Rough seas ahead
At 6 a.m. MST tomorrow morning I will be on a plane headed out to San Francisco to meet my friend B at the airport, where she will be coming from Wisconsin. Thence we shall make our way in a rental car north to a little nowhere place between Mendocino and Ft. Bragg next to Jughandle State Park to attend guitar camp. This is my third year
My first year, the trip coincided with my meeting A in person for the first time. We’d known each other about 7 months. Sweetheart that he was, he volunteered to drive me the 5 hours up to camp, then drove himself home for the weekend to work, and then he got up in the wee hours Monday morning to drive up to pick me up at 8 a.m., and then drove us the 5 hours home, stopping for lunch in Sausalito. When he first offered, I thought he was nuts. “Dude, that’s 10 hours driving in a day, 20 hours total.” “But 10 of them will be with you,” he said. Damn. That’ll get a girl right where she lives.
Last year, then, we made traditions out of the things we did the first year. I would get into town on Thursday so we’d have the day before we spent Friday on the road. We’d eat teriyaki cheesesteaks for dinner. And we’d hit Albertsons to pick up provisions for the road. I borrowed his sleeping bag so I wouldn’t have to lug one from home, since I was already packing for a week and bringing a guitar. And then Friday we’d load up his truck and spend the day driving and talking and marveling at the redwoods and listening to music. He was a wonderful traveling companion, and was the only man I ever knew who was perfectly content to stop for a potty break any time I needed to.
Also, last year he stayed up there with me instead of driving home, and instead of my staying at camp, we holed up in a cute B&B in Ft. Bragg. He would sight-see on his own during the morning, pick me up in the afternoon for more wandering together. Last year I bought mittens and a hat and he bought a didgeridoo at this little world imports shop. And then he’d drop me off at camp for dinner until 10ish, when he’d come pick me up. It was a lovely weekend, one that is even more special in that there will be no repeating it. And I hate that.
I’ve been in something of a funk since Thanksgiving, and how much the holidays contributed to that, for their own inherent blues and the fact that someone I love was missing from them, I don’t know. I really think it’s been a slow ramp-up of dread leading up to this trip. Instead of us talking and planning and looking forward to it, I’ve been all alone. There were a ton of practical things that emphasize this fact that hardly needs underlining. I wasn’t sure I would even go, as my usual ride on this trip was A. And given the potential for emotional overload, I didn’t think it safe for me to be driving alone in the inevitable rain on windy mountain roads any number of which could send you plummeting thousands of feet to the valley below if you weren’t paying close attention. I even talked to E about accompanying me; I didn’t think I could make it alone, but B volunteered to be my buddy as well as my friend. I have to fly into an airport I’m unfamiliar with, instead of his. I have to rent a car. I had to buy a sleeping bag, because I can’t borrow his. It’ll be a shorter trip than it has been in the past. There will be no discussing the Golden Gate, painted in International Orange, on the way out. There will be no lunch and wandering around Sausalito on the way home. There will be no nights at the B&B. There will be no dancing at the apartment. I love California because the time and adventures he and I spent there together. California without him…well, it’s fraught with peril to this fragile heart of mine.
I don’t know what to think, what to expect. I’ve been afraid to face this first, because it’s a doozy. This was OUR trip, and now it is only mine. There is an inherent, inescapable lonesomeness in that reality. And this weekend will be the 6-month anniversary of his passing. The timing is interesting, to say the least.
I’ve tried this week to brainwash myself. Every time a feeling of dread about the trip pops up, I follow it up with this mantra: "I’m looking forward to camp. I’m going to have a good time." Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly strong, I would change it to "I’m going to have a GREAT time." The briefest of pep talks, it fought my dread back a little, but only time will tell if it sticks with me. In any case, I decided if I focused on the dread, of what won’t be happening, I had a better-than-average chance of ruining my own trip before I even stepped into the airport to leave.
It may turn out that the anticipation will be worse than the reality, as it so often happens. I don’t know. It might be overwhelming. It might be anticlimactic. It might be healing. It might be some of each. I don’t really know. I know the ladies at camp will be supportive, and both B and the two women who run the camp have been informed of what I’m dealing with. However, I’ve little doubt I will feel his absence even more keenly than usual, no matter how warm and loving the company of everyone else.
But I think about the moment when one of the ladies who met him last year at the open mic a bunch of us went over to after camp officially closed asks, “Did your friend come with you this year?” and I have to explain, “He passed away in July.” After he’d lugged my guitar in like a pro roadie—inexplicably, in a group of 8 women who had just moments before come from guitar camp, I was the only one who brought her instrument—and then took care of all the ladies coats once we got there, I remember one of my fellow campers standing behind him, pointing at him, and mouthing exaggeratedly, “Keep this one!”
I tried. I wanted to. Lord, I wanted to.
I’m going because I love guitar camp. It inspires me, all those talented women. I’m going because he’d want me to go; he was my guitar guru, after all. I’m going because it’s going to hurt now, and it would hurt if I went later, so I may as well go now. I’m going because I don’t really want to miss a year. I like being a regular, and seeing the same folks each year and meeting a few new ones each time. I’m going to prove to myself that I can. I’m going.