Scrublands: Part III

That night I dreamed of my father...

Photo by Markus Tacker on Unsplash

Tore and I went to the graveyard, which was located on the edge of the village. The weeds and grasses were uncut in the cemetery. When Tore found his dad’s grave, he leaned over and pulled away handfuls of weeds and overgrown grass. After they had been cleared from the stone, Tore took a couple of pictures of it. The name of his father, his grandfather, and one of his many uncles were carved into the headstone. He didn’t say much. He then pulled away more of the detritus. Then we left. We were walking out of the graveyard when I asked him, “How did your father die?”

“Self-termination.”

“You mean suicide?”

“Yes.”

“How’d he do it?”

“Hanging.”

He lifted his arm above his head, as though it were a rope attached to his neck and configured his face into a what looked like a man cartoonishly hung.

From the graveyard, we drove to his uncle’s house. It wasn’t far. I probably could have seen the house from the graveyard if I had thought to look for it. Tore parked his car on the grass out front. We got out of the car and climbed the short steps onto the veranda. Everything smelled of the sea. Tore took off his shoes and went inside. I stayed outside. I didn’t know how long Tore would visit, but it didn’t matter. I was content. I had no place to be and no one I needed to see. I paced along the veranda and let my eyes roam from the sea to other cabins along the shore. Across from the uncle’s house, an older couple sat at a table in their front yard. They shared coffee and cake and periodically glanced at me, at the man who stood on their neighbors’ veranda. You had the feeling they knew everyone in the village. There was also a barn on the property next door. The door was open. Nailed to the door were a sickle and other farming implements. There were photographs tacked to the door, as well. They looked like they had been clipped from magazines. They were pictures of other seas and other cabins. It suddenly felt strange to realize that I’ve travelled to this village a number of time. It’s a faraway place, this village. But I have walked the nearby fields. I have fished the little creek that flows through the valley. I have sat inside a couple of the cabins. I have listened to stories from people who have generational memories of this place—people who spoke about granddads who had collected enough driftwood to keep their winters warm or who speculated about where some long ago neighbors might have hidden their best tableware from the invading German Army. It occurred to me, as it had at Stein Viggo’s apartment, that I was seeing lives not in a past but as they passed. I am not a ghost, but I sense the shadows are reaching farther into the crevices of the world and into my own life. Tore’s uncle had been a fisherman. He is retired now. Hildur, Stein Viggo’s mother, maintains her cabin here. She had heart surgery a couple of months ago. She appeared unsteady on her feet when I saw her. She mentioned that she will not travel to Spain this winter. She has spent the past six winters in Spain, but not this winter, she told me, not this winter. I was relieved to know that she still maintains her cabin. Tore and I stayed at the cabin a couple of years ago. That was a tale of two different trips. The first trip, so to speak, Tore and I stayed at Hildur’s for a couple of nights. I have great affection for her cabin. I’ve never slept badly there. It houses a fine knife collection, many of them handmade. There are fishing rods and nets hung upon the walls. There are statues of ceramic fishermen, standing, as it were, on the windowsills, beckoning us towards the sea. There is a large woodstove in the living room and a sturdy couch that you don’t mind sitting on after a day of fishing or berry picking. On that trip, trip number one, Tore and I had a fine day of berry picking. We found acres of berries in a valley a couple of miles away from the cabin. That night, after a full day of berry picking, I woke up with my body feeling played out. I stared out of the window from the upstairs bedroom and saw the world captured by another enchantment. The cabins, the nausts, the fishing boats in the harbor were hushed beneath a mist. I half expected to see Gandalf passing on the road. There were reindeer sleeping in the fields. But I had to pee. Rather than break the enchantment, I opened the window and peed outside. The reindeer went on sleeping.

That was trip number one. Trip number two began after we left Hildur’s cabin and drove south for two hours to a lake region. There we met Stein Viggo and his brother, Ruben. They had set up a camp beside one of the lakes. Stein Viggo had brought his boat, and we were there to fish. But the weather was too hot. Everything was too hot. The tent was too hot. The wind was too hot. The lake was too hot, which made for poor fishing. We did manage to catch a couple of trout, but we didn’t eat them the same day we caught them, which was a mistake. To try to keep them, I dug a hole in a bog and buried our cooler with the fish inside, hoping to keep the fish cool, but it didn’t work. We lost the fish, plus the cooler nearly baked into the ground. We were aware, of course, that the trip would become a story, but we were unsure whether the story would be worth the misery of hot tents and poor fishing. In the end, the story is okay, though we would have preferred cooler days and feistier trout. At least there had been Hildur’s cabin and the exquisite day of berry picking. I tend to reflect more about the worse days than the better one, though seldom are the worse days as worse as we imagine them to be. There are exceptions, naturally, but much of what causes our worse days, at least in the field, is trivial. I learned this during my years as a fly fishing guide and living in the outdoors in general. The rain, the cold, they do not think of us. The hot wind and temperatures that feel as if they might shear our skin, they do not think of us. The steep hill did not cause itself to be steep because it calculated that we would one day walk it. Yet I wondered. I wondered about the lengthening of the shadows and what they might have been telling me—what they knew.

Tore came out of the house and put on his shoes.

“Already?” I asked him.

“I just wanted to say hello.”

He struggled to get one of his shoes onto his feet.

“I am spent,” he said.

We returned to the camp and settled into the tent and made another fire. It wasn’t cold enough for a fire, but fires bring comfort.

Tore said, “I think I will go for berries tomorrow. There was enough sun today to ripen some of them, maybe a lot of them.” He shrugged. “I will not know until I check. Maybe I will go to the valley closer to the sea.”

I was getting undressed and would soon be glad to drift off in my sleeping bag.

“What will you do?” Tore asked. “You’re welcome to come look for berries.”

I zipped up my bag.

“I don’t know. I think I’ll wait until morning to decide.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I shifted onto my back, a way I almost never sleep. I felt cocooned by the fire’s warmth and the security of the sleeping bag. I began to dream before I slept.

****

That night I dreamed of my father. Dad died in June. He hadn’t been well since Christmas. No, that’s not the full truth of his health. Dad had not been well for a decade. At Christmas he took a turn. In March, he took another turn. He hardly ate. Then he started falling. In April, I left my son and then wife to be with him. I went to live in Colorado. The time had come to help my mother. Dad was dying. December, March, April, and Dad was dying. I spent the next 14-weeks at my parents’ house, doing whatever I could for them. For much of that time, my sister, Amy, was there. My mother’s sister was there, too. They brought a comfort to my mother that I could not have given to her alone. During all of that time, Dad refused medical care. There were no blood tests, no x-rays. no oxygen mask, no doctor. That’s how he wanted to die. He was given a pill for anxiety. He had a catheter and a collection bag. Closer to the end, he was given oral morphine. He grew weaker. His body shut down. He could no longer swallow. He could no longer speak. I remember being beside my sister when we were both sitting close to Dad. Dad couldn’t sleep in his own bed anymore. Hospice had brought in a medical bed, and we were able to position it in his and mother’s bedroom. Amy held Dad’s hand. She looked at Dad’s hand. Then she looked at me. “I think his hand is getting stiffer.” I took Dad’s hand. I held it. Amy knew. His fingers were stiffening. They were turning grey. His limbs were dying.

Dad died early on a Monday. I woke up that morning an hour or so later than I normally do. Sleep had been thin. It had been thin for weeks. My mother and my aunt had just left the bedroom where Dad lay on his hospital bed. They were making coffee. We had all been at Dad’s side for weeks. I walked back to the bedroom, and the first thing I saw was my sister sitting up and looking at Dad. Amy had slept in our parents’ bed that night. I saw her, and I glanced at Dad. Amy said, “I don’t think Dad is breathing. I haven’t seen his chest move.” I looked at Dad, and I didn’t see his chest move either. I went over to him and felt for his pulse, felt for his heartbeat. They were not there. Dad was not there. I went to tell our mother. I can see her now. I can see her and my aunt. They were in their pajamas and robes. They were talking. They looked tired but well enough. Then I told them.

Sunlight entered the bedroom window that morning, clear and beautiful and filtered through the trees. It was early, and that same sunlight landed on Dad’s shoulders. There are moments when I realize Dad has passed. They come to me. I can’t call him. I can’t ask for his advice. I can’t ask what book he has been reading. I can’t go to a coffeeshop with him or to a used bookstore or to a junk store. I can’t go for a drive with him. I can’t go for a walk with him and ask him why he walked so slowly and let him tell me again that he liked to smell the roses. I can’t listen to another of his stories. His absence appears before me. Soon it leaves or he leaves, and I struggle again with a vacancy and a hurt.

After he passed, his body felt like a plank of stiff rubber. Mom and I washed his body with the nurse. His mouth was set hard. We couldn’t get his eyes to close. As we turned him and washed him, I could see that whatever made my father into Dad was gone. His spirit was gone. This is where dreams about my father have lately started, with him dead, with his body depleted and his breath absent, but my subconscious must need to get beyond these images, because it doesn’t seem long before I see Dad as he was when he was most alive. That night, in my dreams, I saw Dad fishing beside me along the desert creek where we both learned to fly fish. Dad fished without stopping. He flicked the line and fly ahead of him as he walked. He fished pool after pool this way, catching a trout every so often. The dream shifted, and I saw Dad getting ready to drive to a bookstore or a coffee shop or an ice cream parlor. He was ready to go. The dream shifted again, and I saw Dad playing volleyball. He played volleyball with church groups, which typically meant the adults would play against the youth. His contention was that the old people, as he referred to himself and to anyone past the age of thirty, could beat the young people anytime, anywhere. The young people, he argued, had no discipline. The one or two athletes among them would demolish the game for everyone else on their team. They would try to make all the plays, but they would get tired, the athletes, and they would eventually make bad plays, too many to win the game. In the dream, I saw Dad limping away from an outdoor volleyball match. He wore an easy smile on his face. The old people had triumphed.

Two-thirty in the morning, and I got up to go outside. The sky was filled with purple clouds. The wind blew across the lake. I don’t know why I was awake. Dreams about Dad, I guess.

There is no summing up. There is no closure. My father died and I was with him. I will carry that experience to my own death. I will carry, too, the hours and days that I spent with my mother. Perhaps I will carry time with mother more than I will carry time with my father. Every day during those weeks, Mom and I helped Dad. We helped get him out of bed. We washed him. We brought him food and drink. We got him in front of the television set. We brought him books. We found his glasses. Early in those weeks, if Dad wanted to go outside, then we helped him outside and gave him a comfortable chair and talked with him and told stories. Later, we helped him inside again. We gave Dad our attention. We also gave each other attention. Mom and I have been early risers our entire lives. My sister speaks of this. She reminds people how she and Dad never got up early, how they hardly ate breakfast, but Mom and I never missed breakfast. Years ago and any day of the week, Mom and I could be found at the kitchen bar of our Utah home, finishing breakfast, discussing what we were going to do with our day. So it was that Mom and I resumed our former morning routines. We drank coffee. We ate breakfast. We sometimes sat outside and drank more coffee and ate English muffins. We watched sunlight glaze the many flowers she had planted that spring. We talked about how the flowers would require extra watering with all the sunlight and heat. Afterwards, we went into our separate lives. I wrote and sent emails. Mom tidied up the house and did paperwork and made phone calls. When Dad awoke, we continued our care for him. We brought him whatever he wanted and, again, gave him our attention. Around noon, Mom or I would cook lunch. We made big lunches—steaks on the grill, chicken scallopini, salads, porkchops, baked potatoes. We ate around three o’clock, figuring that our dinners would be significantly smaller, and they were. The rest of the afternoon and evening was given to whatever Dad needed, even when he told us that he didn’t want anything. But between six or seven most evenings, depending on the weather, Mom and I went for a walk. We walked the neighborhoods. We decompressed. We talked away Dad’s tendency towards meanness and about our own frustrations. We walked without despair and entered those desert evenings with a gentleness. Evening after evening we did this. When temperatures became too warm, we walked in the morning hours. Our walks were a time to nourish each other, a time to speak about our lives, our disappointments, our joys, our memories, not only of Dad, but of each other and of Amy and other family members. We talked about the places we loved and how Mom loved this place and how she had the Monument and the Mesa and the desert and the cliffs. We talked of life going on. We reminded each other that we had not taken this sort of time together in years. Mom learned to express what touched her in this world. She noticed the sunlight. She noticed how the flowers responded to rain. She gave voice to the joy that her backyard offered her. She gave voice to how gorgeous the evenings became under clouds or the threat of storms. One afternoon, we hung white lights around the outdoor table. She gave voice to how lovely the lights looked and how grateful she felt to live here. She gave voice to her own stories. After years of almost begging my mother to tell her stories about growing up and about her mother and father and her sister and about how they lived and how their lives had changed for better or worse, she started to speak them. She told me how her mother, though not wealthy, not even middle-class, wanted my mother and her sister to look good, to be very well dressed, and how every year before school started, they went shopping together at Addler’s in Beaumont, Texas. They went to Addler’s because Addler’s offered the best line of the best clothes. Her mother worked as a beautician in their home, and she saved her money to buy those girls the best clothes she could. And one year, Mom said, she won Best Dressed of the High School. Mama was so proud of that. She could not have been more proud. Then Mom talked about going to church and how shy she was to walk the aisle and share her conversion with her church family. She talked about picnics and how her daddy always had grease under his fingernails because he worked with heavy equipment. She talked about how every Friday they went to Carnations to eat a hamburger and drink a Coca-Cola. Story after story came from my mother, and I could not have received a better gift in that time of passing. My mother was alive with her stories.

And there was love. It seems obvious to say, I suppose, but there was love, and love had been extended to me. It had been given. At different points in my life and in my past, I have sadly failed to receive love. I have even rejected it. But I did not miss love during this time with my mother and my father. There was more love than I could take in, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t how not to struggle, and I don’t know how to receive grace. How do we love what or who has given us more love than we deserve?

Tore woke up around 6:30 the next morning. He was anxious to get to the berries. I was recovering from the dream about Dad. Maybe not “recovering.” That’s too dramatic a word. Rather, I was putting away the dream about Dad and thoughts about my mother and putting them in a place where I could visit them later. Tore said he would walk to the furthest valley, which was a valley south of our camp and that ended just above the sea. He asked if I wanted to go with him, and I told him no. He asked if I would go fishing, and I told him probably not. I told him that I would stay in camp. He reminded me that there was plenty of food and that we had to eat it before we travelled back home.

“I don’t know how long I will be gone. Depends on how many berries I find.”

“Hopefully today you’ll find more than one.”

“I hope so too.”

He unzipped the tent and stepped outside and turned around and zipped the tent back up again. He went to find berries. I went back to sleep.

****

I’m not sure what time I woke up. The sun glared against the tent walls. It felt hot in the tent. I stood up from my sleeping bag, groggy from the heat and the sunlight, and went outside to stretch and to stare at the lake. The lake looked the same. There were no surprises. No fish rising. The wind blew, and I felt glad for the wind.

I went back into the tent and dressed and grabbed my journal and a couple of pens. On the hill above the tent I found a rock where I could sit. From there, I could see the country that Tore explored. The landscape folded again and again into rocky knolls and patches of scrubby valleys. I saw three lakes from up high. One of them, the farthest to the south, must have been where Tore was headed. The valley between our camp and the lakes ran four or five kilometers to the east and towards town and then another two or three kilometers to the west and towards the village where Tore’s people lived. The dirt road cut through the valley, and I could see where it topped a plateau. There is a vastness to this country. I scribbled and looked up and scribbled and looked up again. There is something beyond this country, beyond the sky and the clouds, beyond the sunlight that reclaims the earth. And there is something that desires us to see beyond these edges, to seek them, and then to see where other worlds begin or end. We cannot say with certainty. Yet they are everywhere in this country, these edges, these beyonds. We can face them with either grief or hope, though rarely is one emotion without the other.

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Damon Falke is the author of, among other works, The Scent of a Thousand Rains, Now at the Uncertain Hour, By Way of Passing, and Koppmoll (film). He lives in northern Norway.

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