loss

Gratitude and the slippery slope – Part 1

by Steve Brock on May 30, 2012

This gives you some sense of crossing the avalanche slopes on the way to Annette Lake

Life is messy.

Trips are messy.

I thought I had this whole “traveling gratefully” approach down after last week when my wife’s parents were visiting. It seems so simple: pray and prepare well before the trip, go with the right attitude, be open to what comes your way and give thanks for it all.

Well, it does work that way, but not always as we expect.

This last weekend my two teen sons and I decide to go hiking. The day before, we select as our destination Annette Lake, a small alpine lake in the Cascades less than an hour’s drive from home. The hike looks perfect: Eight miles round trip, less than a 2000 foot elevation gain, a beautiful destination and enough variety along the way to keep it interesting. Or so the hiking book says.

That all sounded great the night before. When 6:30 a.m. comes around (we wanted to beat the crowds and predicted rain), however, I’m not feeling the love for this hike. Still, we head out, my oldest son driving as I pray for a better attitude, to be grateful and to make this a meaningful trip for my sons and me. Oh, and I pray for it not to rain (as drizzle smears our windshield).

We speak little on the drive there. We arrive as the rain lets up. We collectively say a word of thanks for the day so far, a good start. Moments later, we’re on the trail. The beautiful waterfalls, moss covered rocks, and trees of interesting shapes and distortions (from earlier storms this year) get my attention and keep me enthused about the prospects of this hike.

And then we hit the switchbacks.

I can buy the “no pain, no gain” mantra in small doses. I find, however, that I have this pathological aversion to discomfort. This isn’t that hard of a hike, but it is a steady uphill climb for three miles.

Soon, I am fixated on just how long three miles can be. All attempts at gratitude and noticing the beauty around me get overcome by an interior dialogue that goes something like this:

“Three more miles? That’s like more than an hour of this.”

“True, but that’s not so long.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s like forever!”

“It will go by in no time. Listen to some music.”

“I am listening and it is still a long time.”

“Maybe you should start doing more aerobic exercises.”

“Oh, like that really helps now.”

“Hey, it’s only about 2 ½ miles now.”

“Shut up.”

“I can’t. I’m in your head. Be grateful.”

This goes on for another mile or so until we hit the snow.

At first, the snow on certain parts of the trail seems like a nice distraction. We’ve brought two pairs of trekking poles which the three of us share. This seems to work fine until we emerge out of the forest and then, everything changes.

We have come to the first of many avalanche slopes.

Picture traversing a 60 degree mountain slope that is covered with snow and ice. At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. But as we make our way across the first slope two things happen.

First, my youngest son, who is now about half way across, looks down. Bad move. He’s not thrilled with heights and we are very high indeed above the valley below.

Second, I realize his predicament and try to speed up to help him. Doing so causes me to slip. I use my  trekking pole to prevent a tumble, but now I come face to face an unnerving realization: all three of us are just one mis-step or slip away from a 500 foot toboggan slide down the mountain without a toboggan or anything other than rocks and trees in the valley below to halt our progress.

One moment I’m whining to myself about the exertion of the hike and the next I’m aware of something so surprising I don’t want to take it seriously but I must:

We could die here.

 

To be continued…

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Sadness and serendipity – Part 2

by Steve Brock on October 21, 2011

The trip to my nephew’s funeral was one of sadness, certainly. But also one of surprise, even serendipity.

One definition of serendipity from Webster’s is “the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” That would apply to my brother’s and my experiences covered in Part 1 of meeting the hospice director and the former pastor on our respective ways to the funeral.

But with meaningful travel in general, and this trip in particular, we encountered a slightly different definition of serendipity: going in search of one thing and finding another, one that seems unrelated to the former but in fact, furthers our original journey or intent but not in the way we imagined. 

The view from Fort Phoenix, town of Fairhaven, MA, an unexpected destination...

My parents and I flew from Seattle to Providence, Rhode Island. There, we met my brother who had just arrived from Florida. We had a wonderful dinner together that first night, catching up and discussing the funeral that was to occur the following evening.

The next morning we awoke and had most of a day to do nothing. Rather than hang around the hotel all day, we decided to do something I hadn’t expected on a trip of this kind: we played tourists. In the next entry, I’ll give you a photo essay of the surprising things we encountered in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts.

What the photos cannot reveal, however, are the moments that transformed this day from one of mourning to one of a different kind of discovery.

First, as we drove through the old sections of towns like New Bedford (former whaling capital of the world, or so they say) and Fairhaven, MA, we saw more funeral homes than I’ve ever seen before. Whether they do indeed have more mortuaries per square mile there or whether we just noticed them more this day, I cannot say. But each was a poignant reminder that even though we were enjoying a beautiful day together, the intended purpose of our trip was never too distant.

Second, we all came to realize that this was the first trip that the four of us had taken, just on our own, since I was in high school. We’ve done other vacations or family gatherings with our spouses and kids, but not just my parents and their two sons for years. My mom especially noted this, appreciated it and marveled at the time we had together, just the four of us. I tend to think of “family” as a multigenerational collection that spans both my side and my wife’s side through grandparents, uncles, nieces, in-laws – everyone who we consider to be a relation. Yet this trip revealed that something special happens when you travel with only the people who formed your tightest, most intimate circle growing up.

Third, as is often the case in times of pain and vulnerability, we appreciated each other and what we saw more. We paid better attention to the small details – meals unique to that region, comments that reveal a shared sense of humor, the cobblestones of the streets or scent of the sea. I am convinced that our joy is more noticeable when contrasted with our sadness and such was our experience this day.

We came on this trip to mourn the loss of a family member. What we ended up experiencing was a trip where we celebrated and valued dearly the family I have known since birth. It wasn’t the trip I expected. It was much better.

But then, our journeys of serendipity usually are.

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Sadness and Serendipity – Part 1

by Steve Brock on October 18, 2011

We may meet strangers at a Chinese restaurant or on a trip that tell us the exact right things at the exact right times…

Often we depart on hard trips feeling woefully inadequate for the journey ahead. Yet God provides what we need, often in unexpected ways.

So it was for my trip back East to my nephew’s funeral.

Dealing with the death of my 26-year-old nephew in a car accident was only part of the challenge I expected in attending his funeral. You see, my nephew was the son of my brother and his ex-wife. Thus, amidst all the grief concerning my nephew’s death, we also expected to encounter the various dynamics that are part of torn and blended families, especially during such distressing conditions.

But two curious events occurred along the way to somewhat mitigate the stress.

First, a few weeks before the tragedy occurred, my brother had lunch at a small Chinese restaurant down in Florida where he lives. The place was crowded, so he shared a table with a stranger. They talked briefly and that was that.

Except that the day after my nephew died, my brother was back in the same small restaurant on a different day of the week at a different time of day. And yet the only space available to sit was at a table…with the exact same man as before.

They joked about stalking each other and their lunch appointments until both realized that neither had been back there since their last chance meeting weeks earlier. An odd “coincidence” that led to additional small talk.

The man then asked my brother if he had any kids. My brother, not wanting to get into any painful details said, “Yes, two,” referring to his two children from his current marriage. Oddly, the man asked, “Is that all?”

Now what kind of a question is that? Yet it got my brother to admit that he did have two other children from a previous marriage. Sadly, he confessed, one had just been killed in a car crash the day before.

“That’s tough,” the man replied.

My brother thought it a curious response. The man said it as a fact; not unkindly but also without the usual gush of sympathy one normally receives.

When they resumed speaking, they asked each other the usual questions about “What do you do?” My brother described his occupation. And then it was the man’s turn.

“I’m the director of the local hospice,” he said.

The brief conversation over Chinese food suddenly took a far more personal turn.

From that revelation flowed remarkable advice on what to expect at the funeral, what typically happens in blended family situations like this, how to address the often awkward conversations, how to deal with grief amidst it all.

Before this unlikely conversation, my brother had dreaded the upcoming trip. Now, though still grieving, he felt equipped to handle the other dynamics that awaited.

Similarly, on my flight out to the funeral, the airline changed my seat at the last moment and I found myself next to a man who turned out to be in the administration for a denomination and who had been a pastor for twenty-plus years. After the typical comments about airline travel, I revealed the nature of my journey. I too then received excellent counsel from someone who had officiated at hundreds of funerals of all kinds. He understood firsthand the ins and outs of death, grief and the painful yet healing nature of these ceremonies of closure, mourning and even celebration.

We go ill equipped on trips to handle what lies before us. Yet by the time we arrive, we find we have what we need for our journey…and beyond. And as we shall see next time, sometimes the journey we end up on is far different than the one we anticipated.

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Ugly Beautiful

by Steve Brock October 12, 2011

Some trips, like those involving the loss of a loved one, are journeys we would rather not take…until we do and we discover something beautiful.

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The loss of something beautiful

by Steve Brock February 7, 2011

We encounter things on trips that move us profoundly but we don’t know why…until other “unrelated” circumstances reveal surprising connections. I came to appreciate this recently by encountering two very different forms of death.

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