Ammi Midstokke: The slow goodbyes we never want to say

“How long?”

“12-15 months,” says Christi.

Scott got lost flying his plane. He went to the doctor. The doctor sent him to the ER. The ER sent him to surgery. The surgeon gave him a death sentence.

In a single moment, the fragility and impermanence of the world, not The World, but the little ones of our own we’ve made upon it, is thrust before us. Our ideas, hopes, our beliefs about being good people, recycling, and eating organic are wiped out, obliterated with the only inescapable truth there really is: We die.

I drive my car toward the Cascades and Seattle, those mountains that Christi and I explore together, where so many memories and misadventures have been made. Where plans for more of the same are concocted. The mountains look the same, but how can that be?

Since I’ve known the two, I have wanted to grow up to be like them. I want to be floating the Grand Canyon and telling campfire stories of that time ‘we got so lost on a moped in Vietnam, we considered just living in the jungle for a few months until someone found us.’ The book of the life they wrote together is filled with pages of camaraderie, brave and arguably insane travel, and the last time Christi bailed Scott out of jail.

That was 25 years ago. They haven’t had a drink since.

They have climbed mountains in Nepal though, and learned how to fly planes, and gone to Burning Man every year, and watched the solar eclipse. And they have up-cycled and bicycled and spread the good word of preserving Our Mother. They have been true activists by setting the finest example.

My car drops a gear as I speed past Highway 97. Christi and I ran the Enchantments loop in a day last summer. It was hotter than the front row of a strip club by afternoon and, tired of my slumbering pace, she took off ahead of me the last few miles. She left a note on my car. “Hitchhiked to my van.” She had wanted to get home early enough to have a few hours with Scott before the week started.

Come to think of it, every single mountain madness we’d ever survived, Christi had a parking lot transition faster than a triathlete. Dump soggy gear, grab food and hold in face while changing shoes, say the goodbye-sorts-of-things while leaving rubber on the road as she shot back to her urban oasis and husband. What will she rush to now?

Scott and I are going out for ice cream. It’s raining but neither us or our dogs care. When death pulls your lotto number, ice cream guilt is absolved and rain is just wet. We order ridiculously huge bowls and eat it slowly while sitting on bar stools, staring out at Seattle night life. Every time the door opens, cigarette smoke wafts past us. The dogs blink at us through the window.

“I got a ski pass to Snoqualmie,” says Scott.

If Scott has led by example in how he has lived, he is going to do the same in how he dies. It gives me pause to wonder if living and dying are all that entirely different. Scott would say, other than the Miralax, doctor appointments, and tragedy, they are not.

I cannot reconcile that the mountains are not sagging with the weight of this loss as I drive home again. I stop to stare at their emerald timber walls towering above my head. The wind is blowing cold and sharp, my hair sweeps across my face. There is solace here, in that which was before us and will remain long after us. Perhaps they are impervious and graceful so that we must not be.

If our bodies must be left behind, our memories can continue on. Make many of them. The kind that make you laugh and cry, the kind that are triggered by smells and songs, those that are as big and real as the mountains. The kind that remind you of the saddest, most delicious bowl of ice cream you ever ate.