If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Read online

  At the top of the pass falling and blowing snow brought us to a complete stop. We couldn’t see the road. I hoped we wouldn’t have to turn back—what would we do then? But the headlights caught the reflective tape on the tops of the eight-foot-tall snow-plow guide poles, spaced about every fifty feet on either side of the road. Chip shifted into a lower gear and we skidded from pole to pole, hoping the road was still underneath us somewhere.

  We navigated like that for two and a half hours, without seeing another vehicle, in the thick snowy silence, on high alert, moving full speed ahead, or at least as fast as we possibly could in the storm. Having a sick child helps make warriors out of ordinary parents. When we got near Haines Junction, the skies cleared and a full moon rose over Dezadeash Lake and the broad white hills of the Yukon. It was beautiful. I put in a CD and Muddy Waters sang the blues. That’s when Chip, who was driving, exhaled and said, “This is surreal.”

  The bumps on the last leg, an old roller coaster of a road through the empty countryside, hurt Christian. I helped him breathe through the pain the way I had been taught in childbirth class. Five and a half hours after we’d left home we walked into the sixty-bed Whitehorse General Hospital.

  No one asked us for any ID or if we had insurance. They didn’t even know our names until the nurse examining Christian in the emergency room asked us. She said Dr. Feldman had been right, and she called a surgeon (there are two). A nurse with a German accent said, “I’ve come to take your blood,” just like Dracula. We smiled. Christian winced. It hurt to laugh. We helped him into a hospital gown and didn’t look when they stuck the needle in for his IV. When the doctor arrived and learned we were Americans, he had us sign a paper saying we wouldn’t sue him. Then we trotted alongside the gurney with coats flapping, still in our boots, and kissed Christian before he went through the swinging doors and was gone. That’s when I walked around the corner, where Chip couldn’t see me, and cried. For just a minute.

  An hour later Christian was wheeled by on the way to a recovery room. The doctor said he was fine. He had removed the inflamed appendix just in time. Three days later, we were headed back south in snowy sunshine, veterans of a successful campaign with only good stories to tell. Christian gets carsick, so we had all the windows down and our hats on. The windchill must have been minus thirty. I said we’d all get frostbite, and we all laughed. I wondered out loud if it was crazy—or just plain irresponsible—to raise a family so far from a hospital. Chip didn’t think so. He said, “This proves we can get anywhere—when we need to.”

  ON A COLD, windy afternoon, not long after the appendix adventure, my youngest daughter, J.J., and I took a walk on the beach. The calendar said April, but it felt more like February. After pulling hats over our ears, zipping jackets, and tugging on rubber boots, we opted to walk into the wind first, so the way home would be warmer. Living in the northern end of the Lynn Canal makes you appreciate what a blessing the old Irish prayer “May the wind be always at your back” really is.

  We held hands and leaned into the southerly gale, occasionally throwing driftwood sticks for her little terrier, Phoebe, and my big Lab, Carl. The wind carried them so swiftly, and so far off course, that by the time Carl got halfway down the beach, he’d turn back, confused, forgetting what he was chasing.

  J.J. took this rare one-on-one time as an opportunity to tell me about her third-grade writing project. “It’s a story about a girl with a perfect life, who lives in a perfect house. Until she gets kidnapped by aliens,” she said. I think every mother wants her child to have a perfect life. I don’t know if other parents worry as much as I do that it may end prematurely. I can’t help it.

  In the cold, bright light of day with my little daughter’s hand in mine, I tried to forget about what might happen if sick children don’t get to hospitals on time. I didn’t want to wonder why I had a healthy baby in a blizzard and Christy’s friend drowned on a routine boat ride. I didn’t want to think about what happens if a baby coming out feetfirst gets stuck or why old men dying from cancer just want to hear one more song before they go. Instead, on that blustery spring day I concentrated on something happy and very much alive—J.J.

  As we climbed over slimy boulders, I asked about the details of the story she was writing. “You said your main character has the perfect life, in a perfect house. How is it like ours and how’s it different?”

  “Well, her life is pretty much like mine,” J.J. said. “And she has a house a lot like ours.” I felt better already. “Only nicer.”

  Only nicer?

  I looked back down the beach at our home tucked into the spruce trees. I think it’s a perfect house, in the nicest town, in the prettiest place on earth. But J.J. said she wants a house more like the one farther down the road, the grandest private residence in Haines. She had good taste, anyway. “What do you like most about it?” I asked, curious which fancy details caught her young eyes.

  “The bowls with Jolly Ranchers in them,” she said. “I think we should have little dishes of candy everywhere at our house, too.” I remind her that we do, at Christmastime. Then J.J. asked if Santa Claus is real.

  Is life good? Will summer ever warm this beach? Should we believe in magic? “Sure, Santa Claus is real,” I said, “and the best stories have happy endings.”

  DULY NOTED

  During a city council discussion on the new zoning plan last week, councillor Norm Smith asked, “What about the cemetery, is that going to be zoned as park, or a greenbelt, or as commercial area or what?” Mayor Don Otis replied, “Norm, we are going to call that multifamily residential.”

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  “It is great to be back,” said Kate Rineer. Kate and Stan Boor have returned to their Highland Estate’s home after a winter working in Salt Lake City. “The city is such a rat race,” Kate said. “I know Haines has its little problems, but it’s really such a nice place.”

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  Warm weather has melted the snow and ice so rapidly that the Chilkat River has swelled to just a foot below flood stage. Tall cottonwood trees have toppled over the bank at 14 Mile, and River Adventures guide Ken Gross said moose calves are drowning in the swift current. Fisherman Gregg Bigsby reported that the mud from the rivers has colored Lynn Canal brown all the way to Sherman Point. “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said.

  _____________

  Lisa Schwartz said she and Gordon Whitermore are canceling their subscription to Shack Life magazine. The couple moved into their new home at 18 Mile after living in a less substantial dwelling for a period of time she refuses to disclose. It took four years for them to complete the new house. Lisa said their new digs are fine. “This is a real home; my heart goes out to all those women who have lived in a shack.”

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  Nedra’s Casket

  LAST YEAR SEVEN people were buried out at the Jones Point Cemetery, near the Chilkat River on the edge of town, behind the softball park and the Eagles Nest Trailer Court. That’s not enough deaths to support a funeral parlor, and Haines isn’t close enough to anywhere with one to move bodies back and forth affordably. Families have to charter a small plane to Juneau if they want cremation or embalming services. There are lots of stories about both bodies and ashes getting lost on flights back from Juneau or even Anchorage, where the state sometimes requires them to be shipped for autopsies.

  This winter one urn filled with the ashes of an old-timer who died at the Pioneer Home in Juneau didn’t make it back to Haines for the funeral, which was held anyway with a cloth-covered cardboard box standing in for the ashes. Out-of-town family members couldn’t wait for the weather to clear. They had to get back to homes and jobs in the Lower Forty-eight.

  It’s much simpler to stay in Haines if you’re dead than to go anywhere else. Haines can be a hard place to live, but it’s a good place to die, thanks to a handful of dedicated volunteers, service clubs, and churches.

  One woman had the sad experience of burying her father
in Haines, then two months later going through the whole thing all over again with her husband’s dad in Pennsylvania. “In the Lower Forty-eight for thousands of dollars strangers will take over and do everything for you, in the mistaken assumption that they are helping,” Randa said. “It was so much easier for me to work through the grieving process when I had an active role in the preparations for burial.”

  That’s where Annie Boyce and Paul Swift come in. The husband-and-wife team prepares the dead for viewing and burial. They do this for free, for anyone who asks. Family and friends stop by the makeshift morgue—a garage with a walk-in cooler at City Hall, next door to the jail—to help them, or to just take a last look at a parent, child, or friend.

  Paul has bathed and dressed over one hundred bodies in the fifteen years since he inherited the job from a Presbyterian pastor. Annie started helping a few years ago. “It’s good to have a woman, too,” Paul says. “The main thing is to keep it dignified and respectful.” He doesn’t find the work creepy or morbid at all. “I think it’s my Christian background,” he says. “I feel the soul’s departed...”

  “Even,” says Annie, quietly finishing his thought, “with people we’ve been close to, it’s good to be able to help. Yes, it can be difficult and emotionally exhausting. Nevertheless, I believe what we do is a powerful witness.”

  “JUST BE SURE you have three points of contact,” Paul yells. We are a long way from the morgue, on the steep, snow-covered slope of Mount Ripinsky. “That’s two poles and one snowshoe, or two snowshoes and one pole,” he adds, looking down at me over Annie’s head. It is a brilliant Thursday morning in February. The snow is white, the sky is blue, and when Annie called to see if I could get away for a day outdoors I didn’t hesitate, even though I’d never gone up this section of the mountain on snowshoes before.

  “You’ll be fine,” Annie said. “You’re in shape and you have good equipment.” My snowshoeing has been limited to the gentler trail up Mount Riley or the flats along the river. Now we are going very slowly, straight up. Above me, Annie and Paul methodically dig snow steps with the crampons on the toes of their snowshoes. I follow, shoving my boots hard into each one, double-checking them before planting my foot too firmly. Gripping like this, with just my toes, makes my calves hurt. I’m thinking we should be roped to something, or one another, like those photos I’ve seen of Mount Everest expeditions.

  Paul and Annie are experienced mountaineers. They climb this route in December, after work, in the pitch dark with headlamps. They do it in the rain, in the snow, and when you can barely see your feet in the fog. Annie says they hike as much for their heads as for their hearts. It feels good to be outside and alive.

  Annie and Paul don’t have that Outside magazine kind of style. Annie has a faded bandanna around her head to keep the sweat from stinging her eyes. Paul’s cap advertises Aspen Paint—most days he works in a hardware store. They both wear faded plaid wool shirts. Paul is sixty-three years old, has a white beard, rosy cheeks, and a hearing aid. We all celebrated Annie’s fiftieth birthday a couple of years ago.

  I’m no slouch, but the going is hard, slow, and takes all of my strength. My muscles quiver. I’m sweating, breathing hard, and gripping my climbing poles tight. I hope the new ligament in my knee holds. While it works great on the flats, cycling or running, this is a big test. On the other hand, Annie had the same surgery, more recently—and just watch her go. After looking way down, over my shoulder, I resolve not to do it again. We’re a thousand feet up. I jam my boot into the step made by Paul and packed down by Annie, and the snow gives way—not completely, but enough for me to hear the blood rushing through my veins.

  It’s Paul’s regular day off, but Annie has taken a leave day from her job as high school secretary. It’s been a long, dark winter. The last time we had sunny skies, warm temperatures, fresh white snow, and no wind was a year ago. There was a little debate at the trail-head if this route was too difficult for me, but I assured them I could do it.

  Now I’m not so sure. I slip a little and my forehead touches the snowy wall. Maybe I should just crawl up it. Leaning into the hill makes me lose any purchase I have, and I slowly slip down.

  “The runoff isn’t too bad,” notes Paul, the leader with eyes in the back of his head. “If you feel yourself going, dig the poles in or grab the snow with your hands.” Annie tells me to go with the fall, maybe even roll a little if I can’t stop.

  “Stay loose,” she calls down. “Just stay loose if you’re going.”

  My body is tall and angular, more Tin Man than Kathy Rigby. I’m pretty sure I’ll break before I bounce. I wonder, for just a moment, if I could get killed doing this and decide, just as fast, that yes, I could. I jam the poles hard into the bank to stop myself from sliding, but they don’t catch. It feels like I’m falling forever. I don’t see my life flash before my eyes; I don’t see a bright light. I don’t see anything at all. My eyes are shut. Finally I stop. Turns out I’ve only skidded about twenty feet.

  My partners continue up, unconcerned. Maybe it’s because Paul and Annie are the undertakers that they don’t have my fear of falling. They know death is inevitable and would rather meet theirs on a mountain than at home in bed.

  On a good day, a day like today, Haines is often compared to heaven. But on a bad day, these mountains and the water below them are deadly.

  I know that, but I still want to be up here. I keep climbing, not only because I can’t back down without falling but because I feel so good all of a sudden. I faced my fears and won. For now anyway. I want to sing—but I don’t dare because it takes all my concentration just to hold on to the hill.

  At last, we step up onto the ridge, and rest before heading up and over the gentler hiking trail for the trip back down. I try to drink from the water bottle on my fanny pack, but it’s frozen. Paul offers me some from the flat old Listerine bottle he keeps tucked into an inside pocket. We break an energy bar and pass it around with some cold orange slices. The only other tracks in the snow belong to a wolverine. Below us, eagles glide over the treetops.

  Paul shakes his head in awe of the view. He’s seen it a thousand times and it still moves him. Annie sighs and then smiles a big, wide grin. It’s a face she never wears down in town. Seeing them now so happy reminds me of a more somber afternoon, back when I didn’t know them as well but was just as impressed by their bravery and teamwork.

  ANNIE AND PAUL worked quickly. They bathed Nedra and shampooed and dried her wispy white hair before slipping her thin arms and legs into undergarments and sliding over all of it the royal blue dress that once showed off her eyes.

  Nedra was my friend Joanne’s mother. Joanne had helped Paul and Annie get her dad in his last suit, but she said that with “Mom” it was different. The long illness had reduced Nedra’s already small frame to veins and skin, nothing really, and Joanne didn’t want to remember her that way.

  Taking care of Nedra, especially near the end, wore Joanne out. One afternoon I came home and found her asleep on my couch. Sometimes after Nedra went to sleep, Joanne would go for a drive with her dog and park someplace where he could run around, while she lay on the warm hood of her pickup, watching the northern lights.

  Joanne did finally call the hospice people for help, but Nedra was already dead before they arranged for her care. She had bad lungs and died of emphysema. Seneca wrote that asthma is a rehearsal for death. If that’s true, then Nedra had about ten dress rehearsals and time enough to prepare for the final curtain. Her last instructions requested an Emblem Club funeral, an Episcopal burial, and Joanne to make her casket.

  The casket part came about because when Joanne’s dad died, she and Nedra had tried to buy one at the True Value hardware store, the only place in town that sells caskets. The coffin that matched their budget was green fiberglass. Joanne said it looked like a submarine, and she knew her dad wouldn’t want to be buried in something with a snap-on lid, like a plastic garbage can. Since Joanne had just finished building her kit
chen cabinets, she thought she could make a wooden casket. Nedra was so pleased with Joanne’s first one that she ordered another, for herself.

  Joanne’s sisters, Kathy and Julie, live in California and Nevada now. Kathy flew up as soon as Joanne called to say Nedra was going fast, but she missed saying good-bye to her mother by one flight from Juneau. Julie and her husband were driving up the Alaska Highway in their motor home, and weren’t expected to arrive until the day before the funeral. Julie’s two daughters and their children drove down from Anchorage as soon as they got the word that Nedra had died.

  On Tuesday morning, we sat at Nedra’s kitchen table writing her obituary. It was my first one. I’d volunteered to do it because Nedra hadn’t liked a new reporter at the paper. He was an investigative type from down south. I also wanted to do something for Joanne. She’s the kind of friend who brings her mother and her dog to dinner. The last time we’d carried Nedra into our house in a lawn chair; it was Joanne’s fortieth-birthday party.

  I listened as the two sisters struggled with the Victorian language of death—“passed away,” “gone to her reward,” “resting eternally,” “met her maker,” “entered into the kingdom of God.” None of it fit Nedra. She was a direct woman and would have appreciated letting people know right up front how and when she died. We wrote, “After a long illness, Nedra Allen Waterman died from emphysema Saturday evening at her Small Tracts Road home. Her daughter Joanne was by her side. She was seventy-eight years old.”