By Sunday morning the winds had subsided, but the clouds remained, providing a pewter backdrop for the stark branches of the bare oak trees surrounding the farmhouse. Gerry Fitzsimmons had returned to Long Island to plan his next mission. The Cymanows were back in Manhattan singing an early Mass at a Polish church in the East Village. Jon and Jeff had driven with them, and their sons, Paavo and Shimon, had remained with us as company for Jordan. We packed up some of Chris’s belongings, those we wanted to save: a favorite sweatshirt, his photo album, the beeswax candles that he lit each night for reciting the Prayer of Saint Francis, which seemed to soothe him. Three weeks after his death, Chris taught me its importance in his life. It’s a prayer of transformation.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is injury, pardon.
O Divine Master, grant that I
May not so much seek
To be understood, as to understand;
To be comforted, as to comfort;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
In pardoning that we are pardoned,
And in dying that we are born to eternal life.
We left behind Chris’s clothes, to be used by those who needed them. His down jacket went to Daniel, who would wear it for five years, until it fell apart. And we left Chris’s tapes and records, including the single of “Three Times a Lady,” which his roommate had grown to like, and the tape of “Free to Be You and Me,” a children’s recording made by Marlo Thomas that he had requested as the only present for his 22nd birthday. Years later, Christina and I dissolved into tears as we listened to the words of the title song.
There’s a land that I see
Where the children are free.
And I say it ain’t far
To this land from where we are.
Take my hand, come with me
Where the children are free.
Come with me—take my hand
And we’ll live . . .
In a land
Where the river runs free,
In a land
Through the green country,
In a land
To a shining sea,
And you and me
Are free to be
You and me.
“Chris loved songs like this,” Christina whispered. “I can’t find words to describe what it must have meant to him. He took it literally. He was always so hopeful. In the face of anything, no matter how terrible, he was always optimistic. He must have thought there really was a place like this, just within reach. He could be there and so could everyone he knew. He so loved to be with other people.”
Luke presented us with a pastel drawing called The Yellow Balloon, which he had made Saturday night after the funeral. In its center rose a volcano, forming an island in the midst of a turbulent sea. White breakers crashed on its shores. Black sharks encircled it. Above it rose a yellow balloon sparkling in the sunlight. A poem went with it, celebrating the balloon’s freedom. As we drove away after saying our good-byes, Luke stood by the end of the driveway, watching the car until it was out of sight.
We tried to cheer ourselves by singing. Driving south down the narrow and winding Taconic State Parkway, we sang every song we could remember, with the enthusiastic participation of Shimon and Paavo, until we could sing no more. We entered the northern tip of Manhattan on the Henry Hudson Parkway, took the exit by the 79th Street Boat Basin, and proceeded downtown on Broadway. As we approached Columbus Circle, the traffic became heavy, and I began to regret having chosen that route downtown.
When we stopped for a red light by the New York Coliseum, I gasped in disbelief. Descending toward the car, then hovering in the air at a height of about 10 feet, clearly visible through the windshield, was a yellow balloon.
All five of us saw it. “Look at that!” I exclaimed, needlessly. “There’s a yellow balloon!”
“That’s mine,” piped up Jordan’s sweet voice from the back seat. “I know it’s mine because I put a mark on it before I let it go!”
My first thought was, What a coincidence! A child must have lost it in the park. But I quickly noticed that the yellow ribbon attached to the balloon was only about 12 inches long and had an irregular edge, as if it had been cut with a dull knife. The balloon was obviously spent, about a day old, its skin a bit soft from the loss of helium, not taut and shiny the way a new balloon would look. It bobbed in the air instead of rising up like a freshly minted balloon. By all appearances, this balloon had come from somewhere else to settle at the edge of Columbus Circle.
Christina burst out laughing, “Christopher, you are a wonder!”
The light turned green and the traffic urged us forward. We were in the middle lane; the balloon was clearly out of reach and was drifting away. There was no place to stop. I wanted to retrieve it, but I knew I couldn’t. I would have to let it go.
The balloon itself didn’t seem to matter anyway. The encounter was what mattered. It felt as if Christopher were there telling me, “I know you, Leo. You question everything. I gave you a glimpse of my Spirit so you would know that I’m not gone, that we are immortal and survive our bodies. But I knew that wouldn’t be enough for you. You’d question the vision, doubt your memory, attribute what you saw to the emotional intensity of the moment. So I’m giving you this, an objective sign that I am still with you, evidence that’s hard to dispute. Notice how carefully I planned the site: Columbus Circle, named after another Christopher, Cristoforo Colombo. Do you remember how you used to call me ‘Cristoforo’ and I would laugh with delight at the strange sound it gave my name?”
Driving down Broadway to our apartment on 19th Street, Christina and I were elated. To Jordan, Shimon, and Paavo, it all seemed rather routine. Of course the balloon had followed us from Great Barrington to New York City. Of course Chris had sent it. What could be more natural?
For me, the event was so wonderful it was frightening. I obsessed about the explanation. I checked the wind speed and direction for that day and the day before. I tried to calculate how high a helium-filled balloon would rise before falling, how the rate of its descent would be affected by elevation and air pressure, and how those would interact with the rate at which helium seeped from the balloon. I concluded that I could come up with a naturalistic explanation: yes, it could happen that one of 21 helium-filled balloons released at 2 P.M. on a windy day in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, might alight 24 hours later in New York City, 150 miles away. That was possible, but what were the odds that it would arrive in the exact spot we were passing at the exact moment we passed through? The odds against that were astronomical.
I sought an alternative explanation. This was a detective story. Maybe the balloon didn’t come from Great Barrington. Someone living in an apartment near Columbus Circle could have lost a day-old helium balloon through an open window . . . on a cold day in early November . . . and it just happened to be attached to a short, frayed yellow ribbon . . . and it just happened to hover over our car as we returned from a funeral at which we had released identical balloons.
I decided that accepting Jordan’s explanation did not require a childlike leap of faith after all. In fact, his theory was simpler and made more sense than any other. In a court of law, it might well have prevailed. This was one of the balloons we had released, and its appearance at Columbus Circle was no coincidence.