goodbye; the doctors had warned that her time to leave this life neared. She'd been scared for a while when she knew she'd not recover, but then seemed resigned to her fate. We had a teary goodbye, and she had me make some promises – how I should remember her, how I should keep in touch with her parents and especially her sister whom she said had a special place in their heart for me, and how I should meet and see other people; and even find another soul mate, remarry, and create a family.

I wondered if another soul mate existed on the planet; I didn't think so; weren't soul mates unique and one of a kind? You didn't find 'another' soul mate. Remarrying was such a foreign thought; I dismissed it out of hand without disagreeing with Karen.

Karen and I had wanted a family. We'd decided on two children, a home in the suburbs with a lawn to mow – maybe even refurbishing the Dillon house. Karen had stopped taking her birth control pills about a year earlier, and we were starting to think about doing a more thorough medical investigation about her lack of a pregnancy when she got sick.

The day after we said goodbye, Karen slipped into a coma. Karen's parents, Lauren, Anna, and I were at the hospital at the end. We cried a lot. Lauren and I never left Karen's side until after the life monitoring systems in her room signaled her passing with alarm signals that brought the doctors and nurses running to Karen's room, but to no avail. Lauren was with me, and we clutched each other like lifeboats in a stormy sea. Karen had insisted on a DNR notice to the medical staff – Do Not Resuscitate.

* * * * *

The motorcycle and the deep thinking I did as I worked on it were my therapy. I called Anna twice a week, and she'd listen with seemingly great interest about my progress on the bike, but paid more attention to my mental state and my recollections about Karen and me. She always expressed her love for me, and encouraged me. Anna told me, "You're doing what you should be doing – grieving and working on something lasting simultaneously."

Anna gave me the 'Big Idea' during one of our calls about a month after she'd returned to her home. "Why don't you ride the motorcycle out here to San Diego? It'd take you, what, a week or two? You've always wanted to see the country, and I know that even Karen would have wanted to tour with you. It won't be the same without her, but you could see lots of interesting things, meet some interesting people, and who knows – maybe even have a fling or two along the way." She laughed gaily as she always did when she gave me advice about my love life.

I liked the idea of the road trip. It gave the Motorcycle Project an end goal.

I went to AAA and got a map of the United States. I tacked it up on a wall in the garage where I could look at it every day and ponder what a road trip across the U.S. would be like. I drew a straight line from Dillon to San Diego where Anna lived; if I could follow the straight line I'd go through thirteen states and travel over 2,600 miles.

A week after I drew the straight line another idea popped into my head: why not visit all the intervening forty-eight states. I spent military time in Alaska and Hawaii, but outside New England and a little of the east coast I had seen little of the country. I'd had a yen to go camping since leaving the Green Berets, I had friends from college and the Army scattered across the country I wanted to touch base with again, and after I told Anna she really became a big advocate for the road trip. "There's no rush to get out here, but whenever you get here, know that I want you to stay forever." She added with a touch of poignancy, "You can even pretend I am your soul mate."

Growing up, Anna and I had discovered the term soul mate. About the same time, we learned about the concept of reincarnation and multiple lives. We sat and discussed whether we were soul mates, and whether we'd had other lives together. She could make me laugh; pointing out that for sure I'd been her subservient wife while she'd been my dominant master. She'd then jam her fingers into my ribs to tickle me and run like hell screaming that she'd set the beast loose. I did love my sister, and we did have many great memories together.

A few evenings with a ruler and maps on my laptop computer, and I'd plotted out a tentative course, one that wove north and south in a rough sinusoid across the country and touched each state and took me to places I wanted to see without too much backtracking. My first cut at the distance put the trip at around 12,500 miles. With stops to visit friends, I'd be on the road a few months.

I decided that my first serious trip on the motorcycle would be a loop from Dillon northeast along the coast through New Hampshire into Maine, and then inland and across northern New Hampshire to Vermont to where Karen's parents and sister lived. I'd visit with them, come back to Dillon, and assess how the trip had gone – how the bike had behaved, add or omit a few things to my camping and travel kit based on my experiences, and then start off the main journey to the other forty-four states. Always be prepared.

* * * * *

After preparing to start my trip, I thought about the disposal of Karen's ashes. Anna's words – that'Karen would have wanted to tour with you' – stuck in my head. So, I prepared forty-seven small envelopes, each containing a small amount of her ashes. I planned to scatter her ashes in each state I passed through, starting by putting the bulk of the ashes in the ocean off Plum Island beach near home in Massachusetts. Karen and I had walked that beach often, even in the winter. We'd favored the area known as The Refuge instead of the honky-tonk part of the island where the summer homes were packed so closely together.

While the ceremony might have seemed maudlin, I planned to say goodbye to her this way – my own private way on my own terms: no minister, no mumbo-jumbo religious words that neither of us had put much stock in, and, maybe, no more tears. I'd promised Karen I'd do something nice with 'her;' the thought seemed to make Karen happy as she lay dying.

I hit the road at dawn in early May, initially starting on Interstate 495. I hadn't gone ten miles before I realized what I should have figured out earlier; the Interstates provide miles of safe but boring and repetitious scenery. Armed with my newfound wisdom, I moved over to U.S. 1 and 1A, and found considerable eye candy and sights of interest that more than compensated for the slower speeds and stoplights.

At Plum Island, I shed my boots and walked barefoot along the path to the beach. I carried the box with the remaining ashes down to the water where I waded into the Atlantic facing the rising sun. A light offshore breeze helped me consign Karen's remains to the swirls of the morning tide. Sandpipers and seagulls were the only witnesses to the release.

The whole scene was surreal and beautiful, just the way Karen would have liked. She loved to get up early and sense the day in her unique way. I did say a few words aloud as the wind and the water drifted what was left of my wife away from me. I talked to Karen and cried as I talked in a choked up voice. I felt that I had to do something – to say something – besides just dumping the contents of the box into the water.

As I walked back to the motorcycle, I thought I'd feel different. I thought there might be closure of some kind. Isn't that why people did something like scatter ashes? I felt as bad as I had before.

I rode along side the Atlantic through New Hampshire to the downtown area of Portsmouth. I dispensed the small envelopes of ashes I'd designated for that state in the middle of the pretty square of Strawberry Banke. Karen and I had come up Portsmouth over and over again, because it was such a quaint little city. We'd tried many restaurants in the town, walked around, and had many souvenirs from our day trips there. Karen had liked tacky souvenirs.

I wove along the Maine seacoast, trying to stay near the ocean as much as possible because of the views. I camped for the night near the Owls Head lighthouse. I thought of all the symbolism that the lighthouse might have for me; for instance, lifting me with light from the darkness and depression following Karen's passing.

The next morning after my exercises, I took a very quick swim in a near freezing ocean. I'd never seriously meditated, but I suddenly decided to make it part of my daily routine. At first, it was awkward and my brain was all over the place. I roamed around a few picturesque towns taking photographs. After lunch, clouds rolled in so I headed north to my planned stopover near the Maine-New Hampshire-Canadian borders – a state park outside Rangeley that turned out to be deserted, as I predicted.

In thirty minutes at the lakeside park, I realized that I would need several gallons of insect repellent if I were to survive the night. A ride into the nearby town yielded an early dinner, and a stop at a camping and fishing store enabled me to deal with the black flies and mosquitoes. I finished tightly sealed inside my tent, sleeping but only after assuring myself that no visitors of the insect kind had flown in with me.

Despite a drenching rain that developed during the night, I arose at dawn, ran about seven miles along dirt roads and then exercised in a nearby covered picnic shelter where I could do sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, swat black flies and mosquitoes, and do the rest of my exercise regimen. A sign in the picnic area indicated that Rangeley Lake had experienced 'ice out' only two weeks earlier, so my swim to clean up after my workout was short and exceptionally bracing. I tried to remember what I'd learned about hypothermia, wondering whether ninety seconds in the lake with a bar of soap was sufficient to induce that condition. I opened the Maine envelope and spread some of the ashes I'd brought into beautiful Rangeley Lake with a silent prayer and expression of love.

I prepared my breakfast in the shelter instead of the cramped quarters of my tent, making coffee over a coke can stove and cooking some dried scrambled eggs with bacon chips. The smoke from the fire seemed to discourage at least some of the insects. I meditated in the tent for fifteen minutes, eventually becoming oblivious to the pouring rain and insects.

The rain and wet roads made me decide to stay another night in Rangeley instead of trying to travel a long distance on roads that still might hide winter sand that could spill a two-wheeled rider. I used my small laptop computer for the first time and started to record some entries in a journal. I'd thought about Karen a lot over the past two days; in our courtship we'd made many trips up the coast of Maine, sometimes going into Eastern Canada on several excursions. We'd talked about dozens of places around the world we wanted to see and explore together, and I tried to remember what they were. I wrote my feelings and memories into my electronic journal. Maybe the dreary weather influenced my thinking; when I reread what I'd written I became aware of the melancholy mood I'd been in for months.

Instead of moping around the campsite all day, I resolved to adopt a joyful and grateful attitude per Karen's instructions to me. I walked through the woods gathering some dry scrap wood for a fire later. I put them under my tarp. As I did, I talked to myself, affirming thanks and joy for Anna, my parents, the motorcycle, my college, and Army experiences, and most of all the eight years I'd known Karen and the many salient events in our relationship and marriage that were now so dear to me. I forced myself to smile and laugh at some of the humorous events in our marriage. The activity of acting 'as-if' I was joyful did improve my mood.

I put on a smile and my rain gear, and rode the short distance into town for lunch and to find a place that had Wi-Fi and a place to charge my computer and cell phone. The public library had a free Internet connection and available electrical outlets. I sent Anna an email updating her on my activities and travels, and for the first time since the funeral service months earlier, I sent an email to Karen's sister, Lauren, explaining about the road trip and my intention to stop at her and her parent's homes the next day to see whether any of the family was around. I could have telephoned; however, for some reason, I wanted the impersonal nature of the email communication.

TLCgiver
TLCgiver
713 Followers