My Life, Deleted (24 page)

I walked around the front of the car and heard an icy crunch under my rubber-soled suede shoes as Joan took off toward the trees. I followed, sinking deeper into the snow up to my knees. In the clearing ahead, three families with small children were sliding down a hill on a cardboard slab, whooping and laughing with simple pleasure.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Just keep walking,” Joan said, pointing at the footsteps in the snow in front of us. “They did it.”

We walked another hundred yards or so to a place where the air was completely still, silent, and wonderfully peaceful. All I could hear was the breeze whistling through the trees and the occasional soft thud of a pinecone falling to the ground, sounds of serenity I'd never heard before. With all my senses on high alert, I watched a couple of birds soar overheard, bigger birds than I was used to seeing at home. They were also flying lower, so I wondered if they were looking for rabbits or squirrels.

“Are there bald eagles up here?”

“I'm not sure, but they might be hawks or falcons.”

I craned my neck, gazing up at the treetops, which had to be hundreds of feet high, several times taller than the palm trees I was used to seeing. It was probably thirty degrees out, but the sun was shining, and the reflection off the snow was so bright I wished I hadn't left my sunglasses in the car. Although I knew I'd grown up in the snow, nothing felt familiar, even to the touch. Still, I wondered if perhaps my remaining emotional or muscle memory might explain why I felt more of a connection to the snow than I had to any of the sights in nature that I'd seen in Hawaii or Oceanside.

The snow felt cold and wet but softer than the ice cubes we had at home. As I picked up a handful, following Joan's lead to pack it into a ball, she threw hers and hit me in the chest.

“This is what you do, huh?” I said, feeling a rush as I threw one at her, hitting her in the back as she turned to avoid the blow. We both laughed, pushed each other down, and thrashed around like two little kids. I grinned as I imagined doing this many times growing up.

Besides reveling in feeling like an excitable child, I discovered some natural wonders that day that were more amazing than any others I'd witnessed since my accident. It was a most welcome change of scenery.

In early 2010 Grant called one evening, looking for Joan. When I explained that she was at a charity event and Taylor was working at the restaurant, he asked if I was home alone.

“Yes,” I said.

“Motocross is on. You want me to come over and teach you about it?”

I had watched motocross several times, but I wanted him to explain it so I could see his passion and intelligence at work in something we had done together. But as inviting as this sounded, Grant didn't usually ask or offer to come over unless he had an agenda, so I couldn't help but wonder. Still, I hoped that this time his motive would be pure and we could have a quiet visit. I really wanted to feel the love for him and his love for me that we must have shared in years past.

“Yeah, sure,” I said cautiously. “Come on over.”

Once he arrived, we hunkered down in the family room. We turned to Fuel TV, and as he leaned toward me over the arm of the couch, Grant began to narrate what we were watching, starting with the necessary preparations before a race and relating it to what we used to do together.

“You spent most weekends with me driving the RV, grilling out, prepping and fixing the bike, and ‘coaching,'” he said, giving me a playful jab about my habit of telling him what to do. He went on to explain how I'd learned everything we'd needed to know to take care of our own maintenance of the motocross bikes, from changing tires and blown clutches to all the brake pads he'd burned through. Joan had explained that I'd taught myself how to change out a top end on the engine in just thirty minutes rather than have to rely on someone else to do it.

“You always gave me crap about going through so many brake pads,” he said.

“Did you
need
to use the brakes so much?” I joked.

I was really enjoying this. This was the first and only time we'd spent an evening alone, laughing together, since my accident.

This is how Grant must have been before my accident and his drug use. This is the loving, caring Grant, the one who wanted to be part of the family. The Grant Joan has been telling me about.

When the race started, he explained the riders' strategies and the importance of getting a good jump on the others. Very focused, he explained every facet of the race from the rules down to the black-and-white checked flag they waved when the winner crossed the finish line. As he threw around terms such as
throttle speed,
weight distribution,
and
timing,
he sounded like an expert, and for the first time I felt proud of my son for doing something positive.

“How did you learn so much about racing?” I asked.

“We learned it together by asking and watching other riders, and some lessons you paid for—oh, and my natural athletic talents, of course,” he said, grinning.

Hearing this—and the fact that we were able to banter with each other a bit—helped to offset some of the feelings of guilt and doubt I'd had about my parenting history. Joan had told me that the old Grant—a good, sensitive, and smart young man—was still somewhere in this confused and lost spirit, just like the old Scott was buried somewhere in me. The question was how to help Grant bring out the best in himself. I'd only seen glimpses—his mature conversations with Joan's parents and the genuine kindness he exhibited as he helped his grandfather out of a chair or took a bag of groceries from his grandmother's arms. The fact that he usually seemed to do this more for the benefit of those outside his immediate family made me wonder how we could motivate him to treat us the same way.

It was a wonderful evening, reliving some of the good times that I wanted so desperately to share with Grant now. It gave me new hope.

Unfortunately, Grant couldn't stay out of trouble for long. His girlfriend eventually kicked him out, so he came back to us, his tail between his legs. Once again, not knowing what else to do with him, we put him into another treatment program.

Two weeks later he stormed out of a counseling session saying he wanted to get high and kill himself. The staff threatened to call the police.

During a meeting with Joan and his counselor the next morning, Grant asked her to return his cell phone and wallet because he wanted to quit the program. Joan said no, wanting him to stay put.

Grant left the facility on foot, so Joan raced back to our house to safeguard the items. The staff reported his suicide threats to police, and an officer picked him up as he was walking toward his sober-living home. She gave him a ride there, where he called us, asking again for his things, including his unemployment debit card.

Well, I wasn't going to make this easy for him. “I'll use what's left on this card to repay some of the money you owe us,” I said.

“No you won't,” he said. “I have the police here, and they'll come and make you give it to me.”

“Fine,” I said. “Bring them here then.”

Grant showed up at our front door ten minutes later with a police cruiser at the curb. Apparently the officer had agreed to help him collect his things because he didn't seem suicidal. With Joan at my side, I told Grant to go get the police, standing firm in my hard-ass routine, so he brought over a uniformed female officer.

“Grant is here to pick up his debit card, and it's in his name,” she said. “Would you please give it to him?”

“No,” I said. “He's going to go buy drugs with it. He's a heroin addict.”

“Look,” she said, “he's not high now, and we can't do anything but ask you to give him his card back. If you don't, he could file a police report stating that you're withholding his property.”

This made no sense to me, but I felt I had no choice. “Just follow him, because he's going directly to his dealer,” I said. “That way you can bust both of them.”

The officer nodded politely. While Joan calmly told Grant that he should think about what he was doing to himself, I angrily went to my office to retrieve his things, which I reluctantly tossed onto the ground in front of him

“Here's your debit card,” I said, frustrated. “Get the hell out.”

“You need to get help,” Joan said. “Call your counselor. We love you. Call us.”

I wasn't so forgiving. I couldn't believe my own son had brought the police to my house. I'd been following Joan's cues for fifteen months, but after watching
Intervention
and
Celebrity Rehab
religiously for many months now, I could see that being so emotionally and financially supportive was no longer the way to go. So, as far as I was concerned, he had just severed all ties, at least with me.

Chapter 24

T
HE PROBLEM
with having no past was that I had to rely on others to tell me about it, but I also needed a photo of a place or event that they described to make it more real. What helped me even more was to actually stand where I'd stood when an important life event had occurred and walk myself through the motions of the original experience so I could re-create those moments. After getting my SPECT scan diagnosis, I'd buried my hopes for more flashes of childhood memories. But by seeing the places where they had occurred for myself, smelling the air, and visualizing what had taken place, I could imagine the rest. With Joan at my side, I felt that re-creating the most meaningful memories of my past was as close as I was going to come to recovering them.

So far, I'd been to Hawaii, Dallas, Oceanside, Palm Springs, and San Diego, and now it was time to retrace my roots in Chicago. Joan and I had been talking about taking a trip there, to see where our life together had started, but we wanted to wait until the weather was bearable. Once we'd made it through the winter months, we set off for the Windy City on Friday, March 19.

We landed at O'Hare that afternoon, and as we were heading into the city in our rental car, I immediately noticed how different the landscape was from Phoenix. Dismal and dirty, this was a world of gray. Not a single tree was in bloom as we drove west on I-80, parallel to the railroad tracks, where garbage was strewn about and black smoke spewed from factories.

Once we arrived at the Westin Hotel, on the Magnificent Mile, I was struck by how grand everything was. The skyscrapers were so tall I couldn't even see the tops, which disappeared into the white cloudy sky. But I loved the hustle and bustle and wanted to get out into it right away. As we made our way down Michigan Avenue, people scurried around us while we gawked at the upscale window displays in department stores.

I also noticed the contrast in weather, not just from Phoenix, but even from when we'd left the hotel an hour earlier. The long-sleeved shirt I'd worn was fine at sixty-four degrees, but now the temperature had dropped to thirty-nine and the wind had also picked up. Joan had told me about Chicago's strange weather, but now I could feel the goose bumps for myself. I could see why we'd moved to Phoenix.

We went back to the hotel to grab our leather jackets before flagging a cab and heading to meet my cousin Brad for dinner at a steakhouse. I enjoyed Brad's company and laughed at his stories, but since getting to know him again I hadn't been able to shake the need for caution I felt around him.

Over dinner we discussed our plan to visit my old neighborhood in Calumet City. Brad warned us to be careful because things had changed there since I left. By the time I was in college, my parents had moved to another part of town. “I wouldn't go down there unless you're packing a gun,” Brad said. “You don't want to remember it like it is now.”

Brad said he regretted missing our wedding, but my mother and his father had been at odds. He also explained that I was supposed to have been a groomsman at his second wedding, but I couldn't get away from work.

“I wish I would have been there for you too,” I said.

After dinner Joan, Brad, and I visited a couple of different restaurant bars along Rush Street then put Brad on a train to Naperville and headed back to the hotel around 1:00
A.M.

As I lay in bed that night, I wondered what the next few days would bring. I knew I had another day of light fun before getting to what I knew would be the most challenging part of the trip: visiting Taryn's grave in Skyline Memorial Park.

When we woke up on Saturday, an inch or so of white fluffy snow had fallen. The wind was blowing, lowering the thirty-five-degree temperature by at least ten degrees, which helped me understand the true meaning of wind chill. When we began to get pelted by big drops of wet snow, I was prepared. Wearing the black scarf that Taylor had made especially for me, I zipped my jacket all the way up.

While Joan was having lunch with her friend Manny, an NIU cheerleader she'd coached in 1986, I met up at Ditka's Restaurant with Brendan Dolan and Darren Stahulak, who had played on the offensive line with me in college. Although I'd talked to Brendan on the phone several times since my accident, this was my first time meeting him in person. We'd been friends since college, Joan said, and I soon found out why.

As we racked up a sizable bar bill over the next six hours, we chased away more than a few patrons with stories of our college football days. It was good to hear a different perspective on my past, which Joan had been unable to show me, and experience some more of the male bonding I'd heard so much about.

Before we knew it, it was eight o'clock, and I'd had far more to drink in that one sitting than at any other time since my accident. Joan and Manny joined us for another hour of laughs before she and I headed over to Carson's Ribs to put some food in my vodka-filled stomach.

We managed to sleep in until 9:00
A.M.
Sunday, when I woke up with an empty feeling. I knew it was going to be a difficult day for me and even more so for Joan. I was finally going to see the grounds where one of my children now lay, and it really bothered me that I had no memory of placing her there, let alone visiting her on birthdays or holidays. I'd never asked Joan about this, but I imagined that we'd visited her grave every couple of months during the five years before we moved to Phoenix in 1993.

We checked out of our hotel to move closer to the south, had breakfast at a pancake house, and headed to Tinley Park, where Joan and her two brothers had grown up in a modest house. I'd been expecting something bigger, but the squat ranch-style house was only about two thousand square feet, including the basement. Joan said the new owners had left the caramel-brown brick but had repainted the blue wood siding a sage green and also had replaced the garage with a carport. Otherwise, she said, the working-class neighborhood looked just like she remembered.

She showed me the schools she attended, the route she walked each morning, and all her friends' houses. Her eyes were bright with excitement as she recalled playing in the park and described a bit about each neighbor.

As far as I was concerned, my life hadn't begun until I'd met Joan, so my top priority was to see where I'd met, proposed to, and married her. So from there we drove to Zion Lutheran Church, where we'd had our wedding. As we pulled up to park, I recognized the beige brick building from the footage my mom had sent us. We entered through a side door and saw that people were settling into the pews. A service was about to start.

“They haven't changed a thing,” Joan whispered as we made our way up to the front.

Joan guided me to a seat right behind where we'd said our vows. As I listened to the music and the pastor speaking, I pictured us standing there facing the front with the groomsmen to my right and the bridesmaids to her left, then closed my eyes. After watching the video, seeing all the photos, hearing Joan's description, and now sitting in the church, I was able to visualize the two of us looking into each other's eyes and promising, in front of our family and friends, to cherish one another until death do us part. For the first time in my recovery, I was able to connect with an emotion about a past event. With our wedding photos and video in mind, I felt just as I must have at a fresh twenty-one all over again. It was an incredible moment for both of us.

We left the church out the main doors, stopping to take a photo of ourselves where the guests had thrown rice on us as we'd emerged, holding hands, on our way to the limo. Joan and I, still holding hands, looked at each other and smiled with the mutual understanding of what I was experiencing—feelings of gratefulness that she was still standing right next to me twenty-five years later.

Next Joan suggested we find a White Castle to sample one of our favorite shared teenage treats: sliders, greasy minihamburgers, served with pickles, ketchup, and mustard. Apparently I used to eat eight or ten at a time. But now I was sickened after only one bite.

“I can't eat this,” I said, thankful that we'd already arranged to get some pizza and buffalo wings with her niece Julie.

Finally it was time to go to the cemetery, which was surrounded by open fields. Joan and I both have plots there, and Taryn was buried at the foot of them, near a fifty-foot-tall oak tree, about ten feet from a private road. Its branches were bare, but I could tell that in summertime its leaves provided some nice shade for Taryn. Joan's grandparents were also buried in another section of this well-groomed, peaceful resting place.

It was windy and cold, in the upper forties, and the sun was trying to peek through the clouds as we parked the car. I took a deep breath, let out a long sigh, and opened the door.

“There's Taryn,” Joan said, pointing.

We made our way to our child's grave, which was marked with a bronze plaque. A small bronze vase on a chain was turned upside down to keep debris from collecting in it. Wearing jeans and dress shoes, I knelt down on the hard, wet ground, and with my gloved hands I brushed the dirt and dried leaves from the plaque. I'd seen a photo of it in the Taryn scrapbook, but touching the frigid metal surface helped me connect the emotional loss of my daughter to this tangible place.

The plaque read, “Our daughter, So small, so sweet, so soon, Taryn Blake Bolzan, February 27, 1988,” and knowing it hadn't changed in two decades helped me understand what I must have felt being there before. I turned the vase right side up and potted the small bouquet of green and white carnations the grounds­keepers had left there as a memento on St. Patrick's Day.

“Does it feel like it just happened, or does it feel like twenty-one years?” I asked Joan.

“It feels like it just happened,” she said softly, breaking into tears.

I hugged her and held her for twenty minutes, listening to the wind blowing and the birds chirping. Joan showed me where we'd once hung a bird feeder, made by Joan's dad, over Taryn's head, where it drew sparrows and cardinals. She also told me that the groundskeepers had removed the wreath blanket that had been placed over the grave during the winter and would replace it with a new one next winter.

Feeling the chill in our bones, we got into the car, turned on the heater, and sat for twenty more minutes, talking about the memories that my accident had taken from both of us. Because Joan had been under sedation for the C-section, she couldn't remember much of Taryn's christening, her baptism, or the funeral arrangements I'd made and told her about afterward. Because I'd been the sole keeper of those memories, they were now gone forever.

“They were just so precious,” Joan said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and they're gone.”

Although I knew there was little or no possibility these memories would come back, I couldn't help but hope that one day I would remember seeing my daughter in the hospital with my own eyes, holding her lifeless body outside the recovery room, and sharing those painful memories of that tragic day with Joan.

The mood was heavy as we drove for about a half hour to Thornwood High School. Because it was Sunday, the gates to the main part of the school were locked, but to our surprise, the giant indoor track and field, where I'd wrestled, played football, and thrown the shot put and discus, was open. We walked through the halls of my old school and stumbled into an unlocked gym.

At first I didn't want to go inside. “I'm not going in there,” I said.

But Joan thought it would be fun. “Let's just go in,” she said. When I wouldn't budge, she disappeared inside and came out a few minutes later.

“You've got to come in here,” she said, beaming.

“No,” I said, feeling annoyed. “Why are you doing this?”

“You have to see,” she said. “Your name is hanging on the wall!”

Well, that got my interest, so I followed her into the basketball gym and broke into a big grin. There on the wall I saw a long narrow yellow banner with my name spelled out in black block letters along with the names of seven other alumni who had gone on to play professional football and baseball.

“This
is why we go exploring,” she said proudly.

It felt funny to get excited about seeing my name on this banner, but I couldn't help myself. We spent another half hour walking the halls and looking at all the historical sports photos and championship trophies behind the glass cases. We never found the football memorabilia, which must have been in another building.

From there, we drove past my childhood apartment complex in Calumet City and headed to the area where I'd lived in high school and visited during college. From seeing pictures, I recognized the dark brick triplex, which we'd called a three-flat. When we got out of the car, I saw a guy parked in front of us get out of his vehicle with a gun handle sticking out of his back pocket, so we quickly looked around, took some snapshots, and jumped back into the car.

I felt no emotional connection to this place or to its run-down strip malls filled with pizza joints, fast-food fried chicken and fish places, and check-cashing storefronts. People didn't take care of their lawns, and everyone parked their junk cars on the streets, which gave it the feel of a poor, depressed neighborhood. I felt less connected to my childhood haunts than to Joan's in Tinley Park, perhaps because she didn't know enough about my years in this area to tell me any stories. Nevertheless, I didn't feel I was missing anything.

I was happy to leave for my folks' apartment in Orland Park, about twenty-five minutes west on I-80 and four miles from where Joan grew up. My sister Candi welcomed us into my parents' tiny but spotless two-bedroom unit, with its flowered couch and refrigerator plastered with family photos, where we talked for a while before going out for dinner.

Afterward, my mom's close friend Maggie and her husband, Paul, came over for a surprise visit and shared stories about me and their daughters, Lisa and Yvonne, who were close to my age and had been like two more sisters for me.