Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.”
The childhood song appears from nowhere, circling in my mind. I am sitting on a rock where my father once sat. I feel sure he must have rested here, under this twisted old tree, carved with layer on layer of initials and messages from the past. If I dug deep, I might find a scratched “Wayne was here, 1930” buried under 75 years of scarred bark. Another old arbutus reaches perilously out over the ocean halfway down the cliff below me. Its grey, gnarled limbs would have been a sinuous red when he was here, but the view would have been the same: the pristine serenity of Washington’s San Juan Islands, punctuating the softly lapping inland waters of Puget Sound.
I picture him here, in the early days, with a gang of 10 year old boys, hanging off the trees, mischievous and laughing. In later years, when he worked as a counselor at this island summer camp, he might have dallied with a girl whose name is long forgotten, a summer romance, watching the stars wheel in a clear August sky as a prelude to stolen kisses. But I also see him coming alone to this rocky viewpoint, to catch a few moments of the quiet and privacy that he cherished. Did he prop his back against this tree, perhaps watching ancestors of the two eagles who now spiral above me? What futures did he imagine as he gazed out over the long view? Leaning into the tree, I consider all the dreams it must have witnessed over the years and wonder … is life but a dream?
I have come to this island to remember my father and leave a portion of his ashes in a place that he loved, but I have also come to search for answers to the existential quandary I have inhabited since he died. The questions began at the instant of his death and would not be diverted. Unable to wrestle my attention back to the endless demands of everyday life, I finally gave myself up to the questions and came away to this island to let them have their way with me. It was my hope that the timelessness of island culture, along with spacious views of ocean and sky, would allow answers to emerge … so I could get back to living my life. For four days, I have wandered the island, exploring Pop’s old haunts and letting my thoughts drift. Today, my last day here, I feel a pressure to bring some order to my musing. But I also know that you can’t hurry answers, so here I sit, letting my thoughts wander yet again over his life … and his death.
I was privileged to be with my father at the moment he left this world. It had been a long day filled with the hustle and bustle of family members coming and going, holding his hand and murmuring their goodbyes to the strains of the Viennese waltzes my mother insisted on playing at top volume so that Pop to hear them despite his advanced deafness. The booming melodies also served to drown out the disturbing sound of his body struggling to stay alive, one ragged breath after another.
The waltzes finally hushed when family friends arrived to play music for my father. Anticipating an overnight vigil, my mother was taken home to eat and rest for a few hours. My sister heeded her teenager’s ashen-faced request for a break from a disturbing day facing death and, after their quiet concert, the musicians packed up their guitars … leaving just the two of us in a blessedly still room.
I dimmed the lights, plucked a photo from the wall that had
been catching my eye all day and, pulling a chair
up to his bed, gathered his hand into mine. Eighty-eight years of use and arthritis had rendered it a gnarled rake, but our hands just fit so that the pulse in my palm beat against his. The photo I studied was of his christening. Young Wayne sat chubby and angelic in a white gown on his mother’s lap. His brother Bill, a startled looking lad of 4, was pinioned between his father’s legs. The adults, as in so many photographs of that era, were stiff and starched. Not a very happy-looking group except for his mother, whose eyes rested on baby Wayne with a soft, slightly puzzled expression. As I examined each face, I realized Pop was the only one of them still alive. I wondered if he might get to see his mother again, sometime soon, in some other place.
And with that, the tortured breathing that had been a backdrop to our day began to change. Over several minutes, it slowed, growing very faint … and stopped. I hovered over him, holding my breath. Was this it? The end? Just as I decided it must be over, his body, unable to contain the automatic impulse for life, gulped another rasping breath. I leaned in to him, whispering urgently, “Oh, Pop, no! Don’t fight it, Pop, just let go. It’s time to go now.” Another faint sip of oxygen and then … nothing. Riveted, I scrutinized his face, and as his features took on a waxy look – so fast! – I knew he had left us.
I saw no column of light or mist evaporating over his head, none of the anecdotal manifestations of souls leaving the body. I cast about for any sense of his spirit lingering in the room but there was nothing. I had a mental picture of him flying away from that used-up old shell, free at last of the aches, pains and frustrations of a body that would no longer do his bidding. Free at last to soar, like the two eagles who have been fishing the waters surrounding my rocky perch today.
Their eerie high-pitched cry draws me back to the present and I watch as they turn and catch the wind toward the next island. Leaving, as Pop did, suddenly and without looking back. Did he wait, I wonder, until the presence of the thing he loved most in the world, my mother, no longer pulled at him to stay? If he had any choice in the matter, he may well have taken advantage of that quiet window, when the most permissive member of his family sat with him, to move on toward whatever is next … something neither he nor I had a name or belief system to describe.
In that moment of my father’s death, it became irrefutably clear to me that I would die, that we all die. I have always known this, of course, and over the years I have entertained any number of comforting theories as to what happens after we leave our bodies, beginning with the heaven and “life ever after” I was taught at my early Christian Sunday schools. As I traveled the world with my free-thinking parents during our Air Force years, I discovered that different cultures had different afterlife beliefs. But none of them could offer me proof that theirs was the true story. It all had to be taken on faith. So if all those people had faith in all those differing beliefs, either all of them must be true - your faith creates your afterlife? - or faith itself was fallible.
As I explored different scenarios, I moved through western and eastern philosophies - from atheism to reincarnation - but they all ended up feeling like stories we tell ourselves to find comfort, ways to diminish our fear of the unknown. I don’t know what my father’s beliefs were as he neared his own demise. I know he didn’t believe in a heaven, or in reincarnation. Perhaps, like me, he chose to be content with a wait-and-see attitude, unable to believe in other people’s versions, able only to prove it to himself by going there. Unlike me, he experienced a good ten years of mortality staring him in the face, during which time I watched him move from a nervous fear of dying to a seemingly comfortable acceptance of the inevitable. My need to accept my own death seemed safely in the far future … that is, until the hour of my father’s, when mortality hit me between the eyes. And that sudden understanding brought into clear focus these questions I wrestle with. Is it all but a dream?
In the weeks following his passing, we cleared out his room at the nursing home and distributed his few personal belongings among family members. Photo albums were raided for his memorial service. My mother spent long hours creating an elaborate display, an overview of his life. The presentation featured photos of pivotal events and friends long gone, and included a pasted-up album with clippings of columns and articles written by my father when he was a young journalism student dreaming of an offbeat career as a bohemian wordsmith.
As a writer, he must have shared the unspoken dream I carry, that your words might continue on after you, informing others that your life had meaning and somehow mattered. And now the album and the display sit on my mother’s shelf, until she leaves us, at which time a succession of family members will house them until they lose meaning and are recycled during someone’s spring cleaning. Ephemeral as mist, the meaning attached to these physical objects we hold on to, including words. Here one minute and gone the next, like the eagles, like the diving birds who have appeared in the bay now that the predators are gone.
A loud splash below me signals a big fish breaking the surface. Seagulls wheel in from nowhere, the sun glinting on their white wings as they quarrel loudly and jockey for position. As the birds touch down, concentric circles spread through the clear turquoise of the shallows. My mind circles once again to the question that has been haunting me these past weeks: Is there a larger purpose or is this all there is? We’re born, assume bodies, dream our dreams, accomplish some, never manage others, touch a few lives along the way and then grow old and decrepit and die. End of story? Dust to dust?
Which reminds me … it’s time to get moving. I have brought along a small spice jar of Pop’s ashes to leave in this place he remembered so happily. I walk the beach, searching for the right spot, and am drawn to a young salal bush growing from a fallen stump, near an open-front cabin that looks old enough to have housed young Wayne and his camp buddies all those years ago. Towering over all is a mature cedar whose sweeping branches shelter both the cabin and the salal, at whose roots I bury these remnants of my father’s earthly body. Between the lacy boughs is a view of the beach, the water and distant islands. If his spirit is drawn to visit here, he will have a beautiful view. I gently pat the duff that covers his ashes and linger over a quiet goodbye.
Finally the chill works its way through my parka and I abandon dappled shade for open beach, letting the thin January sun warm me as I make my way back to the car. The clear skies are a godsend and I decide to head up to the viewpoint on Mt. Constitution, where I will find top-of-the world views, if I’m lucky. I’ve been up the peak every day since I came to the island, only to find the summit wreathed in cloud. Perhaps today will be the day.
I wind my way up the mountain in low gear, and spot nursery trees, thick with new growth, in among the cedar and fir that forest the slopes. I wish I knew whether human ashes contain nutrients, and hope that the small offering of my father’s remains will feed the young salal and allow him to live on in that way. I think of the cedar sheltering the site, which will give of itself all through its existence: to birds and squirrels as nesting place and feeder, to other mortals finding inspiration in its graceful longevity. And when it falls to earth, it will become a nursery for the plant life that will fill the empty space in the canopy. What do we humans give, I wonder? There are those few who extend beyond the personal into the collective, their stories embellished through the decades until they become a symbol, a story of a life – but the majority of us, we touch other lives in small ways. We bestow a smile here, compassion there; we leave children or art, if that is part of our story. And when we die? Most of us will leave a scattering of memories that will occasionally warm the hearts of a small circle of friends and family … until they, too, pass away.
Like the scattering of islands that unfurls before me as I reach the top, born from the sea and destined to return to it eventually. But now is not the time for bittersweet thoughts; I have finally attained the clear eagle’s eye view for which I’ve been longing.
Beyond the islands, to the southwest, I can see the snow-covered, majestic Olympic range spread along the horizon. Far to the south emerges a ghostly cream shadow that is Mt.Rainier. The spiky white peaks of the Cascades resemble sharp teeth guarding the eastern entrance to our Pacific Northwest paradise. And to the north, the chain of Canadian mountains stands solid, dense with snow. At my feet the coastline and its outlying islands show off their deep rainforest green against the shimmering waters of the Sound. And above it all looms Mt. Baker, tall and magnificent, deep snows tinged with a pink wash as the sun sinks toward the horizon behind me.
It is breathtaking. I suck the beauty into my soul and feel closer to eternity than I have for a very long time. I look down on a flock of geese flying high above the land. Tiny freighters inch toward distant ports. The fog is coming in, partially obscuring my view of the small city where I live, where my father lived and died. I watch mist rise from the hilltops and gather into cloud, which steadily spreads toward me, blotting out the islands below. Turning, I encounter a large thunderhead moving in from the south, black and threatening. Shivering in the suddenly sharp wind, I take one last look, to gather in a little more beauty before I head back to my cozy cabin.
Creeping down the mountain through gathering cloud, I resume my inner discussion. If there is no larger meaning to life, I decide, then what is of value must be the bright moments you have during your time on Earth, those experiences that touch your soul: beauty, deep feelings, deep thought. Also, I imagine, those times when you touch someone else’s life in a meaningful way – a suggestion that guides, art or words that inspire, understanding at a vulnerable time. Still full of the expansive view I’ve just left, I continue to play with this new notion. Is it possible that those feelings we treasure - gratitude, love, compassion, awe, peace – can leave a mark beyond the moment? Perhaps they live on after us, contributing to some cosmic bank of “good” in the universe. Could a feeling expand, as it moves from one person to the next, gathering strength and meaning as it grows exponentially. Or is it but a single instance, to be savored and released … back to the ephemeral, back to the mystery.
I’ve caught glimpses, a sampling, of my father’s life these past few days and I wonder: In the end, did he feel his life had meaning? If I can find the value in his existence then perhaps I can find the meaning for which I have been searching.
How can I summarize Wayne, my father, known to me as Pop? He was a quiet man who kept his thoughts and feelings to himself. He had a vast curiosity and explored, insatiably, through books as well as years spent traveling the world with my mother. An amateur photographer, he chronicled their travels and our childhood, leaving us with thousands of photographs.
He was quietly successful in a stable career that superseded his boyhood dreams but provided a secure lifestyle for his family and facilitated those extensive travels.
The father of one boy and three girls, he participated in our raising in a well-meaning but often distant way. He had a goofy sense of humor and enjoyed playing and joking with us, but often seemed at a loss as to what to do with his children when we weren’t kidding around.
In retrospect I see that his offspring, for better or worse, have all inherited his wariness of intimate interactions. He was a very private man, so much so that his children still aren’t sure if we really knew him or not. He often answered questions with only a gentle smile and an amiable twinkle in his eye – that same twinkle that was remembered fondly by friends, acquaintances and family, in almost every card and speech at his memorial service.
He loved my mother with all his heart for sixty years, and lived to make her happy. He also depended on her to keep his life on track. Pop was a sensitive, fallible man – not a hero or a leader; an ordinary man who strove to be a “good” man. He instilled in his children qualities that stand us in good stead in our own lives: a love of books and words, permission to be ourselves, and an ability to thoroughly enjoy simple, daily pleasures.
So that is his legacy: boxes of photos, yellowing pages from a college newspaper, and six people alive who carry his genes as well as memories of him that will survive as long as we do. Small things will remind us of him, in unexpected places and quiet moments. We’ll feel gratitude to him for bringing us into this world, for being a good man and a responsible father. And once in an insightful while, we will take the time to acknowledge his legacy.
I turn into the resort just as the rain begins. Dashing to my small ocean-side cabin, I shed my damp coat and boots. Hunger pangs gnaw at me but I don’t want to lose the thread. I feel as if I’m on the verge of an answer. This final day of drifting around the island and through the channels of my thoughts is leading me closer to my goal. I brew a quick cup of tea and carry it to the table where my laptop awaits.
With the day’s observations and questions recorded, I stare out the window, wondering how to tie it all up into a neat bundle, as is my wont. What will it take to make me feel complete enough to stop all this questioning and get on with the business of living? It is human nature to question, to try to find meaning in our existence. All around us nature continues her endless cycle of life and death, thousands of tiny sparks of consciousness being born and dying in every second. And yet we continue to hope for some form of immortality.
That search has led science to invent ways to extend our physical lives, at the cost of being stuck in bodies that no longer function. We invent elaborate heavens and afterlives to assure ourselves that we will not just disappear. We strive for and are fed by acknowledgement, being seen and heard, in the hope that our name - or at least our words/thoughts/ideas - may not be forgotten. We form religions and establish worldviews, all of which eventually wither with time.
Outside my window the storm is now raging. The black cloud is upon us. The wind howls, driving the rain into frantic waves that leap at the pebble beach. I savor the warmth inside my cabin, as I sip tea and glory in the wild beauty of the night. It occurs to me that of all the things that feed us, beauty may perhaps be the most ephemeral and the most valued. The golden freesia that has graced my table during this island retreat will wither within a few days but it has fed me immeasurably as I’ve explored these deep questions of life and death. We find beauty in an artisan’s creation, in words that provoke thought and emotion, in glimpses of eagle/mountain/storm, in a father’s uncertain love for his children, in the simplest song. Can I draw the conclusion, then, that our lives are most valuable because they are time-limited? That the meaning for which we strive lies in the very mortality we flee?
My mind circles round and round this new notion as would a dog, sniffing it with deepening interest. As I circle, the quandary that has pestered me for the past month begins to grow lighter. And suddenly, with no discernible effort, I am satisfied. I can settle at last into the peace that comes when an answer emerges from within. It turns out to be a Zen koan that satisfies my need.
Setting aside my laptop and stretching, I let my mind wander through the pathways I have traveled during this retreat and realize that my father has left yet another legacy. This one occasioned by his passing: that of helping his eldest daughter, who inherited his tendency to question, to come to a deeper understanding of the mystery of life and death. Which now leaves me free to turn my attention to the next question: If a life indeed has only ephemeral meaning, then how shall I live mine so as to get the most out of what it has to offer?
Perhaps, as the old song suggests, I can learn to row my boat more gently down the stream - savoring the beauty, taking time to create, brightening the days of others with the twinkle in my eye. For if life is, indeed, but a dream; therein lies its value.
Bellingham, WA 2006
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