Finding Jim (20 page)

Eric holds the Zodiac steady while we clamber over the sides onto the beach of Gordon Island. No one moves, and I touch the square bulge in my jacket pocket. We scatter over the sand.

I stand in one place and then scurry to another. Was it here on this knoll, or by this rock? Where was the exact place we kissed? I don't know. I should know. I drive my toe into the sandy beach and stare at nothing. Damn it. Why didn't we stay together then? We would have had eight more years.

When people ask how long Jim and I were married, I say, “Two years.” If they comment on our brief time together I blurt, “We were together for more than seven years before that, and we first met when I was 16.” I stretch the truth and add on the few months when we weren't officially dating. I wish I could say that we were married for 25 years and had four children.

Mike ambles up and offers me a petrified piece of seaweed, “Here, Sue, I thought you might like this, it looks like ski tracks.”

Ken is behind him, “Look at this beautiful shell, too.”

Susan presents me with a curled piece of driftwood.

I hold their gifts. They remind me of children who offer gifts in return for friendship or to cheer someone up.

I am lucky. My husband was killed and I am lucky to be surrounded by love. I am grateful in a way that makes me weak-kneed because I am not certain I have the courage to love again.

An eagle perches on top of a small dead tree above a grassy knoll. I creep closer and he glares at me but does not fly off. I settle below him on rocks just out of reach of the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. The rest of the group sidles up because they know I plan to throw some of Jim's ashes into the ocean. I light a candle and surround it with a photo of Jim and me and two good luck teddy bears. I fumble with the box in my pocket and begin to speak slowly:

Hi, Sweetie. The Charlottes are as beautiful as I remember. But, without you, I am lost. You made life beautiful for me. It's good to be here with friends.

I wish I could tell you how everyone is doing, but I don't know. Your dad cries every day. Your mom has a picture of you at the bottom of the stairs so that she can say good morning to you. She wears your favourite red fleece, the one you had on when you fell, around the house. Kevin focuses on his family and says his daily life is intact. He was really happy when I gave him your mountaineering boots. Many wonderful people carry you in their hearts. We miss you.

Some days I don't know how I'll make it without you and other days I feel you holding my hand and think I will be okay. My head and heart play tug-o-war with the facts. My heart waits for you to come home and my head tells my heart that you will never come home.

I claw at the drawstring bag inside the box and sink my fingertips into the dark, dense remains, which are like sand mixed with white crushed peppercorns, and hold Jim's body, flesh against flesh. With my eyes closed, I stroke his face, hold his hand. Without a word, I stand to face the ocean and throw Jim's ashes to the waves. The wind snatches pieces of Jim and throws them back at me. I stare at the white bone and ash sticking to my clothes and stifle a laugh. This is not how I envisioned the perfect scattering. I scold Jim. Don't make this harder than it is. I brush him away so that he settles into the crevasses of the black volcanic rock at my feet.

“We send your body back to earth, as it should be. Peace be with you.”

The bag holds enough ashes for each person to scatter a handful. I save the rest at home. Eric reads a poem. Rose says she never wants to wash her hand again.

I stride back to the boat, chin up and chest open.

When I return home to Whistler, I look at my calendar. A red cross marks each passing day since Jim was killed, almost three pages of them. No events. No birthdays. No reminders. I stop the ritual and throw out the calendar.

(AUGUST 1999)

I brace my hand on the counter and gulp into the phone. “Hello.”

“Hey, Susie, it's Jen.”

“Oh hi, Jenny. How are you?” I pull up the kitchen stool and slump down.

“Good. How are you?”

I cradle my forehead with my hand. “Good. Well, fine. You know. It's shitty, but I complain so much these days, talk about myself so much these days, my grief. My friends must get sick of it.”

Jenny sighs. “Oh, Susie, it must be so hard. I just feel bad because I can't do anything. To be honest, when I call, part of me hopes to get the answering machine. It's difficult to hear you in pain.”

“Yeah.” I straighten up a bit. Honesty gets my attention. Truth is vital when my feet are on shifting ground and all is unfamiliar.

Jenny invites me to go to VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver with her mom and her four-year-old son, Montgomery. She thinks the meditative garden will be healing for me. When they arrive to pick me up, I am sitting in the hallway of my parents' house, hands clasped in my lap, coat on, waiting. I follow Jen to the car, smile a hello to her mom in the driver's seat and open the rear passenger door.

“Hi, Montgomery, how are you?” I crouch to get into the back seat beside Jen's beautiful boy. His feet dangle in the air, and his palms press into the leather seat. His brown eyes are so wide open. I wait for an enthusiastic hello.

“Is Jim dead?” he asks, clearly and firmly. Jen sucks in her cheeks and flips her head to look at her mom.

I look at him. “Yes, Montgomery, Jim is dead. It's sad, isn't it?”

He nods his head slowly up and down. I sigh and sit back in my seat. Silently, I thank Montgomery for asking the question I ask every day. Is he really dead? Montgomery swings his legs and looks ahead.

The Zen meditation garden weaves through small trees, stone statues and gentle cascades. Sitting on one of the stone benches, I lose myself in the symphony of birdcalls. For a minute or two, there is nothing else. But my thoughts churn again, preparing for my trip to Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. There is so much to do before leaving. How will I manage it all without Jim?

(AUGUST 1999)

You don't conquer mountains: they let you climb them or they don't.

–
JIM

In 1998 Ian Ross of the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia asked Jim if he would guide a fundraising group up Mount Kilimanjaro. Jim asked me to go as his assistant guide. The memory of my pain on the summit had faded behind the remembered brilliant colours of the African sunrise, and I agreed to go back.

Eight participants, most members of the board of the society, raised $5,000 each for the society, paid their own trip costs and attempted Kilimanjaro on behalf of the fight against Alzheimer's disease.

Jim and I led the trip in August so that we could continue to Morocco, where we would work for Eco-Challenge, a multiday competition in which teams of four race non-stop, 24 hours a day, over a gruelling 500-kilometre course using such means as trekking, canyoneering, mountaineering, camel and horseback riding, mountain biking, canoeing and kayaking.

Eager to play a defined role on Kilimanjaro beside my famous mountain-guide husband, I passed a two-week field exam to certify as a backpacking guide with the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides. From my photos, I created a book of flora and fauna found on Kilimanjaro. Jim and I met with the team and took them on a practice hike. I answered questions about Kilimanjaro and felt useful, even though Jim could have led the group without me.

We ran the trip through a local tour operator in Tanzania, Marangu Hotel. The company is family run, has organized commercial climbs of Mount Kilimanjaro since 1932 and services at least 1500 climbers a year. Seamus Brice-Bennet, one of the owners, is a soft-spoken, dry-humoured, middle-aged Brit who was raised by his mother in Marangu Village in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. At the age of five he was sent away to boarding school in the foothills of Kilimanjaro while his mother ran the hotel. After boarding school Seamus went to England to become a “bobby” and met his wife Jackie. When their first-born was six months old, they returned to Africa to make Marangu Hotel their home.

The morning we prepared to leave to climb the Western Breach, the route Jim and I had abandoned, we gathered in the courtyard of the hotel in front of a line of 20 porters and five African guides.

Seamus extended his arm to an African man close to my age. “This is Frederick. He will be your lead guide.” Frederick bowed slightly, lowered his gaze and held Jim's hand for an instant. “His assistant guides will be Johnny, Wilfred, Elionne and Eric.” Seamus turned to Frederick and spoke in the local Chagga dialect and then turned to us. “Elionne will be your cook.” Seamus introduced us to the porters who would carry our personal gear up the mountain. Porters covet this position, as they often receive more tips than regular porters. The younger porters, as young as 15, smiled. The older ones, as old as 50, nodded.

One of the team members, Bruce Allen, was a well-known Vancouver radio-show host and talent manager. A Vancouver paper published his daily journal entries from the mountain in which he described individuals on the team as “loquacious,” “wry-humoured,” “quiet,” “a good guy,” “young” and “excitable.” Of Jim he said, “Jim's a pro, a hockey fan, he'll set the pace.” He described me as “nice, very accommodating.” His comments about me were true, but I wished he had said “smart, brave, funny and kind.”

Steadily we moved up the volcano until we reached Shira Plateau, at 3749 metres, where we spent an extra day to acclimatize. Jim called it a rest day, but after we hiked for six hours to a neighbouring peak, Shira Cathedral, the team joked that it was the hardest rest day they'd ever had. As we hiked, one client asked, “So what other big peaks have you done, Sue?”

“Mostly stuff in North America, and I've done some mountaineering in Nepal and India and here in Africa.”

“Have you done Everest?”

“No,” I laughed. Everest was so out of my league. “No, I'm not that type of a mountaineer.” Part of me wanted to say that I'd climbed
K2
, like Jim, to feel worthy of being their guide.

One of the other team members piped up, “Jim is our guide, but Sue is our cheerleader. We need her.”

My face reddened. “Yes, I'm a pretty good cheerleader.” Others in line nodded their heads.

When we returned to camp, some clients napped in their tents to relieve symptoms of mountain sickness. Bruce wrote, “Wow, for the first time a wave of nausea hit me. I thought I was going to lose it. I wake up around midnight and try to get past the point of trying to breathe. I sleep in 20 to 30 minute segments.”

Clients asked my advice about medication, clothing, what to eat and how to deal with the altitude. I was snuggled in my sleeping bag before I realized that I had no mountain sickness at this altitude. Helping others was a great distraction. Jim listened patiently to my opinions as we discussed each client's needs that evening. I knew what I needed: recognition that I played an important role and accolades for a job perfectly done. When would I stop trying to prove I was perfect and worthy of love?

After two more days of hiking, we made it to Arrow Hut at 4900 metres, the jumping-off point to the summit. I did the rounds and asked each person how they were feeling and offered help. Our tents wobbled on rocky ground beside the jumbled Arrow Glacier and below the abrupt, massive, glowing-orange rock face of the Western Breach. Bruce wrote:

Barren! Desolate! Cold! Long johns going on tonight. Everyone is moving slow. Many have headaches. Water is critical. Will leave at 1 a.m. in the dark to the summit. We are committed now. Night can't come soon enough.

The sun set after dinner, outlining our camp in silver-orange. In our tent, I outfitted my daypack with extra batteries, gloves, down jacket and first aid supplies, should clients need them. Still experiencing no symptoms, I fidgeted with excitement, poked Jim and tried to engage him in conversation. “I hope I'm being useful.”

“Sure you are.” Jim peeked one hand out of his sleeping bag to stroke my face. “Let's have a good climb, okay?”

“Okay.” Soon I drifted to sleep, grateful for having such a loving, understanding partner. The alarm rang me out of a deep sleep.

Bruce wrote:

At 12:30 a.m. we are up. It is dark but a half moon and a myriad of stars provide some light. With headlamps on we start up the Western Breach and can't even see the top. Eerie. Lots of scree. Two feet forward, one foot back seems to be the norm. I hate this stuff. The pace is maddeningly slow but it works and is probably what is saving all of us. Altitude kicks in hard as we reach the rocks. Ian is the first to be sick and he passes his pack to a guide.

Four more people vomited and several had to be steadied on their feet when we stopped. At each break, Jim and I surveyed our line of soldiers, doled out hard candies, retrieved water bottles from packs to make sure people drank, and warmed stiff hands.

Bruce noted:

Every effort produces an instant loss of breath. Back and forth. Zigzag, zigzag. My headlamp fails. The batteries can't work in this cold. People really struggling now. Every time we stop, you feel the cold. I lean on my poles and try to suck in as much air as possible.

The cold air stung my lungs, but I felt strong and alive with the unknown of the night and our adventure. Every few minutes I sipped from my drinking hose to keep hydrated and chomped at the ice forming in the plastic tube. In the dark, I strained to see some outline representing the top so I could tell the group that we were almost there. Give them hope. Black, smudged forms approached and receded, but it wasn't until we were almost there that I could see the rim of rock.

Wrote Bruce:

Finally after about five hours, we reach the crater rim. There is little or no elation. People are just trying to cope. The sun is rising and before us lay the snow fields and, in the distance, the true summit – Uhuru Peak, 5895 metres.