You Got This

Albuquerque. I drove there today. Alone. All four hundred twenty miles of it. I’ve never done this before. It’s a familiar route, but only because it’s the main way out of Arizona, and Rob and I have driven it together many times. Today is different, though. Today, it’s the first leg of a trip that will culminate with Rob’s memorial service in his hometown on the gulf coast of Florida. 

Sarasota was a different place when Rob was a boy. Far from being the congested city it is today, it was once full of dense woods and open beaches where he learned to fish and hunt and sail boats. His childhood adventures there rival his fictional favorite, Tarzan. Only Rob really lived in a tropical jungle. He ate fresh (road kill) armadillo. Camped in the piney woods, building campfires where he and his teenage friends roasted whatever wild game they bagged, or canned sardines if the hunting didn’t work out. The boys he grew up with were lifelong friends.

When Rob and I got married, we moved to Sarasota where he began his firefighter career, following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. He taught me to love and appreciate all the woodsy haunts where he spent his childhood, especially Myakka State Park where it’s practically a guarantee that you can see wild alligators any time you make the drive out there. Gray spanish moss drape massive stands of southern oaks, while dense palmettos overwhelm the undergrowth beneath. You’ve gotta watch where you walk in woods like those.

It’s a whole different kind of wild there. A lot like Rob.

As much as he loved Florida, he also loved the mountains. And the desert. And farmland. Any time we had a few dollars saved up, we hit the road and traveled by car or minivan or SUV to see as much of this amazing America as we could squeeze into two or three and sometimes four weeks. Our last vehicle had 298,000 miles on it when I traded it in last month and we took credit for all but 20,000. We’ve crisscrossed this country numerous times, from Seattle to Maine, Montana to Texas, and all the heartland in between. We visited forty-eight states in our forty-four years together.  North Dakota and Hawaii didn’t make the list because, well, North Dakota. And you can’t drive to Hawaii.

Rob taught me how to travel and today I took everything I learned from all those miles I navigated for him and set out on my own. I’m on this journey to tell him good-bye once more. His ashes are already in place at the foot of a headstone in his family’s cemetery plot. Next week my family and I will gather with his mother and sisters and together mourn the man we lost too soon.

I’ve grieved all day today. My route leaving Arizona took me through all our favorite places on the Mogollon Rim where we finally made our dream come true to live in the mountains, only to lose it after five short weeks. It was the shortest route google maps offered, but the most painful. We spent most of our marriage in the places where I drove today.

I passed through Payson where our kids spent much of their own childhoods playing in the woods and throwing rocks in Tonto Creek. I drove by the entrance to Woods Canyon Lake where Rob and I escaped any time the desert heat got too suffocating. So, we were there a lot. When the turnoff to our cabin in Heber appeared, I followed it for a mile and a half to the driveway where Rob’s homemade sign sits out front, a slice of juniper with the address where ambulances came last January when we were seriously ill.

I’d never seen our house in the spring, and I wanted to see what it looked like with the bushes filled out and new growth in the planters Rob had built. The new owners hung a hammock out back between two large pines—it was the one thing that made me smile. It’s clear they love it the way we did. Selling the house to their young family was the only thing I could do to protect the place where we barely got to live. We were there in the stark fall and winter—we never got to see how pretty it is when it’s full of life, watered and vibrant. Sitting in the driveway of the last home Rob and I shared, it took a while before I could see to back out onto the road. I didn’t want to leave. Goodbyes are like that.

The sign Rob had made, the one he’d talked about having for decades, wasn’t in place there, though. Next week I’ll be reading his name on a headstone instead of reading the words ‘McLeod’s Keep’ on the massive piece of juniper Rob commissioned for that cabin in Heber. It’s not fair. That’s not whining or selfish, it’s simply the truth. And facing the truth has been as much of my journey as the drive across America will be this week for me.

We’ve lost so much. I’ve lost so much. I still can’t believe it most of the time. Even tonight, when I got to my hotel room, the first thing I thought when I put my things down was that I needed to call Rob and let him know I got here safely. The agony in my gut doubled me over as I realized that my brain is still protecting me from the full reality that Rob is gone. He doesn’t answer his phone anymore. The instinct to touch base with him was so strong, though, that remembering he’s not waiting to hear from me felt like he had died all over again.

Grief is relentless.

There was a moment today, though, a mercy for a while, that softened the hard reality of what I’m doing these next two weeks. One of our favorite places is on top of the Mogollon Rim on state highway 260. The four-lane highway is steep and curvy, driven at fairly high speeds lest you get run over by trucks and campers on their way to cooler heights. The road follows the very edge of the Rim and all that lies between vehicles and a death drop to the Ponderosa Pine floor below are concrete barriers. The view is spectacular and it’s hard not to take a quick look at the expanse of thousands of acres of pines that spread as far as you can see.

I had trouble seeing it, though, through my tears. My hands held the steering wheel in a death grip while I tried to control my emotions. The memories of all the times we’ve driven that road together, gasped at the view like we were seeing it for the first time, it all rolled in on me like a monsoon storm as I climbed that mountain.

In that moment of pain and sorrow, I sensed Rob’s presence with me. I’ve felt his presence before, but usually it’s in moments of rare joy when our family is laughing together the way we always loved doing. But today, I knew he was aware of how hard this trip is for me. How much pain I’ll revisit and share with family and friends. And I knew I’m not alone.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to know the veil between this life and the next is thin and that someone who loves us from the other side is close by. But I’ve talked with many others who’ve experienced the same thing. I know it’s a mercy of God to allow us this awareness. Rob’s presence was close for the next hour while I drove past Woods Canyon Lake and down that long road to our cabin in the woods, even as I sat crying in the driveway we owned last Christmas. And as I left Heber, the sensation faded with it. But I left comforted. Not that there won’t be more tears and more pain. But today, comfort came when I needed it and, with it, strength to do this impossible thing that life has asked of me.

I am grateful to God for carrying me, surrounding me, allowing the veil to be thin in places, and walking through this experience with me. I don’t know how I’d get through this without Him. And in the moments when I feel His arms around me, I understand that He meant it when He said He'll never let me down or loosen His grip on me. That's when courage comes again.

I’m not alone.