Going Through the Storm

We were on our way back East, Frances and I and Madeline and our blind pug, enjoying a glorious day in Yellowstone.  Driving along the glacier lake, I was seized with a sudden urge to go swimming.  “Pull the car over” I asked Frances.  “Where?” she said.  “Anywhere… by the shore.  I… I need to go swimming.”  So she did, a little off the road.  I got down to my skivvies and jumped in the icy cold water.  I thought my heart would stop.  I came crashing to the surface and when my breath came back I yelled as loud as I could “YES!”.  God that water was cold!  I climbed out grabbed my clothes, dressed and we were on our way again.  “Odd decision” my lovely wife said to me.  “Yes” I agreed, “odd”.  Not sure why I felt so compelled to do that.

About an hour later as we neared the end of the lake, my cell phone buzzed,  we had been out of range, it was a message from my brother.: “Call me now”.  We pulled over along the shore.  I had just enough of a signal to get through.  “Dad had a heart attack about an hour ago.  While swimming in the pond.  He’s in a coma.  I need you here.  Now.”  I told him I was on my way.  I would find an airport and fly to home.  As we came out of Yellowstone down the Eastern side of the Rockies into the rolling prairies of Wyoming, I was on the phone for the next hour, finally finding a flight out of Billings, MT two hours to the north that would connect me to the Twin Cities and onto New England.  As we raced through the open prairie, my thoughts raced through a thousand memories, many of them having to do with water.  My father and I share a great love for water, he for the ponds and rivers of New England, me for the mighty oceans we spend our lives near. 

Just then, as we were driving, a storm came upon us.  Not one of those placid storms but a real drencher.  A gully washer as they say.  It rained buckets. Lighting and thunder.  “Should we pull over?” asked Frances.  “No”,  I said, “we have to through it.”  Through the storm, with determination and passion.  I was so glad she and Madeline were with me and with such calm as the storm in my heart raged as much as the skies around us. 

I caught my plane in Billings, and in Minneapolis and then to Hartford.  As I turned on my phone taxing to the gate, there was a message from my brother.  My dad died while I was in the air, above the storm clouds.  He simply slipped away.

As I drove from the airport to the hospital in Northampton, MA I suddenly realized what had happened.  I dove into that glacial lake in Yellowstone at the precise moment that he had a heart attack swimming in pond in Mass.  Our hearts had passed through the storm.  His heart was all done now after 83 rich years.  Mine still beating through the many more storms before me.

With Grace and Grit, John