FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 1999
Keith, Graeme and I are leaning over a topographical map on my kitchen counter in Whistler, going over details of Jim’s accident when I blurt out, my fists clenched at my sides, “I want to go to where Jim fell.”
Almost before the last word is out of my mouth, Keith says, “I’ll go with you.”
Graeme shakes his head slowly and lowers his gaze, opens his mouth to say something and then closes it again. Open and then close. “I’d like to go but I’m just too busy and I can’t afford it,” he says softly.
When I tell Jim’s brother Kevin, he responds, “Yeah, yeah, Sue. I can see why you want to go. I mean, some people are saying that you’re crazy, you know, that you’re chasing ghosts, but I support you.” We hug, but my body braces against the disapproval, and my heart trembles at the thought of more loss.
When my friend Susan offers to go to Alaska with me, she confides what another friend told her: “What? Sue wants to climb the chute where Jim died? If she dies, I’m not going to her funeral.” One short laugh escapes me, and an electric current carries fear through my body. I whisper to everyone I love, “Please don’t leave me. I need you to stay with me.”
I have to go to Alaska, for me. To honour the place where Jim died, to absorb any remnants of his final living moments – to make sure that he is not still alive.
The risk of going pales in comparison with the risk of staying. And I know the risk of going because Jim and I ski-mountaineered in this same area of Alaska last April, one year ago.
I will return to Alaska for our second wedding anniversary, June 30, almost two months to the day after Jim was killed. I scan my list of things to do: book plane ticket, organize food, pack. Days pass. I cannot focus long enough to complete the tasks. Finally, I call Susan and explain my inertia, and she arranges the plane tickets and contacts Paul at the lodge.
Before I leave I meet Mom Haberl for tea at her townhouse in Vancouver. She greets me with the usual open arms, laughing eyes and singsong, “Hello, come in!” We sit on the floral couch, and she works a handkerchief between her hands as she speaks. “I guess I don’t need to go to the mountain. I know my tears are for myself. I know that Jim is fine. I just wonder why God didn’t take me instead. I’ve had a full life and I would have been happy to take his place. You know?” She looks at me hopefully through watery eyes. I rub her back and hold her hand, but my throat will not let any words out. I want to bring Jim back so that everyone will be happy again.
I still feel unnaturally responsible.
Mom Haberl and I hug at the door and hold on for a bit longer. She grips my forearms, looks me in the eyes, laughing, and then as if scolding a child in the most loving way, pokes at my chest. She prods a few times and makes a few false starts before the words come, laced with tears. “Now, you yell at that mountain for me, okay?” She laughs. I kiss her wet face. She stands in the doorway waving while I drive away.
The next day, Keith, Susan and I fly to Anchorage, rent a car and drive to Chitina. Paul arrives to pick us up in his six-seat bush plane. He hugs me so that the down of my jacket compresses flat against my body. “Good to see you, Sue.”
When we land at the lodge, Paul’s family greets us.
His wife juts out her hip to support the weight of her toddler and leans toward me, “How are Jim’s parents doing?” And before I can reply, she adds, “I can’t imagine anything worse than losing your own child, your own flesh and blood, you know?” I don’t. I have no children and can’t imagine a more heartbreaking grief than what I am experiencing.
At Jim’s memorial, a friend warned me, “People will say insensitive things, and they don’t mean it.” People try to say the right thing. They do not try to hurt my feelings. Grief teaches me to take life less personally because, for the most part, shit happens and everyone does his or her best.
Grandma Eleanor, Paul’s mom, encircles me with her arms, “We’ve been praying for you, and for Jim.” I cannot hold on any longer and the dam breaks.
After lunch, we stack our camping and ski gear on the gravel runway beside Paul’s favourite aircraft, the Super Cub, in preparation to fly to where Jim was killed, on Mount Ultima Thule. The propeller is still, but I keep a few paces back. I remember the cramped seating and the toy-like appearance of the small plane. My underarms grow damp as I recall Paul’s anxious words, “C’mon, baby, lift!”
Paul flies a lighter load first with Keith to make sure the snow is hard and smooth enough for a landing. When Paul returns, Keith’s seat is empty. But the landing is too soft for a heavier load, and Keith will look for a site with harder snow where Paul will land with Susan and me.
Seated on the floor of the plane, Susan and I wedge one inside the other, legs spread in front of us, directly behind Paul. As we approach the head of the glacier, Keith waves his arms to signal that he cannot find a safe landing.
Plan B. We get ready to drop an oblong, red plastic children’s sled out the window so Keith can move our gear farther down the glacier to harder ice. Paul will fly Susan and me back to the lodge to get the bigger plane with wheels. The wind shoves and grabs as all three of us force open the window and wrestle the sled into launch position. Paul turns and counts loudly to overpower the rush of air: one, two, three! We push down on the sled and let it go. Paul cranes his neck to see behind him.
“Shit. We’ll be all right. Hang on.”
I twist my shoulders and catch sight of the red plastic sled molded around the tail rudder of the plane. “We’ll be okay.” I echo Paul’s words. I am not scared. I am more concerned about getting to the cliff where Jim fell.
Susan braces one hand on the roof and the other on the floor. With no rudder for control, Paul throttles on and off until the plane lurches closer to the ground. The landing skis on the bottom of the plane bump hard and my chin hits the seat in front of me. The plane bounces up and down several times on the soft snow before skidding to a stop. When we scramble down to the glacier, Paul kisses us and chuckles, “I guess it wasn’t our time.”
Keith skis up, eyebrows raised. “That was a bit bumpy.”
Paul checks the plane for damage, wishes us luck and takes off.
By the time Susan and I click into our bindings, Keith, in efficient guide style, has lashed our gear to the sled, and we ski down the glacier. Minutes later, Keith stops at a circular indent in the snow and prods at a square piece of plywood the size of a placemat with his ski pole. “This was our camp,” he mumbles.
I lock my gaze onto the snow and stifle my childlike enthusiasm. Their camp is still here. Still here. Maybe Jim is still here. Maybe. And then I see ski tracks beside me, warped from the sun. I hold my breath and place my skis in them and push off with my poles. I picture Jim shuffling along in front of me. He skied in these tracks.
Gravity pulls my skis down the slope. I lean forward against the wind pushing me back uphill. Push, pull. The spring sun has drawn a film of water to the surface of the glacier, in some places forming puddles. My skis hydroplane in short bursts sending my arms flailing like a scarecrow to regain balance.
“Yahoo!” I turn to Susan glissading beside me.
“Yahoo!” she returns.
Slushy snow splashes onto our plastic boots; rooster tails spray as we careen through the deeper puddles. We fly.
My heart sings to be in the mountains, to feel Jim.
Meanwhile, the facts squat in my mind. I push my ankles out into a snowplow. My airway squeezes down until I wheeze and the back of my throat aches. Keith’s jacket brushes against my arm.
“This is it,” he says.
Keith leads me to a rock and sits me down. I look up as he draws a line in the air to the steep chute he, Greame and Jim climbed, to the protrusion where he and Graeme were waiting when the slab cut loose, to the crown line marking the weakness that triggered the avalanche, to the rocky cliff where Jim fell, to the snow where Jim was buried.
Keith’s gaze fixes on the spot, and he says, “I’ll be back in a second.” He trudges closer to the cliff and picks up an ice axe and a red glove. Jim’s. Two months later and the mountain spits out evidence of the accident. I cannot deny it.
As I peer up at the cliff, trying to piece it all together, to make sense of it all, a rock falls. Then snow sloughs off. The mountain sheds continually. That’s just the way it is. There was no grand scheme to kill Jim. Even though Jim was so kind and good and wise in the mountains, he was still fallible. My love could not save him.
With my bare finger, I carve “I love U” in the snow where Jim was buried by the avalanche. From the top lid of my pack, I extract a limp bouquet of four roses, one sunflower and mauve wildflowers. “We love you, Jim.” I don’t know what else to say. It is as if I have terrible stage fright. I am in the wrong play and do not know my lines.
Back at the lodge, we eat dinner with some guests who chat excitedly about their coming adventure. They ask me why I am here. In a steady voice, I tell them that my husband was killed and that I came to say goodbye. Heads lower, condolences are murmured and a cloak of silence descends on the group. It is my first experience of feeling a sort of shame, isolation. I do not fit in. I am a reminder of mortality, and my sadness and grief make people feel unhappy and uncomfortable.
Grandpa John, Paul’s father, flies us back to Chitina, to our rental car. As he hugs me he drawls, “Now you all have a very deep wound, and it will take some time to heal.”
When Grandpa has gone, Keith says, “You know when I tried to settle up our bill with Paul, he wouldn’t let me pay. They aren’t going to charge us.” I want to feel grateful for such a generous gesture, but my heart is numb.
En route to the airport, Keith, Susan and I drive to the funeral home near Anchorage where Jim’s body was prepared for the flight home. They still have his mountaineering boots, clothes and sleeping bag. I explain to the young blonde woman at the desk that I am Jim Haberl’s wife, and she hurries off. When she returns, she places Jim’s black plastic mountaineering boots and his yellow and black, one-piece GORE-TEX climbing suit on the counter. Like a robot, I jerk forward to take the boots. I finger the suit and feel a long tear in the material. I cringe and will my mind not to imagine. I gather the remnants and go outside. Susan’s arm is around me. I tell her I need to walk. My throat closes; I bend over, my hands on my knees, gasping.
As we drive away, I wonder whether they have given me everything that belonged to Jim. I need everything because I feel like I have lost everything. Several times I open my mouth to speak before the words come out. “Keith, can you turn around please? I want to go back. I think they have more of Jim’s stuff.”
I go in again and ask the woman for Jim’s red wind stopper, his sleeping bag and long johns. His sleeping bag and underclothes had too much blood on them so they’d been destroyed. She thinks for a moment about the wind stopper and then goes into the back. She returns with Jim’s favourite fleece. It is covered in dog hair and ripped at the elbow. She hands it to me and the softness of her gaze makes me feel as if she hugs me. I hold the fleece close to my chest and walk back to the car, breathing steadily.
I have gathered some of the pieces of my shattered life and think of the next place I will search, the place where Jim and I met: the Queen Charlotte Islands.