Leaving Loss Behind

What could I do? Lisa was no longer there to light my life. Her light was extinguished because she wanted so much to give life. Why was life and light being taken away from me? Why was I the one left alone? Charlie hopped around and looked at me as I fed him with a forlorn face that matched mine. Did he sense the gravity of Lisa's passing like I did? I think so.

As I made coffee and drank it that morning looking out the window at a sunny, but bitter cold, winter day, I thought briefly about suicide. Bitter tears that wouldn't stop running down my face as I rubbed my burning eyes. Why me? I didn't know. Was I witnessing the end of humankind? Was I only here to chronicle it. Would I get some relief? There was no answer to these questions running around my mind. No answer.

But I had a ghastly task to do and I couldn't put it off. I went in the bedroom and wrapped Lisa tightly with a sheet. She was light, less than 110 pounds pregnant, but still difficult to carry downstairs and outside in the snow and the 10° day that greeted me. Charlie was no help, getting in my way.

I quickly buried her in the snow alongside her baby boy to keep any marauding animals from finding her. I put Charlie inside and then put on my snowshoes and took the snow shovel to the nearest old graveyard, about three blocks away. Lisa never said what she did with her father when he died and I never asked. I couldn’t even contemplate how a 15-year-old had removed her father and buried him after he died.

The snow was so deep that the 6 foot wrought iron fence that outlined the place was buried, so I didn't have to worry about the locked gate. There were a lot of tall monuments in the crowded burial area from prominent families going back 150 years years or more. Using those that stuck up out of the snow with snow hats on top, I discerned there might not be any space left in an old cemetery that may have been filled in completely over 50 years before or more. Still, I had to look for a place to bury her anyway.

I dug around in a few places and hit smaller headstones in most. Finally, about noon, I dug down to the ground in one place that seemed not to have even any stone markers flush with the ground either--only tall, dried grass as an obstacle to digging. It was noon and the temperature was still about 20°, although I was sweating from all the exertion like it was midsummer. I needed to hydrate, too, so I retired for lunch at the truck. I started the truck up to warm it and recharge the batteries while I ate some lunch that was in the refrigerator there. Also had some frozen lemonade to quench my thirst that I thawed out with the microwave.

Fortunately, I had a pick and shovel in the trailer and got those out. As I was doing that, I realized that it had been three days since I checked on the goats. They had eaten all of the food I gave them and were bleating for more when I arrived. They also were very thirsty so I got them water. Thankfully, they probably could eat snow, get water from their food, or even go several days without water. I milked the nanny to take the pressure off her full udder and she was pleased that I did. I got so that I could tell her moods by the way she looked at me and bleated.

Taking the goat milk back to the shop, I checked on Charlie and got more water for the goats. When I got back to the gravesite, the ground was like concrete, frozen solid, but thankfully only for about 15 inches until I broke into soft wet soil that was easy to shovel but took some time. I only got down about three and a half feet, afraid that I would hit wood or metal of a casket buried at 6 feet.

Lisa and her baby were small. All I needed to do was make sure that she was underground so that marauding animals would not find her. I could have found a funeral home, broken in, and put her in a fine casket, but I didn't want to stand on ceremony with no one around to tell me otherwise. The sooner that nature did its work and her body returned to replenish the soil, the better I felt about it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Still, when I returned back home to Charlie's delight that evening, I felt the weight of the world on me and couldn't even cater to his entreaties to play. I made myself some warmed over soup and cried. I drank a bottle of scotch too quickly and almost didn't get to bed before I passed out.

Woke up two days later in the middle of the night with Charlie hopping up and down in joy that I wasn't dead like Lisa. I had a bad headache and was so dry I drank about a gallon of water followed by coffee as I tried to clear my head and think. All I could think about was that I needed to leave that place. I needed to get out of Hot Springs and the memories that I had made there. With Lisa and Oscar gone, there was nothing left for me but bad memories in this place.

But this wasn't Palm Springs. There was a biblical amount of snow covering the roads and highways. Unless I wanted to sled out, there was no way to leave until spring. I was trapped in a place I no longer wanted to be. A place I wanted to leave every day until that March day when the temperature reached nearly 75° and the last snow in this part of Arkansas, now reduced to dirty slush and ice, was rapidly melting and running off into nearby streams.

In the two months that preceded that day, I made a lot of goat cheese, reorganized and added to the stores I had on the trailer, removed Charlie's bunk set up to my regret and built a corral and ventilation for the goats so they could ride with me on my travels wherever they took me. I spent many lonely evenings playing with Charlie, working on those puzzles and playing games that I could play alone, each one reminding me of Lisa as I did.

Thaws were followed by more snow storms in a tantalizing way. But there was a lot to do gathering up the preserves we had made, making sure that the pigeons could make it on their own without anyone around; basically taking over the third floor in wintertime. In spite of the fences, little critters like mice and moles had gotten into the garden enclosures and were already wrecking havoc, so I opened the gates so that larger critters could take advantage of anything that would grow there as well.

It was March 10, as close as I could reckon from my still running smart pad with no Internet to connect to, that I started up the Peterbilt 576 to head out on the road again, going back east on a road I had already cleared of obstacles to Little Rock and beyond. Throwing caution to the wind, I had decided to tour the East in spite of all the reactors melting down, counting on staying in the hot zones only briefly and counting on spring rains to keep my path and air clear of radioactive dust. What did I have to lose? There was no one around to care one way or another. I didn't care anymore. Caring about myself left with Lisa.

As the miles quickly fell away behind me and I encountered patches of ice and snow, sometimes a foot deep in the higher elevations, even those challenges did not prevent layers of regret to gradually fall off my shoulders as I drove that day past Little Rock and all the way to Memphis, where it began snowing again. I pulled into one of those roadside rest areas and let the goats out to exercise.

The restrooms were still there and I checked the men's room out. It was quite nasty but I was able to relieve myself there. When I came back out, it was snowing and blowing very strong again. Both Charlie and the goats were predator magnets, so I got them both back in their respective inside places and settled in for the night with a hot supper. By morning there was three feet of drifting snow encircling the tractor and trailer. It was three days before it thawed and I could get back on the road again. I was grateful for the instant motel offered by the sleeper to keep me from setting up camp in those conditions.