Falling Toward Heaven

Once in a while you meet someone who just plain bowls you over — someone who unlocks the door to a dim, long-unvisited room in the house of your life, fills it with a brilliant light, and leaves you squinting, blinking, but illuminated.
Leaning back against the counter in the crowded kitchen of a party on Francis Avenue North, I juggled a bright blue plastic cup of microbrew. It was good to be out, basking in the convivial glow. Over shoulders, between talking heads, I caught a glimpse of bobbed brunette hair pulled back with a black silk velvet band, an arch of dark eyebrows. Riveted, I looked again — who IS that? As she spun from counter to table, easily navigating a plate of hors d’oeuvres between friends, her deep indigo pleated skirt twirled and rose, revealing more of legs wrapped in knit leggings the color of moss on the north side of trees in a misty fir forest. We caught each other glancing and smiling across the room. She was next to me. The bubble of my attention shrink-wrapped a tiny portion of the kitchen: Her deft and delicate hands were slicing up chunks of crusty bread on a wooden board criss-crossed with lines of use.
With an ease that delighted, we began talking, at first brushing the edges, then into the heart of real conversation. There was an engaging slyness to her smile, something that suggested she knew more than she was letting on. A native of Seattle, she was the youngest of nine children. She had just taken up the violin. She worked for Channel 9. Her name was Lena. And she was leaning, inches away, her arm nonchalantly arched behind me, almost on my shoulder! Was it possible? Were we flirting? I looked an instant longer into her eyes. They were open, a startlingly vivid blue, deep, and looking right into mine. I felt my ears warm like a forgotten-with-no-pot electric stove-top left on. My shirt, I suddenly noticed, was sticking to me. Must have been that brisk walk over from Wallingford, up the Fremont hill. She was beautiful. With the grace of complete confidence, she spun away, a vision splendid, carrying the board of bread through the crowd.
It flashed through me — a release of the last five months, a blissful sparkle: Something in the way she moved, the sound of her voice, her laughter — for just an instant it was as if we had always been together and this was our party; a rush of pride, of wonder and humility, as if afterwards, arm in arm, we would open the door and look lovingly in on our sleeping children; as if I were seeing her through the rosy filter of shared history and in wonderful anticipation of years together ahead.
Five months before, the woman I loved returned from a solo road trip through the dry deserts and eroded mesas of the Southwest. She brought back the conviction that we needed to stop seeing each other — completely and absolutely, immediately. We embraced, for a long time, for what we both knew could be the last time. Dropping her forehead to my chest, she drew a breath, slowly and deeply. Looking up, grabbing both of my arms, she said “I could be making a huge mistake. I won’t let pride get in the way, if it turns out I have.” “I love you, and I trust you,” I said, as she walked out the door. In a sea of stories in the summer of no summer that followed, relentless with days of salt wet Seattle dreariness, I was tossed by waves of mourning for the loss of her bright company. I weathered the inevitable storms of awkwardness that swept like shivers through our circle of friends. I hadn’t heard a word from her again. In that brief moment with Lena I saw what, for the life of me, I couldn’t in 150 long days and nights before: There were other phenomenal women in the world after all. It was time to move on.
The black rotary phone stared back like my cat waiting to be fed. I picked it up, and dialed. Double stops on the violin . . . up a fifth . . . down a third. Pause. Lena’s voice . . . <beep>: I invited her to my party for October birthdays the coming Saturday night. Life was totally cool.
After a flurry of the kind of housecleaning only hosting a party can prompt, I was ready for some mindless entertainment. Thursday night — time for Seinfeld? Click. With an electronic buzz and crackle the television came to life. The camera was panning across the KCTS building in downtown Seattle, klieg-lit for night video. “ — a tense night at KCTS-9,” a newscaster’s voice was saying, in the somber yet hopeful tone they muster for bad news in the making. “A small plane carrying two Channel 9 television producers is missing near Kelso, in southern Washington.” Cut to fog shrouded forest: “In heavy fog, the Cessna 172 apparently overshot the runway on the first try, went around for another, and has dropped off the radar. The airplane’s emergency radio beacon, programmed to activate in a crash, has not been picked up, and no wreckage has been sighted. Search and rescue teams are combing the rugged territory in a 25-mile radius around the airport. Missing are Rob Reed and Lena Sharpe.”
The night before my 39th birthday, on the six o’clock news, determined rescuers in army fatigues slogged through dense brush and along muddy rivers. “No sign yet of the missing Cessna 172.” Later, a special bulletin — live from the scene: “ A helicopter has spotted something suspicious 5 1/2 miles northeast of the airport which could be the missing plane. We’ll keep you updated on this breaking story.” Later, around 10 o’clock, in another special bulletin, it came. “Searchers have located the wreckage of the missing plane. In it is the body of 29-year-old Lena Sharpe. Footpri — .” Click.
With shocking clarity and directness, I saw the delicacy of the silver threads that hold each of us to life, and to each other. (Like something precious you have dropped into the lake — you quickly reach out, but too late, grasp only water through fingers, and it continues, tumbling through the deepening green, flashing brightly as the sun hits it, spinning end over end, away.)
The night I met Lena was the only time I saw her — I doubt she even noticed the drama meeting her played out in me — and yet still, I carry with me the wisdom of that moment, the beauty of that epiphany. In that moment she was so alive. Vital, positive, strong, warm, intelligent. There is no way to make “sense” of her death. It is ultimately unexplainable. It is irreversibly final.

Death has no tolerance for ambiguity, no room for compromise. It makes no allowance for effort; leaves no chance for reconciliation. Faced with knowledge of its final bitter company, who could then still emulate its unbending character? It seems only and lovingly human, while we can, to live with an open and willing heart; to honorably carry, for a time, the weight of an unbalanced friendship; to patiently bear the burden of another’s hope of love, of connection, of community. It seems only and wonderfully human, and almost achingly necessary, in the course of this passionate journey, to care too deeply, try too hard, say the wrong thing; to awkwardly begin, fall, risk it all again and again; to not have all the answers, make horrible mistakes; to not be perfect — and always, to generously forgive ourselves and each other for it all, and keep working as hard as we can to overcome the merely voluntary things which separate us, little by little, from those we love.
–Rob Harrison, 1993.
Illustrations: from Passionate Journey by Franz Masereel, 1919.
