The Mountain
“From the muses of Helicon, let us begin our singing, that haunt Helicon’s great and holy mountain, and dance on their soft feet round the violet-dark spring….”
—Hesiod, “Theogony”
The mountain is nothing but itself. It does not speak. It has no message, and yet it is the great metaphor maker. It reflects what the traveler brings to it: a getaway, quiet majesty, a challenge, security, or danger. It is all these things or none of them, and the traveler sees whichever he looks for in it. For millennia people have come to high mountains and sat at their feet or scaled their peaks, hoping to return with the answer to a question.
Six days a week, from Tuesday through Sunday, Paul Tobit drove a sightseeing bus on the winding roads at the base of Mount Rainier in Washington. People often asked him if he got tired of the view. He never did. The mountain was vast enough to provide endless material for wonder and contemplation. There was the sheer majesty of the towering peak, the way it changed with the seasons and the weather, the sense of danger and foreboding that came with its snow cap, where the oxygen was thin and adventurers risked life and limb for the chance to say they reached the summit.
“Magnificent in its symbiosis.” Those were the words Paul usually used on his tours to describe Rainier. Up on the mountain, everything is interconnected. The logs fall and they turn into mulch, which becomes soil for new trees. There’s an algae up there that grows in a wispy hanging vine. It somehow draws from the tree without choking it. To Paul, it was evidence of the hand of God.
The philosopher Edmund Burke described two different responses to natural beauty in his treatise On the Sublime and Beautiful: one originated in love, the other in fear. Fields full of flowers, meadows and ponds covered in lilies were comforting; they gave people a sense of harmony and security. They were pretty, but they were not sublime. To be sublime, a landscape had to evoke not only beauty but terror—a sense of something so great, so enormous, with a life span so long that we can scarcely comprehend it. It renders us weak and insignificant in comparison.
Mount Rainier was sublime. Even the most arrogant man would have to be humbled in its presence. It reminds us that the world is much bigger than we are, that there are still places that we cannot blast, or sell, or pave, or control. Is it any wonder that Jesus, who “went up to the mountain to pray,” came down with the message that “the meek shall inherit the earth” and delivered the sermon “on the mount”?
Paul enjoyed his job. There was no gossip, no politics, no deadlines or performance reviews. He found both solitude and company on the side of the mountain. The tourists who filed onto his bus each day were always in a good mood. You don’t take a sightseeing tour to be miserable and grumpy. The groups bonded quickly over their shared temporary interest in snapping photos of nature. After a pleasant day together, they parted ways without any messy breakups or accusations.
People take vacation snaps in a futile attempt to capture the mountain and the moment so they can take them home to flat states like Indiana and Kansas. There is something in our DNA that makes us want to hold onto the transitory. Photographs give us the pleasing illusion that we can. Yet the image never quite evokes the experience…. “The picture doesn’t do it justice. You had to be there.”
People also take photographs so they will not feel lonely. They take them for the absent friends they wish were there to share the view. There are few things more melancholy than looking out on a truly sublime landscape and realizing you are experiencing it all alone. This was something Paul knew quite well.
The ritual of being a tour guide appealed to him. What was for the tourists a singular experience was for Paul a repeating experience. Each day he would unlock the bus, jot notes in a couple of logs, and fill the gas tank. At 10:00 a.m., the visitors started to file in with their passes and take their seats. Some privacy-loving folks went straight for the back. The ones who liked to ask questions sat near the front. In the middle were the social ones who hoped to meet their new neighbors during the ride.
Paul rounded a familiar curve in the road and heard the expected sighs and murmurs as the tourists saw a spectacular view for the first time. He had developed an act of sorts over the course of two years. He knew what guests always asked, and he told them before they had the chance. He knew what jokes and lines made people laugh. He had his share of inspirational and thought-provoking observations too. And if that wasn’t the group’s mood, he could ply them with trivia and hold a contest, awarding a T-shirt to the winner. At the end of the day his pocket was always stuffed with more than his share of tips. He would never become rich on his mountain proceeds, of course, but he had everything he needed—regular meals, a small cabin with a spectacular view, and time to gaze at the mountain and reflect on life.
Throughout his tours, Paul liked to make references to burning out on his old job. Inevitably, toward the end of the tour, someone would ask what his old job had been. He loved their reactions when he said, “A minister.”
“Special Friend”
“I summited Mount Rainier.” Words are inadequate to the experience. All of the preparation, every single step, the times you think you can’t go on, the cold, the thin air—all that it means to accomplish that feat—it’s lost to everyone but the individual who undertakes the journey.
Of all of the parts of his job as a minister, Paul liked funerals the most. Of course, “like” isn’t the right word. No one “likes” having to perform a funeral. Yet ever since his wife, Sara, died, Paul found funerals, and only funerals, truly satisfying. Though he was an introvert by nature, he had always been a compassionate and thoughtful minister. Even as a young man just starting out in his ministry, he intuitively grasped when to offer comforting words and when to allow a silence. He had a stock of memorial prayers that made people cry and smile with private memories in the right balance. You could say he had developed the craft and had a good funeral technique.
After Sara died, however, Paul felt the full
weight of performing funerals. He became part of a fraternity of grief and understood all the emotions of the person in front of him. He remembered the small gestures: the offers of food, the shared memories, the shoulders he cried on. He came to believe that he could give sermons for the rest of his life and it would never have as much meaning as holding a recent widow’s hand and letting her cry for as long as she needed. It was the one time he still felt blessed to be a minister, to have the opportunity to know he was making a difference.
Until she got sick, Sara had been full of life and energy. It seemed like only yesterday that they had met. She sat behind the reception desk in the church office. He was smitten immediately by her charming freckles, the mane of curly red hair, and her warm and genuine smile. She made it her life’s mission to help him take his life less seriously. He never fully understood how someone so personable, outgoing, and universally loved could have chosen him. His joy existed in her. When he buried her in the cemetery beside the church, he buried his joy with her.
Could it really have been six years since Sara died? Sometimes it seemed like an eternity, and sometimes it seemed like only a day. At first he had believed it had to be a mistake. Someone like Sara could not possibly stop existing. She would walk through the door in her favorite pastel dress and laugh the way she always had. It was months before that feeling stopped haunting him.
The constant invasive memories of Sara stopped after the first year. One day he woke up and realized he hadn’t thought of her at all the previous day. Then two days passed without thinking of her. Then more. He stopped expecting her to be there. He found ways to take care of himself, to work around her absence, yet he could never truly fill the void she left behind. There was no substitute for the role she had played in his life.
He continued to live mostly on the momentum of his habits. He got up on Tuesday morning (Monday is a minister’s day off) and drove to the church with about as much enthusiasm as someone drives to an office cubicle for a job counting widgets. He met with people about weddings and baptisms and pasted on his best ministerial smile. He sat through the meeting to plan the sermon with Emily, the music director, and Marlee, the religious education director, and let his experience carry him through.
He waited for the mail in the early afternoon, a highlight of his day that inevitably disappointed. (No engraved invitations to lunch with the governor, no handwritten personal letters, just a few advertisements and newsletters from other churches.) Then he went home, heated up a frozen dinner, ate it off a folding table in front of the TV, went to bed around ten, and the whole thing started again.
Today was a Wednesday, normally a complete throwaway of a day, but fortunately, Paul thought, he had a funeral to plan. It made getting out of bed easier. He entered the church through a back hallway that led to the office. It was already unlocked when he arrived, which meant that Julie was in.
Julie had assumed the reception duties at the church after Sara became the minister’s wife. Now in her mid-forties, she had blonde hair, which she often wore in a long French braid. She had many of the same qualities that had made Sara perfect for the job. She was patient, warm, and interested in people. She was also the gossip hub of the church. Churches have files and records, but most of the real information about a congregation resides in the receptionist’s head. If you wanted to know anything about anyone in the church, it was Julie, not Paul, who could tell you.
Paul stopped in the restroom behind Julie’s desk and examined his face in the mirror. At forty-two, his hair was already salt-and-pepper gray. The hair at his temples had gone completely white, and he was starting to thin a bit at the crown. He reached down and grabbed the spare tire around his waist. It didn’t quite qualify as a “beer belly,” but he was certainly not the trim man he had been twenty years before. That was his real body, of course; this replacement was some kind of mistake. Paul thought the dark circles under his eyes made him look three times his age.
Then he had an even more disquieting thought. Maybe he looked exactly his age. Paul threw some water on his face, then went into his office and waited for his meeting with Stuart Briggs.
When Mary Adams died at age eighty-one, it came as a surprise to no one. The end came after years of slow decline that took her motor skills, memories, and sanity. Then there was the long death watch. She held on, uncomprehending and in pain, for weeks. She finally slipped into a welcome unconsciousness, where she remained for several days before finally letting go. “At least she is not suffering anymore,” people usually said.
Through all of it, Stuart Briggs was at Mary’s side. Mary was Stuart’s first and only love. They had met in high school and hit it off right away, but for whatever reason, Mary never was attracted to him. They never dated. Stuart waited in the background as she dated other boys. He was a guest at her wedding to another man. When her first husband had died, Stuart was there, hoping for his chance, but it never came. He waited through a second marriage, which ended in divorce.
After that, Mary came to rely on Stuart’s constancy. He was the person she called when she needed someone to go with her to the movies, to help her with an errand, or just to talk. They became regular companions, but as far as anyone could tell, they never had a physical relationship and it was never a romance, at least not for her.
When Mary became ill, it was Stuart who cared for her. He took her to church on Sundays, pushing her in her wheelchair even as walking became a challenge for him. He was calm and patient with her confusion and mood swings. He visited her daily in the nursing home long after she had forgotten his name. He stayed with her every day she was in the hospital and then in hospice. He was there when she died, holding her hand. Now he was making the funeral arrangements because Mary’s children were scattered across the country in California and Colorado.
He now sat before Paul holding a small scrap of newsprint. It was Mary’s obituary, a short notice mentioning her career as a teacher and her long membership in the church. It named her first husband (“pre-deceased by….”) and said she was survived by her two children and their families. Stuart was identified only as “special friend.” He had loved Mary longer than her husband; longer than anybody. The center of his world was gone, and yet he had no official title to acknowledge his status. When someone says, “I lost my wife,” everyone understands the magnitude of that loss. “I lost my friend” is different. Unless you know the person well, it has no meaning at all.
As Stuart talked about his thoughts for the service, Paul thought about obituaries. When a person you love dies, the obituary takes on an outsized importance. It is the community record that this person lived; she was here; her life did not pass without notice. Yet obituaries are also almost always flat and disappointing. They consist of a dry list of job titles and accomplishments and official connections. But what about the unofficial connections we have in life? Where are the teachers who changed our whole perspective; the mistresses; the dear, dear friends; the ones who worshiped us with unrequited love? What about the ones who got away? The ones we pined for who never returned our affections? Where do they fit?
Obituaries are written in shorthand, sketching out a biography but leaving out all of the context that creates a full life. Marital status is a shorthand, but a misleading one. You can be a devoted spouse or a disinterested spouse, an abusive spouse or a supportive spouse. You might have married for love or social status. It is all marriage. Career titles are a shorthand. The deceased held a job, but was it his main sense of pride and identity, or something he dragged himself to every day to pay the bills? You will never know from a death notice. Even seemingly straightforward words like “mother,” “father,” “daughter,” and “son” are shorthand. Was your brother “like a brother” to you, or were you distant or rivals? Was your father the constant presence who taught you to play baseball and took you to Cub Scouts, or was he the man who had sex with your mother and disappeared? Was your relationship with your mother loving or strained and difficult?
r /> The shorthand of obituaries is meaningful to those already in the know—but then, they don’t really need the biography. Our obituaries, and our biographies in general, are a show for those who know us the least. Paul thought he had stumbled onto the very definition of what it means to be intimate, to know someone well. It is to understand the meaning of those shorthand words for a particular individual, to understand the ambiguities of a life, the parts that do not fit neatly into boxes.