I’ve struggled to write this letter. This year, on the second anniversary of Michael’s death, I haven’t had so many words.
The day before Michael went missing he visited two beaches on Pender Island where we lived. In the afternoon he went for a run with my now partner Jude. He asked Jude if they could run all the way to the ocean, further than they usually ran. They did, and stood together taking in the view, looking across Boundary Pass towards Mount Baker, a stretch of ocean where Humpback whales migrate, resident orcas feed and oil tankers travel. A place where you see, feel and smell all of life singing together, the sentient and insentient. A chorus. A heron landed in the bay. Micheal looked across to Saturna Island and said, “It’s so beautiful I can hardly stand it!’’ I can imagine him all sweaty from the run, hands on his hips, shoulders rounded forward, chin slightly exalted as his breathing settled.
After Michael returned from his run that day, we collected our picnic things and trekked down to a nearby beach. A shell beach overlooking Bedwell Bay. We ate dinner there and afterwards he put on swim trunks and stood in the water for a moment, then dropped abruptly, chest first, throwing his hands out to either side with bent elbows. He winced slightly around the lips and squinted his eyes as he plunged. No hesitation.
I think of the salty tears that stained his cheeks when I met him in the Emergency Room. I had to know they were tears and not eye drops the nurses had administered, so I licked them. Salty. I think of Avalokiteshvara, the deity who comforted him the most. The one who hears the cries of the world, and collects tears in a small vial to pour back into the ocean. One tear, one ocean.
This year the tears come in heaves. Like tropical storms, violent and fast. They clean me out. Afterwards, spacious heaviness.
Early this week we traveled back to Pender Island to honour the day of the transplant surgery. The day his body stopped working, I tell the kids. We arrived at the beach he had run to that last time, the kids asleep in the van. Jude set up camp while the kids played. We remembered what we know of Michael’s final moments there. The anxiety the kids had been showing all week settled some, they were ready to mark the day, tie together the threads of feeling in the long anniversary. Hudson got absorbed in collecting pebbles of many different shades and shapes. He brought a handful to me and said, “Why do all the beautiful things [the pebbles] fall from the sky when I come here?!’’ In Jewish tradition, when you visit a loved one’s grave you leave a stone on top. It seems cold, in a way, stark. In a Jewish cemetery, there are no bouquets, just dots of stones across the tops of headstones. The intention is that the weight of the stone quiets restlessness in the one who died, and in turn, this gesture quiets you. And, the lastingness of the stone is a metaphor for the mark of the life lost, a promise that the impact of their being continues. Much longer than flowers.
Towards evening we moved to the shell beach where he’d swam and we shared our last meal. This year, on the marker of Michael’s final moments on life support, it was a full moon, a Buck moon. Now, as you may know by now, as you may know from his life, Michael is not a subtle spirit. As we approached the drive in to the beach there stood the most enormous Buck with beautiful fuzzy antlers. Hi, Michael.
High tide was at 7:30 pm, the same time that I was saying my final goodbye outside the OR in a field of transplant surgeons. Cold beige linoleum. Michael’s head nodded gently to the right. When I think back to that moment I hear a drum. It must have been my heartbeat, set against the rhythmical folding of the accordion hand pump ventilator keeping his lungs going while he was wheeled out of the ICU. I hear the drumbeat as I type this. I heard it too as we drove to the shell beach and saw that enormous Buck.
We got to the beach just before sunset. This is the first place Michael and I visited on Pender. It’s part of how we fell in love with this place. Its wildness. At the edge of the forest, on the cliff above the water is a giant maple tree with many enormous reaching trunks. We’d considered getting married beneath it, if it hadn’t been for the cliff nearby. Kids. This year, before moving from our home, I went to say goodbye to the beach and was unsettled to find the maple tree split in four directions.
This night, we maneuvered around the fallen trunks of the maple and scrambled down the cliff with our gear — two bells, photographs, a wooden boat, flowers, some ashes in small packets, a candle, a bowl, and the wedding incense. Jude carrying a sleeping Ezra on his back in the baby carrier. For the second year, I set up an altar here for Michael. Once everything was in place Hudson clapped his hands together and exclaimed, ‘’Finally! We have a home again!
The day was fading. A seal breached. We rang the bell three times, then loaded up the boat with kindling, the flowers and cedar, the ashes. Dolphin danced around on the shore, high kicking in the wet sand. The surrounding hills became silhouettes. Hudson pressed his palms together, then to his lips and bowed. I lit the kindling in the boat until it took, and Dolphin and I lifted the boat into the water. “Now we’re thinking about Papa,” Dolphin said, his eyes wide and happy. He followed the boat out, then along the shore, pushing it into the ebbing tide with an oversized piece of gnarly driftwood. He was determined to keep it from getting stuck on the rocks. It burned, then lingered.
We rang the bell 42 times, one for each year of Michael’s life. Then 2 more, for each year since his death. With a ferry to catch, we packed up swiftly, and made our way back up the cliff, around the maple, through the woods, over the logs, past the nettles. My body felt gritty and soft. Strong back, quiet front. Jeans plastered to my legs with ocean water.
Driving up the dark hill towards the main road we caught the same enormous Buck in our headlights.
Goodbye, Michael.
Michael has a book coming out this month, on July 30th, called The World Comes To You. It’s a poignant book of poetic dharma. It’s really nice to read, his voice is clear and strong. Even after spending so long combing through the words, Erin Robinsong and I both feel like it’s fresh when we read it now, as if we had very little to do with it at all, as if he’s speaking through it.
If you’re in Vancouver, on Wednesday, August 21st from 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm Erin and I will host a book launch at Banyen books. There’s a promotional podcast for it here.
I hope you enjoy the book.
With love,
Carina