“I thought of dying
today. Far from a suicidal manner but rather my hopefully distant passing. How
much I want it to be as least of an inconvenience to my loved ones as possible.
The more I dug, and I actually googled what practices exist after ones passing,
the more I realize how difficult it is to die. How much burden it puts on those
closest to you. Dying is discommodious. I don't know how I will go but I hope
it's doing something I love and in a place that I love. I have a part of me that
hopes that my remains would be inaccessible making recovery nearly impossible.
I don't want to be a tombstone, an urn, or a plot. I want to continue to draw
people out of their homes and see the world even in my passing. If you want to
come pay your respects, come to the mountains. Come to the rivers, the valleys,
desserts, and oceans. Come see me where I would have loved to spend time with
you. Come see this world with all of its miracles.” – Timothy Ozerkov
It has been nearly a
year. Nearly a year since my life completely changed. Nearly a year since many
lives were changed…changed in an instant. Many, I included, have cried out for
Tommy. We feel bad that he had to go so soon. And this can relate to any loved
one that has passed away….we often feel sorry for those individuals that have
died. I am writing today to say that I do not feel bad or sorry for them. I
feel horrible without them here. I am deeply sorry that I do not get to spend
more time with Tommy, that I do not get to grow old with him and share in many,
many more years of life’s grand adventures. I mourn the fact that his beautiful
daughter will no longer hear his sweet voice, feel his warm embrace, see him
cry as he hands her away on her wedding day. I feel deep pain in my heart for
his parents, who no longer get the chance to see their son. However, that is me
feeling sorry for me and those family and friends around him. We feel bad for
us and for our pain and for what we are missing. In reality, Tommy was the
lucky one. Dying is the easy part of this equation.
Tommy did not suffer,
he did not appear to be in pain. He merely slipped away, ever so quietly and
gracefully from this Earth – out of reach from all of us. Simply gone.
And here we sit. We
sit with the aftermath. We are the ones that have to try to mend ourselves. We
are the ones that hurt.
I cannot speak for
everyone else who is mourning the loss of Tommy. I can only speak for myself
for we all process things differently and we all have our own unique way of
grieving and working through this tragedy. However, I would imagine that there
are a lot of us out there that feel similar.
And here I sit….in the
middle of an icefield, scanning the nightscape for help.
On November 29, 2015,
I thought I was going through the hardest day of my life. I thought that was
the most painful day of my life. After watching my love take his last few,
precious breaths I then had to try and survive myself. I thought this was my
Hell. Somehow surviving the night in a crevasse at 9,000 feet on the side of
Mt. Jefferson on the coldest weekend of the year, fighting hypothermia,
confusion, and injuries myself would be one of the easier days of the last
year. There was a time where I honestly thought that since I survived this,
there was no way I couldn’t handle anything.
And here I sit…
The day after the
accident, Tommy’s family, myself, my brother and sister in-law all gathered to
await the retrieval of Tommy’s body from the mountain. It was a waiting game.
Every time somebody’s cell phone went off, curiosity would spread through the
room. “Who was it?” “How’s the weather?” “Can they fly?” “Are they going to
make an attempt?” Too many times to count, we were met with bad news….not going
up today, weather doesn’t look good, etc. Hope and let-down, hope and let-down….this
emotional roller coaster was far too much for me to handle for I was far too
numb from the preceding days events. Oh yeah, let’s add into this weird mix of
emotions the fact that the County Sheriff arrived to take my statement. A
period of events that I wish never happened, let alone revisit and re-live all
over again. I had to re-live them, not Tommy. He suggested I give my statement
in front of everybody. His intentions were well…he thought this way, I wouldn’t
have to repeat it to everyone again. I felt like I was put on stage….all ears
and eyes on me; and I have never been one to thoroughly enjoy public speaking,
never one to play the starring role in the highschool play. I don’t care for my
the spotlight. My anxiety was rising, like a tea kettle boiling water, I began
to shake, to cry. “This can’t really be happening to me.” I was looking into
somebody else’s story, wasn’t I? Unfortunately, not. Then the news….the
National Guard has made an attempt and was successful at retrieving Tommy’s
body.
And here I sit…
I am greeted in the
parking lot of the mortuary by the County Sheriff once more. He tells me that
he cannot let me or the family see Tommy until after the autopsy is done. “Autopsy?”
I cry, while my knees buckle. My brother swiftly throws an arm out and catches
my by my arm pit. “Sis….calm down,” he tells me. I take two deep breaths in and
out. That’s all I could control…two breaths. As calmly as I can, I ask why we
will have to do an autopsy. I have been through enough. Tommy has been through
enough. Why must we now barbarically cut him open? The Medical Examiner agrees
to speak with me before making her final decision based on my medical
background. I, again, must re-live what happened on Mt. Jefferson. Tommy lived
it once, to the end…yet I am tortured with having to re-live it over, and over,
and over again. I painstakingly tell her his mechanism of injury, his initial
signs and symptoms and then the progression of his head injury with associated
symptoms from the time I made contact with him until his last breaths of crisp
mountain air. She finds that to be sufficient evidence of cause of death. I am
relieved. Heartbroken. Slowly realizing that this is actually happening. “You
are the one that placed his ring upon his finger, would you like to be the one
to take it off?” the Sheriff asks. I ask if he could remove it for me, he nods
in agreement and walks off. Every time I am left alone, I feel nothing. Numb.
Cold. Shock. He returns, slips a black velvet pouch into my hand. It is soft. I
can feel the hard, circular piece of metal that lay within this delicate pouch.
My husband’s wedding band. All I have left of my lover in this world….all down
to one cold piece of metal. Before I can place the pouch into a pocket, I am
asked, “would you like to see him?” A heaviness encroaches upon me. The walls
must be closing in on me. I look to my brother, my rock, and grab his hand. I
know he wants nothing to do with this…my family doesn’t “do” death very well,
but he grabs onto my hand with a sense of the reassurance that I needed, and in
we walk. He is still frozen. He is cold. Firm, with a sense of plasticity. I
lay across his chest, one of my favorite places in the universe to be…it brings
me no comfort. I look at his injuries….I repeat out loud, “My poor husband.” “My
poor baby.” “I’m so sorry you had to go through this, lover.” I run my hands through his glorious, glorious
hair one more time. I go to leave and my brother stops me….”Sis, you should
give him a last kiss.” He’s right. I’m scared tho. Scared that this last, cold,
frozen touch of the lips will taint my memory of all kisses past. I gently kiss
his frozen lips. Then his forehead. I whisper, “I love you, Tommy.” And then I’m
gone.
And here I sit…
And here I sit…
After a week at my
mother’s house, it was time to return home. Even though my mom accompanied me
back to my home in Oregon, I felt like I sat in that house alone. I lived in
that house, exactly the way Tommy and I had left it before we took off for our
Thanksgiving weekend trip. Pictures of our Mt. Kilimanjaro summit hung on the
wall. It wasn’t until I could no longer smell his scent on his pillow case that
I changed our sheets. I closed his office door, not wanting to disturb anything
in there. I lived in that house with the memory of Tommy and our life together,
haunting me. It was tearing me apart. I am the one that had to go through all
of his belongings. I am the one that had to handle all of the finances. I am
the one that had to notify institutions of his death. I am the one that broke
down crying in public places. I am the one that had to “handle” everything, all
while trying to force myself to actually make it up and out of bed, or to maybe
take a shower. It was all too much to bear. There were times and still are
times today that I wish that Tommy had survived and I was the one to go…I wish
he would’ve survived for so many reasons but it also would’ve been easier for
me.
And here I sit…
Here I sit, nearly a
year from the accident, from Tommy’s death. I sit on my couch, in my house,
alone, tears running down my face. I have done extremely well this last year. I
have moved, got a great job, and have continued to heal myself through nature.
However, there are certain dates that hit me like a wrecking ball. I have cried
my way through our love-aversary in June. I have cried my way through my
birthday in August. I have cried my way through our anniversary in September. I
have cried myself through his birthday in October. I have cried while looking
through old pictures. I have cried in the arms of friends. My sorrows and my
deep pain have made others cry. They cry for not only my pain but for losing a
special spirit, even though they never knew him. I have screamed for help these
last few weeks. I have bounced back from each and every one of these instances
yet I am still sitting here, chest heavy, salty tears rolling down until the
drop from my chin to my sweatshirt. Every day closer to November 29th,
I am being brought that much closer to that crevasse. I am beginning to have
trouble sleeping again – I have not had sleeping issues for months. I have had
several instances in the last few weeks where I have picked up the phone to
call Tommy – I have not had that impulse since last December. I have folded my
left thumb over to graze my ring finger, looking to rub my wedding band for
that subtle sense of security just to find out that it is not there – I haven’t
worn my wedding band in 8 or 9 months and have never felt the sensation of it
being there like I do now. That beautiful wound of mine, the wound that I
thought was healing, well, it is slowly and viciously ripping back open.
And here I sit….I sit
here alone, again, thinking about how easy it is to die. Once you die, you are
done. You do not feel the constant heartache. You do not have the image of your
loved one, dead before you, burned into your brain. You do not wake up in night
terrors. You are not greeted with flashbacks. You do not have to feel the scorn
and judgement of what used to be loved ones. You are not buried in paperwork.
You are not faced with challenge of returning to work. You do not feel the
emptiness inside. You do not sit and cry yourself to sleep. You are not judged for your actions anymore. You do not for you
are simply gone. You got the easiest part of this tragedy. The ones left
behind are the ones that will be tortured by the ghost of your memory until it
is one day their turn to go. Until then, I am convinced, the ones remaining on
this earth have the toughest fight ahead of them.
Much Love,
Alison Fountain
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