Personal Essay

Grieving the loss of a child is a journey through wastelands you never expected to cross. Unlike every other challenge you’ve ever faced, there is no easy way through a loss like this. You stumble and fall. You curse. You are hobbled and bloody. You are not sure of the way. You might be going in circles.

The truth is everyone suffers in this life. It’s our lot to take the awful with the beautiful. We all must face it. In a perfect world, your mom wouldn’t forget you in the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease. You wouldn’t lose a dear friend to cancer in the prime of her life. Your son wouldn’t die in a motorcycle accident before his twenty-first birthday.

In the months before we lost Connor, we crossed a high wire of reinvention. We retired from our careers. We sold our long-time family home and said goodbye to a lifetime of friends on Vashon Island. We bought a winter home in Arizona with the half-sane plan of living a life split between the summer sea and the winter desert. For half the year, home was where we’d drop the anchor.

Reinvention might come easier for some. I felt like a reluctant hermit crab who knows he must shift to a new shell to survive but dreads the transfer. The plans were years in the making. And just at that vulnerable juncture between one shell and the other, that final letting go of the safety and security of the familiar for the heady promise of a new life, a tsunami upends everything, stranding this naked, scared crab, its tiny claws raised as if to fight the wind and water and waves.

And yet, life continues. We settled into the new house in Arizona. Little bursts of joy came from unexpected sources: the convenience of curbside trash and recycling, reliable high-speed internet, and kind, welcoming neighbors. I unpacked the sixty boxes of books that make up my library, caressing each volume, inhaling its scent, remembering its message as I slowly rebuilt my sanctuary, my illusive shell.

Reading has always been a solace. I read a lot of history and philosophy these past months: the marvels of early Egypt and the brutality of Ancient Rome in Will Durant’s grand opus, The Story of Civilization; the millions of years of Earth’s geology poetically taught in Basin and Range by John McPhee; and the insignificance of our human existence in a careening, infinite universe in Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman. Taking a dispassionate view can ease the sting of personal loss.

We sold MV Indiscretion this spring, saying goodbye to trawler life and our ties to the Pacific Northwest. I have let go of so many layers of my identity — business professional, islander, sailor, son to my parents, and now father to my son — that it felt right to reach back to utter beginnings, where I might remake myself, like Gandalf after his plunge from the Bridge of Moria.

We bought a small off-road capable RV in April and have taken a few trips to explore the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. In June, we crossed into Mexico to camp on the shores of the Sea of Cortez. These months in the desert were the longest I’ve strayed from the ocean in my entire life. I missed the smell of the sea and the feel of dried salt on my skin. We waded in the warm surf, feeling once again that indescribable joy of shifting sand under our heels and between our toes while flocks of pelicans dove for their dinner a few yards from us.

I sat beside tide pools nestled within the rocky outcrops that lay between long stretches of sand: hermit crabs battling to defend their territories, starfish, sea stars, sea slugs, mussels, sea urchins, and tiny brine shrimp, all pursuing the minutiae of their daily lives. Looking up into the cosmos and down into a tide pool, I noted the parallels: we are all one.

A strong south wind picked up one night, and gusts gently rocked the RV on its suspension. I emerged from a heavy sleep to check the anchor, trying to remember how far we were from the rocks on shore. I drifted back to sleep, still dreaming we were afloat. I know the sea beckons on the far side of this wilderness.

After a long period of intentional isolation, I have begun the process of reconnecting with old friends and making new friends here in Arizona. This has been difficult for me. They ask me how I’m doing. Am I OK? I don’t have an answer. “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step,” said Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Every day, I take a step.

I’m writing this tonight from a small campground in southern Colorado. We’ve been traveling for a few weeks, taking the backroads, stopping often, seeing where the open road takes us. We have no plan, no definite time to return. It feels good to roam.

Driving through western New Mexico, I felt a lightness I didn’t expect. The beauty of the colorful mesas and buttes rising around us filled me with awe. We hiked to La Ventana Natural Arch to find ourselves in an ancient, sacred place — a place of prayer and hope and resilience. It left me wanting to see more, to do more. For the first time in many months, my mind tilted forward, a blessed release from so much focus on the past.

Every day brings a little more joy and a little less sadness. On good days, I see a brightening just over the horizon. A clearing? Yet there are still those days when I sink deep into sorrow and recognize the false dawn. There is no way around this, only forward, across this barren terrain. One step. Then another. When I dare look around, I see so many others walking beside me. Grief is the price we all pay for love. Won’t you take my hand? It won’t be long now. If death has taught me anything, it’s that nothing persists, not even grief.

If the first half of life is about growing and accumulating, then the second half must see us disbursing, letting go. Life is full of cycles — like the seasons, or perhaps more dear to me, the flooding and ebbing of tides.

In the past few years, I’ve let go of my aging parents, my career and a lifetime of associates and colleagues, a dear friend, and this past year I watched my two kids leave home to start their own lives of growth and accumulation.

At its best, letting go brings an emotional release, a lightness, a feeling of immense relief, like putting down a heavy weight you’ve been carrying around for too long. At its worst, it brings a paralyzing sense of irretrievable loss. I’ve been thinking about these two very different outcomes as we navigate our next phase of letting go.

I’m told your house never looks as good as the day you sell, and after twenty-three years here on Vashon Island, we’re close to reaching that particular zenith. White paint has stained my fingers and forearm, and a big smear tattoos my right cheek. The list of projects has dwindled over the past weeks, and we’re down to just a few beauty marks.

After each section of trim I painted today, I found myself looking out at the water on this sunny Spring day. You’d think after all these years I’d take this view of Puget Sound for granted, but I don’t. For a spell, I watched a container ship make its way southbound to offload in Tacoma, its wake stretching out for miles in the flat water.

On clear days you can see Whidbey Island from our front porch. Such a wide, unencumbered expanse of water provides a theatrical experience for watching weather systems roll through, especially the northern gales in deep winter. Dark gray squalls march across the water, relentless in their intensity, unstoppable in their progress. Bald eagles float just fifty yards off the porch, contorting their wings in tiny increments to remain utterly still as they study the whipped up sea for a meal. The Firs and the big Japanese Maple tree groan and shudder in the gusts. The biting sting of the wind on your cheek makes you appreciate the warmth inside the house as you take all this in.

They say it takes a special kind of person to live on an island like Vashon. Betty MacDonald wrote her memoir Onions in the Stew while living here in the 1940s. Most of her humorous observations about the eccentricities and shortcomings of island life still ring true.

Anyone contemplating island dwelling must be physically strong and it is an added advantage if you aren’t too bright.

Vashon is nestled in southern Puget Sound halfway between Seattle and Tacoma. The island population of roughly ten thousand hasn’t budged much in thirty years. There are no bridges that connect us to the mainland. Ferries on the north and sound ends of the island are the gateways to visit or leave.

Unlike more tourist-minded destinations, Vashon grooves with its own unique personality. Some say that driving off the ferry boat and winding your way through its rural roads is like going back in time. “Keep Vashon Weird” bumper stickers adorn VW buses and BMWs alike. Eco-friendly farmers, artists, hippies, celebrities, weekenders, old families, newcomers, commuters, eccentrics, musicians, professionals … a hodgepodge brought together by a love of saltwater, an unconventional lifestyle, and geographic seclusion.

I’ve lived here far longer than any other place. I’ve put down deep roots. In 35 years of life before Vashon, I moved some twenty times, from one house or apartment to the next, every year or two, which at the time seemed perfectly normal. Growing up, my parents had this ache in them to roam. We moved every year in my four years of high school. I was a shy kid. By the time I made any friends, we were packing up for the next town.

Lisa, my partner these many years, also led a wandering life as a child. Instead of traipsing through small Washington coastal towns, she lived abroad, calling places like Singapore, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand her home. Her father worked in construction, and when the job ended, they moved on. Again and again.

From the early days of our relationship, we kindled a dream of running off together. A ranch in Montana, a seaside villa in Mexico, a flat in Madrid. Six months into our courtship, we spent three weeks touring Greece and decided, after perhaps a bit too much Ouzo, to get married there and then on the island of Skiathos. Neither of us had met the other’s parents, and our stunned friends were sure the marriage would not last out the year. But when you know, you know.

When our daughter was born, we vowed to give her something we never had: a consistent, unchanging childhood home. We moved to Vashon just shy of her first birthday, and she and her younger brother grew up in the same house, in the same little town, with the same friends from pre-school tots to angsty high school seniors. When the time for college rolled around, both were desperate to get away from a place so small and remote. Yet, later in life, I wonder if the deep-rooted memories of sandy beaches, quiet forests, and a one-block town without traffic lights become a subconscious yardstick for the ideal life?

The house, built in 1917, turned one hundred during our time here. At one point or another, we’ve remodeled just about every inch of her, but we always stayed true to her spirit. She’s an old soul, sitting atop this hill looking out over the water. I realize we’ve just been her caretakers for a time.

I left the island every morning by ferry for twenty years and suffered through my fair share of business travel. Returning home, breathing seemed easier, the sea air and open vista perhaps working together to inflate my lungs more completely than anywhere else. The sound of the gentle surf through the open skylight lulled me quickly to sleep when I fell into my own bed at last. This island home has always been my sanctuary.

Every so often, a grandchild of the former owners stops by to see the house. Fully grown now, they look around, starstruck. “I spent every summer here when I was little,” a lady in her mid-twenties tells me, close to tears. They will have brought their partner along as witness to a living piece of their childhood.

I learned to sail on Vashon, and the connection between boating and island life is inexorably linked. I’ve sailed along her forty-five miles of coastline countless times, and my family knows to spread my ashes in Quartermaster Harbor should the sudden need arise. For years, we kept a mooring buoy in the deep water in front the house. It became a summer tradition to sail the boat around from the marina for crabbing and sailing and floating picnics.

On clear nights, I would sometimes sneak down the long flight of beach stairs to sail alone under the stars. Lying back in the cockpit, steering with my leg over the tiller, trimming the sails in the darkness by the feel of wind on my cheek. Sailing at night feels so magical: the lift and fall of the gentle swell, the hiss of the waves against the hull, the green glow of phosphor trailing astern, and that dizzying feeling of falling and merging into the galaxy of stars splayed above you. I’ve never felt so utterly connected to the cosmos as on small boat under the stars on a summer night.

Selling the house and moving off island has been our plan for years, so why do I feel so pensive as our time here draws near? My glances around the house and the water are slower, more considered, like Ahab gazing at the sea before his final showdown with the white whale. I strain to hear the tolling of an iron bell, for it’s possible the end of this chapter of island life is followed by mere epilogue. A little voice inside me tells me to stop, to reconsider. The house looks so good; why not stay, the voice implores. I am sorely tempted.

But no. What haunts us late in life are the things we didn’t do. In letting go our island home and life, we step into a new life of two distinct halves: from May through October we’ll live and cruise aboard Indiscretion, our expedition trawler, with Shilshole Marina as our new home port. Near enough to see our friends on Vashon and the perfect launching off spot for exploring the Salish Sea during the best weather the Northwest offers. In October, we’ll drive south to our new home in a 55+ community 40 minutes west of Phoenix, AZ called Victory at Verrado. Six months of warm winter weather, desert hikes, Seattle Mariners spring training, and poorly played golf is just enough time to begin pining for the greens and blues of the beautiful Northwest. We’ll lock up the house in early May and make our way back to Indiscretion for another season.

Lately, I’ve been having this recurring dream of riding in a hot air balloon. The gondola is staked to the beach in front of our house with anchors that seem much too small for such a large craft. An offshore wind buffets the big balloon and I know those anchors can’t hold much longer. The two of us pile in the gondola, which, once aboard, looks weirdly like the pilothouse of a trawler. We release the mooring lines and float up and up into the sky. We clear the tree line and watch our house and the island grow small, insignificant. We keep rising, our view expanding in all directions. I point out the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast. We float over Desolation Sound, Princess Louisa Inlet, the Broughton Archipelago, and the wide expanse of Queen Charlotte Sound. Ahead, just over the curved horizon lies Alaska. The dream always ends when we toss out the sandbags of ballast at our feet. Maybe we simply fly upwards into the stars. Or, perhaps we set down in Greece to renew our marriage vows, but this time, we stay the whole summer, traveling light.