Diary of Grief

Day Five: The Journey

In the car we’re silent. It’s 3:30 and Mom and I are headed downtown to visit the place where Steve breathed his last breath. A certain trepidation pulses through me. But given the circumstances, I can’t think of another place I’d rather be going in this moment. And I am so grateful to be making this journey with my mom.

We don’t know precisely where we’re going, so we end up parking the car, trailing around a bit, then re-parking and trailing around some more. Where we park the second time, we slip past a cyclone fence and explore an empty field of brittle, brown grass. We peer over the field’s edge into the creek below and scan the length of the bank. We are looking for any sign of the cross that Steve’s family has placed in the ground. But so far there’s no sign of it and I feel a sense of panic: what if we don’t find it? The desperate need to be at the place where Steve died is difficult to explain: it is a need to be close to him again in any way possible. I whisper some prayers to Steve: Help us find it, I plead with him, show us where to go. I feel as though he hears me.

With no luck, we head out of the field and back to the car, driving another several hundred feet or so. We park near an abandoned red shopping cart and somehow, it feels like we’re close now. Mom and I head toward the freeway overpass. The most likely place for a cross seems to be at the bottom of a steep hill that leads under the overpass, composed of loose dirt. I hand my camera, as well as a giant memento rock that I’ve been carrying, to Mom, and tell her I’ll head down and check it out. Just ten unsteady steps in, and I can see the very tip of a black, wooden cross at the bottom of the hill. My heartbeat picks up and I turn toward Mom: We found it. It’s down here.

On the way down, we pass a shapeless mound of stiffened blankets in the corner, between the overpass and the dirt path. I begin to note the details of this place that is already sacred to us, this place, where, for whatever reason, Steve ended up visiting on the day he died. There is a caged area along the top of the hill, a few plaid shirts scattered in the distance, bright tagging on the beams that uphold the overpass, a mattress...

I head to the cross first, Mom following behind. Be careful, Shannon she warns. But just a few steps in I slip, throwing my leg up into the air in a wild act of balance, just in time to catch myself. I wait for Mom, and we are on the hill side by side now. On the way down, we cling to one another for balance as our feet slip and move beyond our control. We hold onto one another’s arms and hands more tightly than I can ever recall. In fact, this may be the tightest we’ve ever held one another. Each of us is concerned about the other falling. Mom looses her balance and I grab onto ever part of her body I can find, and try to steady her.

At one point, maybe a third of the way down, journeying in this loose dirt with my mother, there is a moment that occurs to me so suddenly and so briefly, I don’t know it even qualifies as a moment. First it, is a feeling, like something washing over me: a baptism of goodness. Something precious, and fragile and unexpected comes to find me in this otherwise grievous of moments: it is connection; connection with my mother. We are, here and now, despite whatever has come before us, (and for mothers and daughters, things do come) connected to each other by something larger than ourselves. It is a grace, a gift of unexpected origins. And I accept it so gratefully here on the slippery and perilous hill.

The second beautiful thing to wash over me is this: I see Steven (not literally, but with the eyes of my soul) smiling at us, Mom and I. I see him loving us in this moment. I see him as the center of this celebratory connection between my mother and I. And knowing he loves us both, I feel connected to him, too.

We finally make it, sort of galloping without choice down the last bit of that steep hill and there, wedged into a space between boulders, the black cross stands, with fresh flowers beneath it. It means everything and nothing to be here in the place where I know Steve died: everything because it’s the best the way I can find to be near him again, to honor him, to find him who cannot be found – and nothing because Steve is still gone, and visiting this place has not filled the hole that’s inside of me. I don’t know what I expect: to see an apparition of his face on the underpass walls? Or to hear his voice echoing across the creek? Maybe it’s difficult to avoid such fantasies in the midst of grief. But the spot is peaceful and that is something; not an apparition, but something. A generous sunlit wall under the overpass forms the backdrop for the scene and occupying the area just below, is a shallow body of water that connects to the creek further down. The water is so still, and beautifully lit. I think of Steve’s soul, still like that. And light. The line from the Nicene Creed, God from God, light from light, comes to mind. To think of Steve reunited with the very same light from which he came is comforting to me.

Mom tosses a colorful bouquet into the spot near the cross. It’s clear I cannot toss the ten-pound rock I’ve made for Steve, so I make the precarious climb over the boulders and lay it down.

The photo of Steve and I in Disneyland, sporting our Mickey Mouse hats and two giddy smiles, is decoupaged on the rock’s surface. In Sharpie, I have written: To my first friend ever, Steve. I love you always, Shannon. And I do. I loved him then and I love him now. And always.