Trying to see ahead...

I left Newport, toward uncertainty, my friend Paul driving.

Rolling sw on Highway 2, looking up, I saw two bald eagles flying behind us. In giant wingstrokes, they soared overhead as if in pursuit, and I wondered if those were the same Eagles that had appeared weeks before during my conversation with Hank. They'd circled over the ranch and Hank had proclaimed it a sign. Short on translation, I'd accepted his proclamation, feeling a glimmer of hope, but then I put my faith in these things all the time. Whether or not such faith is truly justified.

Now, as the Eagles disappeared behind me on the horizon, I kept thinking about all the things one thinks about when facing an unknown reckoning. Wondering what I'd left unsettled, what remained undone or forgotten. I thought about writer Hunter S Thompson and his recent suicide and that Thompson seemed to be reinforcing the whole early morbidity rate trend among the left brained, "write like you mean it" set. I thought about the nature of life expectancy and how Tsunami's and Terminal Illnesses breed the will to survive, while creativity seems too often to result in self destruction. I certainly didn't understand any of it.

As we left the Selkirks and found ourselves on the Bull Pined flats just north of Spokane, I embraced not embracing my pensive status and I thought that there wasn't much I could do about anything so I might as well ride it all out. Wherever it leads. I wasn't looking for a gun or place a phone call to anyone as I blew my cerebral state to smithereens. I was just looking for somewhere to focus.

Thankfully Paul kept me from descending into too much introspection as he spoke about the future, about his own direction and the choices facing him as he gazed into a foggy crystal ball.

Both of us describe uncertain futures. I listened as Paul conveyed all the pros and cons of his balancing scale. Myself, I was leaving for Seattle, a flight bringing me closer to a possible final goodbye with my beloved Grandmother, Billie Lopeman. As we approached the airport, my grandmother struggled for each breath 300 miles to the west in Seattle. Paul and I had struggled for a way to talk during the 75 miles to the airport, "while not talking about it". But saying goodbye at the curb, it all ended. Fighting tears he held me in a long embrace and we both remained there, not wanting any more future to arrive until we were ready for it. Not caring about the stares from the skycabs, or other motorists wondering why these two men were embracing so long and with so much intensity.

Paul has agreed to be a pall bearer, as have many of the men my grandmother has befriended and teased over the years. All of them unique and determined, all of them untraditional in their approach to journeying through sexual orientation, and masculinity, and all of them touched by this woman. His tears were genuine. We both recognized the news from Seattle seemed dark and increasingly filled with funeral and burial arrangements. We couldn't talk about it, we had to feel our way through this one.

As I was checking in at the counter, Paul called me quickly, already long into his own departure. "Timbo, run quick. See the moon. See the moonrise. Its amazing. " His breathless voice affirming that even in the darkness, one finds light, even if the tone and hue isn't exactly what you were banking on. Beauty is everywhere. Even in the dark.

The flight was late, and as we flew over Eastern Washington, lit by the moon, I saw many places I'd spent time with Billie. Banks Lake, Grand Coulee Dam, the lights of Omak and Tonasket to the north. I moved across the aisle and looked down toward other memories.

Directly over U S 2, I also remembered my last trip on the highway two month previous with my former boyfriend Ed. It was Christmas Eve and we were on our way to Seattle, he driving us into a sunset that seemed to last forever. Places like Dry Falls and Waterville and Leavenworth lit up the night underneath me, and I realized how different the perspective seemed just two months later. Then the future seemed bright, now it was equally bright, but the lighting was entirely different. Although Both voyages west were lit by inspirational light, one did not resemble the other.

Go west young man. Go west.

Because whenever you travel west, the horizon is ever changing. Like our lives.

~ ~ ~

Arriving in Seattle, I met my mother at the baggage claim. She wore her chemo wig, and I hugged her, reassured she had not grown weaker or thinner since I'd seen her at Christmas. As we waited for the bags, she caught me up on all the recent moments she'd spent in the hospital, anxiously at her mother's side.

My grandmother had had another heart attack and as mom sat next to her during the longest morning, she'd endured her mother's struggle to catch each breath. The panic of not being able to breath, and the short labored panting reinforcing in my mother how close to the end things were. As she described the events of that morning to me, I wondered about such a scene. My mother barely into remission, barely out of chemo, sitting with her mother as her mother struggled for each breath. Talk about facing your own mortality, I could not imagine the scene between mother and daughter, both winded from so much living.

"Tim, I need you to be ready for this. You aren't going to recognize her. A lot has changed in the last two months. Your grandmother has lost a lot of weight. She isn't the same." My mom spoke slowly, as if just saying the words brought a whole new reality to the forefront. That we would be having this discussion in baggage claim, where people are hopefully reunited with their belongings seemed surreal.

My father met us at the curb and drove us toward the hospital. Overhead the moon remained brilliant and illuminating, and the Seattle traffic seemed shocking in comparison to the pace of life in Eastern Washington. A twelve lane freeway and a frantic pulse propelled us forward. My father filled in the blanks as he and my mother continued to prepare me for what I would find when I saw Billie Lopeman in Intensive Care Unit.

I thought I was prepared. I really did. But nothing can ever prepare you for such a scene.

We entered the hospital through the emergency room, and it being a full moon, the place was packed. People watched us as we made our way up to the nurses station, signed in with security and then awaited approval to enter the inner sanctuary of the hospital. Finally, we were ushered toward the door, and the security officer nodded at us as we passed beyond his protection. I C U is not for the faint the heart and the security guard offered one of those weak smiles that people offer when they don't know what to say to a stranger, but they need to say something.

Anything.

The corridors and elevators and steps and hospital artwork-its all a blur now. I couldn't find my way back to that moment if I wanted to. What does remain clear is that first reception of the nurses at St Francis. Welcoming us the minute we came into I C U, I immediately sensed true warmth, caring, and something to balance the whir of machines and beepings and monitorings. In their faces I saw genuine smiles, and compassion. They weren't just coming to work, but they believed in the mission at hand. They were angels of compassion, care, and nuturing.

Entering the hospital room, I immediately became overwhelmed and teared up. Barely a hundred pounds, Billie looked up at me with that glassy morphine gaze that I've become familiar with in other situations of similar outcomes. She smiled, "Timbo" she managed through labored breathing. I took her side and sat on a chair next to her, and surveyed all I didn't want to see. Tubes and machines were everywhere. Her body seemed frail and not much more than a skeleton, and her breathing was still shallow. I tried to speak about the moon lit flight and about the snow and about the weather, but I could not find my voice and each word was shakier than the last.

My parents resumed the speaking when I could not.

I tried to change the subject and start off on several different courses, but my eyes kept interference and I always lost my voice and ended up in tears. Recomposing, I talked about Montana and my friends Frank and Kevin's kidnapping me there. We revisited places she loved and finally her breathing grew more relaxed and I found my way. I talked about writing. I talked about anything. Only a few times in the coming hour would my parents have to take over.

Eventually it came time for us to leave, and as we said goodbye, we did not know if she would still be there come morning. The doctors have no guarantees. They say things like keeping her comfortable and that she is frail. They talk about pain management and about her ailments. All of which became very real to me as I bent down to kiss her goodnight.

Her hands so covered in tubes, her chest covered in sensors, the only place open to gently kiss her goodbye, was her forehead. I bent over and gently told her I loved her and kissed her, whispering, "I wish you sweet dreams, grandma."

My father said a prayer of healing and I prayed too. I prayed that God might show mercy and that soon, while Billie dreamt of her beloved Montana, that He would arrive on Billie's old horse Babe. That He would offer her a leg up and that they would take a final ride together revisiting all the places she loved. Riding gently across the Sweetgrass Hills, westward toward the green alfalfa fields west of Cutbank, and then onward toward the promise of East Glacier. Across the flathead valley, toward Bull River and the Cabinet Mountains. Across the still waters of Lake Pend Oreille, up toward the ranch and down toward Spokane. Maybe she'd ride in one more parade, God and her. Maybe she'd see Grandpa. Maybe she'd see the future and know that all was well. Maybe.

I prayed silently that God would take her home, before what little that remained of her was gone.

Because Going west young man, in all its changing scenery is about change. Even for a woman named Billie Lopeman. And I knew that my grandmother, more than anyone else I know, would embrace such a ride.