Ashes Twice on the Silver Fork Trail

          When my friend Kate and I hiked up the Applegate's Silver Fork trail in early July, we walked through God's own flower garden.

Every few yards, it seemed, another wildflower held up a stop sign. We stopped to exclaim over a new little blue jewel (a variety of Jacob's ladder). We stopped to climb up a bank of marsh marigolds alongside a small stream and found rein orchids and monkey flowers not visible from the trail. We stopped at steep hillsides of blue flax, red Indian paintbrush, yellow cinquefoil, purple penstemon so rich in color I wanted to wrap myself in it. The floor of the woods was pied now with yellow arnica, now with white yarrow, now with scarlet gilia. We identified seventy different kinds of flowers on the three-mile hike.

          When we reached Observation Point, where snow-streaked Mt. Shasta shimmered above green valleys and forests, we climbed an outcrop of rocks and ate lunch with that magnificent view before us.

          I had brought some of Mike's ashes with me. After lunch, I stepped up on a rock, looked towards Mt. Shasta, Pilot Rock, and the whole stretch of the Klamath Knot, where the Cascades and the Siskiyous snarl together, and I gave it all to Mike. I read a poem I had written called "Change of Vocabulary," about loving being able to say, "I am Mike Kohn's wife" for almost a year, until:

                     Now 'wife' smacks up against

                    the fence of the teeth.

                    Lips try to form the word,

                    but the tongue with its truth-telling

                    forces 'widow' out instead

                    to hang frozen in the air of reality.

The poem ends with the word "widow," which hung in the air for a moment before I thanked Mike for making me his wife and threw his ashes to the glory of Mt. Shasta.

          After I got home, I was haunted by the beauty of the flowers on the Silver Fork trail. I wanted to give Mike to the flowers, too, so the next morning I got up early and hiked again, alone this time, up the Silver Fork trail.

           I knew where I wanted to be and went straight there: to a mound of black rocks, not quite at Observation Point. I climbed to their top, took off my pack, and wandered down the hill towards the Dutchman Peak side, where I wasn't visible from the trail.

Completely alone, I climbed among the flowers. I counted nineteen varieties just in that one spot. Bees buzzed and butterflies flitted all around me. I lay down among the penstemons and paintbrush, being careful not to lie on a bee.

I took pictures, ate a bit of lunch, drank some water. And I talked to Mike. I told him how beautiful it was there among the flowers. I told him how much I missed him, how much I wished he were there with me. I said, in a burst of anguish, "Why did you have to die? Why did you die now, when things were only getting better and better?" The tears came in a downpour.

          Grief is not a constant ache. Grief comes and goes. I can read my poems and shed a tear and spread Mike's ashes in a beautiful place with a pang in my heart. Or, as now, my heart can twist with pain and the sobs come like hailstorms.

         Emotional outpourings, whatever they might do for the living, change nothing of the fact of death. I stopped crying and read the poem I had brought, "Spring Promises," which asks whether spring "promises me renewal from this now of sorrow." Maybe. Renewal is certainly the promise of spring, but I am still in the now of sorrow.

          Nonetheless, I was surrounded by beauty: the flowers, the mountains, and the forested slopes. The scene was soothing and peaceful. I stood up, took a deep breath, and hesitated with the vial of Mike's ashes open in my hand.

          "Rest in beauty," I said, and threw his ashes with an ecstatic flourish over the flowers.

The Difference a House Makes

        A year ago this month, when Mike was between cancer episodes (though, of course, we thought it was "when Mike was cancer-free"), we joined 32 members of the Kohn family for a family reunion on the Big Island of Hawaii. We flew to Hawaii a few days early to meet Mike's nephew, Jeff, for some time together in Hilo, where we stayed at an airb&b called Loloma Cottage. The place charmed me from the time I walked through wet grass and past lemon, avocado, and breadfruit trees to its front porch, where a bowl of avocados and lemons sat on a small table between two bright red chairs so big and comfortable I immediately sat in one.

         The house was hippy-adorable: a porch and a one-room interior with a low double bed at one end, a kitchen at the other, and an outdoor shower and bathtub. It had a tin roof, like all houses in Hilo, but it also had tin walls, a sliding screen for a front door, and, in a lot of places, screens instead of windows. The unpainted wood of the house made it look as natural as its surroundings. The bright colors of everything else—painted chair, shower curtain—took a cue from the colorful fish and flowers of Hawaii. The house nestled so tightly among the tropical vegetation it was like another natural element.

        Mike, Jeff, and I sat on the porch and drank coconut water from a coconut that Joe, the airb&b host, had left for us, its top already lopped off. Little Hawaiian-colorful, neon-green geckos, called gold dust day geckos, with droplets of red on their heads, blue along their sides, and gold dust on their backs, climbed up the porch poles, the chairs, and Mike's feet. Doves cooed incessantly. At night when we came back to the cottage from hiking Waipio or bathing in the Mermaid Pools, tree frogs greeted us with a loud chorus. We went to bed with their songs chorusing in our ears. 

        The next morning the first rooster in the neighborhood got the jump on the others by crowing before the sun came up. Then all the birds woke up and started their morning songs. We were surrounded with birdsong, as loud in the house as outside it. 

        We stayed in Hilo for three days, then drove across the island to join the family reunion in Kona, where we would stay for the next six days. Our airb&b there was a large house in a suburban neighborhood, with a large kitchen and four bedrooms for the eight of us staying there. There were a large refrigerator, two bathrooms, an outdoor shower for rinsing off saltwater and sand from the beach. Every room had air-conditioning and fans. The doors could be closed and locked. During the day, if we were at the house, we were usually on the cool porch, where we watched yellow, canary-like birds and red-crested cardinals pecking in the lawn and big white cattle egrets catching bugs on branches of the bushes. Doves cooed all day. 

        Although the humidity, frequent rain showers, sunshine, near-by beach, colorful birds, and gorgeous flowering trees with their heavy, sweet, tropical scents assured me I was in Hawaii, in the house I felt like I could be anywhere in suburban USA. The geckos, the tree frogs, the press of tropical vegetation, the loud and incessant night sounds, the cacophonous birdsong—all the outdoors that was present in the indoors at Loloma Cottage was shut out, either by walls and windows or by asphalt and buildings. The house in Kona was comfortable and easy, but I missed the Hawaiian nature that was so much a part of the little handbuilt cottage tucked into the tropical vegetation of Hilo.

Itch, Itch, Scratch, Poor Wretch

What is an itch?

    A sparkler under the skin, flaring upward, stabbing the underside of the skin with tiny sharp pinpricks of fire. A demand for scratch.

Why does it occur?

    Perhaps because you have an allergy to fragrances in substances like soaps and detergents and although you knew that commercial hand sanitizer must have fragrance in it (of course, because otherwise it would smell like alcohol; why did't you think about that?), you accepted your friend's offer that you use hers after you touched her phone because, alter all, she was doing you a kindness and you wouldn't want to deny her that opportunity, would you?

Where does it occur?

    On various parts of the body, now here, now there: arms, hands, wrists, between the fingers, on the palm, shins, ankles, knees, tops of the feet, back of the neck, scalp, chin, forehead, ear lobes, under the breasts, around the navel, in the pubic area, tops of the thighs (front and back)—just about everywhere except the bottoms of the feet and, so far, thank goodness, the unreachable back.

What can you do about it

    (1) You can scratch and scratch and scratch until the flesh burns and you lie back exhausted and let the burn take the place of the itch till in a few minutes the itch demands scratch again. Be careful not to tear the skin in your frenzy to get at the fire.

    (2) You can try to smother the fire by rubbing the itch hard, but it will always smolder under the rubbing motion.

    (3) Fire retardant in the form of an itch-relief medication will put it out for, maybe, ten minutes. Then it comes back as though never treated.

    (4) Cold water will put out the fire most effectively and for the longest time. Keep a bathtub full of cold water for immersion when the fire comes into the legs or the stomach. If you can stand the cold, you can even immerse yourself to the back of the neck. Say good-bye to hot showers and to a solid night's sleep. Keep a pot off ice water by your bedside for plunging your arms into when the itch demands it during the night. The fire will always come back, but for a while there will be relief.

    (5) Do nothing. Don't scratch. Ha. Just try it.

Will it ever stop?

    Yes. It eventually works itself out of the system, and there will be no more fire, no more itch. In the meantime and forever after, never, never, never put your skin in contact with any substance that has fragrance added to it. Read all labels. Essential oils are all right, but if the label says, "Fragrance" or "Parfum [perfume]" in the list of ingredients, DO NOT USE. Remember what an itch is, and DO NOT USE.

Breathing Lessons

    This summer I've been taking breathing lessons. 

    That sounds dumb. We all know how to breathe, don't we?

    If I say I'm taking pranayama lessons, it sounds more reasonable, and, actually that's what it is. But what is pranayama except a way to breathe?

    I'm learning, then, to breathe well. I'm learning to breathe deeply, letting the air begin in the pelvic floor and rise to the top of the ribs and the chest. I'm learning to let the ribs dictate the flow of air. I'm learning to breathe slowly and smoothly, which isn't as easy as it sounds. I listen to the breath as it goes through the windpipe, through the throat. When I try to get the air all the way to the top of the chest, I hear it becoming rough and forced. The idea is to get the air to flow into the body as you desire it to but not to force it to do that. The idea is to be completely relaxed. The idea is to open the chest and let the air come in. When I try to force the breath, I tense up somewhere, usually in my hands. A few recovery breaths allow me to check the body for tension and to relax again.

    I decided to join my yoga teacher's pranayama class (by Zoom) when she offered it two months ago because I thought it would help me deal with my husband's recent death. I thought it would help me grapple with grief. I thought good breathing might be the key to acceptance or recovery or peace or whatever it is I need to find at this moment.

    Certainly I was right about all that, but I hadn't realized how difficult pranayama would be, and, after all, I was surprised at how much good it did me, too. Concentrating on nothing but the breath for half an hour is a deeply meditative activity. I can't be thinking of anything else, like the useless sort of wishing Mike were here that I so easily fall into, and emotions can't creep in or overwhelm me because there's no room for that if I am trying to breathe well. 

    I was also surprised at how complex pranayama is, how many different ways there are to do it: the long, slow ujjayi breath lying down, the ujjayi breath seated, half closing the nostrils for the inbreath, half closing them for the exhale, closing one nostril and then the other, learning to make the sound in the throat with both the inhale and the exhale—and lots more. 

    I just signed up for my third month of lessons. I don't aspire to being a pranayama yogi, but the classes are doing for me what I wanted them to do. They are good for me, and I am enjoying the practice. Certainly I can breathe without knowing pranayama, but knowing it, I breathe better, my posture is better, and my emotional equilibrium is better. That's reason enough to learn some pranayama.