The morning air was hot and dry with a hint of Canadian wildfire smoke when I stepped outside the imaging department at Foothills Hospital on Wednesday. I’d gone in for X-rays of my right hand, so I was not in the mood for this bad-memory-triggering weather. The hand — ugh — this is not a problem I need right now. This is why I chose to ignore it for nearly seven weeks since I unintentionally tossed my body onto a sandstone slab while hiking in Canyonlands last month. I was in the national park to visit the spots where we spread my dad’s ashes last year. I had just shimmied down a tall ladder with some exposure, which triggered a bout of vertigo, which left me feeling wobbly before I commenced jogging down the trail. My foot caught on something and down I went, smacking my right hip, right temple, and apparently my right hand.
The noggin bump was initially excruciating, releasing a torrent of grief that transferred all of that pain to my heart. I cried for my dad, how much I missed him, how much I just couldn’t hike — let alone live my life — without him. This emotional floodgate released enough of the pain to allow me to stand. The bruised leg caused the next wave of pain. After that calmed down, I realized my pinky finger hurt something fierce. The base of the joint was mildly swollen but I could bend the finger okay. I decided to ignore what I decided was a mild sprain.
Similar to my chronic back pain after being hit by a truck, and my sternum injury after my last trail-running crash, it seems the part that hurts last is the part that hurts longest.
“I always see you after you fall,” Dr. Fineberg exclaimed when he walked into the exam room. Dr. Fineberg is not my primary care physician, but he does seem to be the physician readily available when I call my clinic for a last-minute appointment. He fitted me with a medical sandal when I broke my toe after falling down the stairs in 2018, examined my jaw after the last big trail crash in November, and now remembers me for being the embarrassing klutz that I am. I explained to Dr. Fineberg that the latest fall happened way back on May 5. I wasn’t in much pain, but my hand also hadn’t improved since then. There was still swelling at the base of my pinky finger. I’d made efforts to protect my finger for weeks, and now I am rapidly losing grip strength. I can no longer curl the finger or move it laterally. This became disconcertingly apparent when I was scrambling on the upper part of Niwot Ridge over the weekend. I tried to pull myself up from a handhold with my four-finger grip, experienced a sharp pain, and felt my hand slip. Luckily it was a low-stakes place to slip. But what if it hadn’t been?
Dr. Fineberg examined my hand and concluded, “There’s definitely something wrong.” He ordered the X-rays but also immediately referred me to an orthopedic surgeon. “I’m not saying you’ll need surgery, but definitely at least physical therapy. They’ll get you an MRI.” He already knew, and I knew, that an X-ray wasn’t going to show much, but that’s the protocol. I didn’t want any of this. I wanted to just keep on living my life with a slightly injured hand. Do I really need grip strength?
“Hand surgeons are the best in the business,” Dr. Fineberg said almost as a non-sequitur. “That’s a million-dollar organ right there.”
I stepped out of the hospital into the sunlit haze, feeling sorry for myself. My phone buzzed, so I paused to check my messages. There were a few people waiting for rides in front of the hospital — a young couple on a bench, a woman about my age wearing scrubs, and an older woman in a wheelchair being pushed by a nurse. The older woman was striking in a way that I couldn’t quite define. I’d guess she was in her 80s with shoulder-length silver hair. She was well-dressed in a long blue floral skirt and a white blouse with white high-heel shoes. That was it. The heels. My great-grandmother always wore heels, as far as a knew, until the day she died at age 98. The old woman’s head was bowed and I couldn’t see her face. After that hint of recognition that brought memories of my Grandma Great, I remembered my manners and redirected my attention to my phone.
As I scrolled through my e-mail, I heard a startling sound, a sort of sputtering wail from the old woman’s direction. “I,” she blurted before her voice collapsed into sobs. “I’m so sad,” she cried out in a shaky, piercing tone. “I’m not ready to die.”
My whole heart seemed to burst in her moment of grief — a stranger to me, and yet, so raw, so affecting, so close to an edge that no one wants but all must venture. My head, my leg, and finally my hand started to throb as I gripped my phone tighter. I stole one last glance in her direction. From this angle, I could only see her bowed head and the nurse who stood stoically behind the wheelchair with a hand placed on the old woman’s shoulder. Besides the nurse, the old woman seemed to be alone. I wanted to rush up to her and embrace her, cry with her, tell her I was so, so sorry. But this is unhinged behavior to impose on a stranger, so instead I turned and walked away.
Safely hidden from view in my car in the parking garage, feeling like my sternum had been crushed all over again, I cried for the old woman who I never met and would never see again.
Sometimes I wonder how we as a species survive grief. It’s everywhere, in everyone, every day. Grief is an ocean — sometimes calm, sometimes turbulent — that can swallow us without warning. With every loss, our hearts become heavier. It no longer seems possible to breezily float through life. We begin to sink. Life becomes an increasingly exhausting battle just to keep our heads above the water. Then, for many of us, a time will come when we have accumulated so much loss through so much life that we have grown old. When that time comes, we’ll have to confront our own deaths. We won’t be ready. How can we ever be ready?
The second anniversary of my dad’s death was June 16. It feels strange to equate a death date with an anniversary, so my sisters call it Dad’s “Angel Day.” We made an effort to all be together again this year. Sara flew to Utah from California and I drove from Colorado. Lisa had a million things on her schedule but carved out time where she could. Last year, the three of us and Mom traveled to Oregon to watch the ocean waves and reflect. Mom didn’t want to make such a commitment this year. As the date approached, it became clear that she didn’t want anything at all. She wanted to be alone, which we respected. But it was hard. It was hard to spend days and nights at my childhood home in the heat of a Salt Lake summer, remembering the zombie-like way I passed through my days and nights in that house two years ago.
The sisters and I aimed to commemorate Dad in the best way we know how — spend quality family time together, hike to some of his favorite places in the Wasatch Mountains, and go out for late-night treats at an old-fashioned custard shop. On Friday morning, I guided Sara to a lovely view of Dad’s favorite mountain, Lone Peak — on the crushingly steep Jacob’s Ladder. We stopped at Dad’s trail sign — the one where he always wanted his picture taken for unknown reasons — and I lamented that some hoodlum carved a “B” to make it “Jacob’s BLadder.”
Lisa wasn’t able to join until Friday evening, so the three of us set out to visit Lower Bell Canyon Falls. The amount of water rushing down the canyon was intense; far more than I have ever seen. Dad would have loved the spectacle.
I told Lisa that on Monday, I wanted to aim for Gobbler’s Knob. It would be intense, I warned her — not only because the hike had nearly 4,000 feet of climbing in eight miles, but because this approach would require us to spend much of that time in the shadow of Mount Raymond. Mount Raymond is the mountain that killed our father on June 16, 2021. I am working toward a personal need to make peace with that mountain, even though I know mountains have no will and thus no culpability. Dad slipped near the summit and fell; it’s hard to accept, but sometimes — most times — death is just that simple. I know there’s no reason for it, and yet I go looking for a reason just the same.
Despite a relative lack of recent conditioning, Lisa was game to join. As we climbed, I suspected the physicality of the hike was her main focus, whereas I was trying to manage a crush of emotions. It makes sense. Lisa doesn’t have the same relationship with this place as I do. Dad and I snowshoed to Gobbler’s Knob on the day after Thanksgiving for many years. It was our Black Friday tradition. And I can’t look at this aspect of Mount Raymond without wondering: Which couloir was it? How far did he fall? Where did he land? That’s just how my brain works. I suspect someday I’ll feel compelled to investigate closer, but I’m not ready yet. Still … how can we ever be ready?
The wind was intense. With 40 mph gusts forecast in the valley, these altitudes brought a few 50+ mph gusts that nearly knocked us sideways. Much of Butler Fork was littered with avalanche debris. At least three enormous slides over the winter flattened entire drainages and took down rows of ancient aspen trees. We had to navigate through deep snowfields, and then we could barely brace ourselves against the gale at the saddle. Two other parties near us decided to retreat. I told Lisa we could turn around at any time, but she was determined. We reached a snow cornice that spiked my anxiety, which she noticed. I had to explain that my mind and thus body language was overreacting to something that wasn’t objectively all that dangerous — the cornice was flat with no overhanging lips. It would have taken a real effort to slide even if the wind knocked us over. But she too was visibly nervous, which makes sense, because I was proposing we cross a narrow bridge covered in slippery snow. Through the howling wind, I heard her say something about asking Dad for help. Coincidentally — or maybe not — the gale calmed as we made our way over the snow and up the final pitch to the peak.
The previous day had been Father’s Day. Lisa, ever the preparer, still has a stack of Father’s Day cards that she bought years ago to use in a future that, as it turns out, never came. She found the cards on Sunday. Instead of throwing them out in sadness or anger, she took one and wrote a beautiful message to our Dad. Then she carried the card to the mountain and shared it with me. The message was so real, so loving, that it felt as though Dad were sitting beside us and listening. We both had a good cry.
Then we signed the summit register. I was amazed we found a pen that worked. I managed to make a typo in 34 characters. My hand hurt from gripping the pen.
Sometimes I think that mountains may be the only remedy we have against the grief of the world. At least, the mountains are my best remedy. The peace I felt after I went to Canyonlands found me here. My sister felt it, too. I hope the old woman outside the hospital has something like this in her life. I’m haunted by her cries. I feel them in my bones. Or rather, I feel them in my scars — all of these little injuries I’ve accumulated over the years that remind me that life is just dying in slow motion. And yet we keep going. We keep accumulating losses. We keep building scars. We keep processing grief. We keep climbing mountains.
We’re not ready.
I too sometimes think about wanting to investigate closer the being that killed my own father (now 29 years ago). I still haven't done it. What would I even say? Would I scream "you ruined everything"? Would I fall to my knees and thank them for profoundly altering the course of my life, which I now love? Both seem equally ineffectual. The banal truth is that death is so random.
Every time I read one of your posts about your Dad, I feel a gut punch. Despite being a perfect stranger, I'm hit by the unreality and unfairness that your Dad is gone. So I guess I'm a bit unhinged, but I wish I could somehow carry even one tiny fraction of the weight of his loss with you.
Very touching, and a strong line of Truth tying it all together.