Down to the River ...

Anyone who knows me professionally would not be surprised to hear that my healing place is at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser River. I love to go there and wade into the freezing water, picking rocks and contemplating life. I had to opportunity to speak at one of the Lakeland Mills funeral and there I suggested a healing ritual. While the words were lost on one of the workers, who asked, "Who the f*&k was the guy who talked about the stupid rocks?" the ritual has served me well. The first suggestion is to just go down there and sit, watching the water move past you. I find it difficult not to notice the weather, and all the changes that are constantly impacting the river channels. Some days I select rocks to keep, and other days I hold tight to a rock while I connect with my frustration or struggles. I then yell as loud as I can and throw the rock back into the river. There have been days when I visit the river daily, and other times in my life when weeks pass without a visit.

That is where I found myself a few days into the box building. The design that I had chosen was similar to the first box I build, my grandmother's. The box was tapered and I was looking for a centre piece board. I remembered having collected several wide boards that I had kept in my carport roof. For those of you who don't know, my house burnt down at the end of January. One of the only salvageable things were these boards, however many of them were scorched by the flames. The board I selected was 10 inches wide and seemed perfect to become the centre piece of the box. The only issue is that this board also symbolized another significant loss for me. I felt it needed to be cleansed of that negative energey so that it would be free to contain the grief I had for Baxter.

I asked one of Baxter's friends, Adam, if he wanted to help me engage in this cleansing ritual. We drove down Patricia road and parked at the end, knowing we would have the opportunity to have a discussion while we walked down to the river. I explained to Adam my need to cleanse this board and suggested that we use the principle of see one, do one, teach one. I rolled up my jeans, took off my shoes and socks and waded into the river, washing the board. Adam then followed suit. I then stuck the board in a root  and allowed the water to flow around the board. Adam was reminded about the raft trip that Baxter had talked about. I floated the board down the river to him where he caught it. I suggested that I would give him some time alone to spend with the board, and suggested that he listen to his intuition and do what seems natural. He emptied his pockets and threw the contents on the river shore and sat down in the water.

I sat back and then went about my job of selecting a rock to throw into the river. When I picked up the first rock, I was filled with so much gratitude in the moment, I had to slip it into my pocket. It was only a while later that my thoughts shifted to some of the frustrations I was experiencing in the moment. I then shared with Adam the above ritual and threw this rock with all my strength. I then reached into my pocket and explained to him my feelings of gratitude as I had watched him in the river, so playful and how through him, I had felt connected to Baxter. I gave him this first rock and we walked back to the car. When we arrived, he realized he had forgotten his keys, so we went back down to the river.

By this time, a hippie girl had set up her things around the spot we had been hanging out. She was playing with her hula hoop, and her hyperactive dog. We searched the beach, getting closer and closer to her personal space. She then asked us why we were there, and what we were looking for … I brushed her off, suggesting that she didn't need to know the reason of our visit. It would wreck her day. She continued to push and after the third request, the only words I could get out is that my 22 year old son had died. I choked back the tears, but was also thinking about the song she was playing on her IPOD. I asked Adam if that song had any meaning for him, and he suggested that he was reflecting on Baxter singing the song a few weeks previously. Both our hearts were filled with gratitude as we walked back to the car. I realized that even in the darkest hour of my grief, I could open my heart, and experience significant connections with Baxter, both individually and through his amazing friends.

My Journey; intersecting headwaters.

The headwaters of my journey begins way up in the mountains. You see within my role as a crisis response social worker and trauma therapist, I have been exposed to the tears of many, way up in these mountains. The tears have gathered together and formed into trickles, and these trickles have formed puddles which eventually made their way into tributaries. Not only do the tears contain the sorrow, but they also form a pattern of resiliency and strength that I have seen transformed from the sadness and struggle. My life perspective has been shaped by these stories and I have come to terms with the idea that life is precious, and there is no guarantee on this earth except the fact we all shall perish one day.

My river that I have chosen to call gratitude, has ebbed and flowed throughout my life. It started as a gentle meandering creek that flowed effortless within a prairie river valley. This creek then became a stream that flowed into a scenic forest, with few unpredictable turns and pitfalls up until 5 years ago. Since that time there has been sections of rapids and waterfalls, although from my perspective the flow has continued to be consistent and I have never lost sight of the natural energy and the experience of gratitude.  I had hoped that the river was going to have a significant section of calmness after I recovered from my house burning down in January of this year, and I started to experience stability within my personal relationships. I had just said to a friend recently that my rapids are starting to slow, and I look forward to meandering for a while … not so. On September 3^rd, there was a knock on my door at 12:25. I opened the door and saw an RCMP officer and two familiar faces of the victim services workers. I knew the visitor of death was upon me. I didn’t struggle with the disbelief, I just needed to know the who … I was curious about the name of the club that no one seeks membership of … the club I would like to rename, “shit happens”.

The words, Baxter Douglas Goerz, still ring in my ears. For a split second, I couldn’t remember if he was travelling to Calgary alone … I later learned he was going alone because he believed he was preparing himself for a mystical journey. He had purchased a ticket along with his beloved EM to travel to Cambodia on the 23^rd of Sept. This last road trip was part of his musical bucket list cross off tour. This was to be the third musical weekend he would attend this summer. His friends tell me that he was in a good place, if he was an athlete we might describe it as “the zone” or in the flow. He had enjoyed the last 3 weeks back in Prince George reconnecting with his peers after a 6 month hiatus being exposed to the culture of Fort Nelson. It is so easy to visit the questions, Why … I have heard the pitfalls of asking any questions that begin with this toxic word, instead I chose to think of the statement, NOW WHAT?

As many of you know I had built boxes for many families who had lost a loved one. Some of these lives were long and full and others were full of tragedy and trauma. I knew that the work of building a box, can guide the hands, and redirect the adrenalized energy into the creation of a vessel, a utilitarian container that was not only necessary but instrumental in telling Baxter’s story. I had learned in the past to do less, and allow others to utilize their skills and abilities. In this case it took me less than a couple of hours to engage the basic cuts. My first delegation was my kids and immediate family. I knew they could assist in drilling the tapered holes for the dowels and gluing and screwing the floor. Many hands make light work and less clamps were necessary with the hands available for assembly. My friend John let us use his porch, and my brother guided and directed my path when my brain turned to mush. I knew the basic box just needed to be strong enough to transport my son home from Calgary. I could finish it later, spend more time on the lid design and worry about the rough sanding and decoration later … My single focus was to bring my son home as soon as possible.

Meet my new best friend Tyler

I was profoundly impacted by one of the friends who got up and spoke at Baxter's memorial on Saturday. He had met Bax for 3 weeks during a Mr. PG contest several years ago. We had planned to have freivilliges (or free mike) to allow those people the opportunity to speak. While I don't remember the details of his talk I do recall the warmth in my heart, knowing that Baxter impacted people in a positive way. Baxter ended up being crowned Mr. Congeniality, an award chosen internally by all those in the contest.

After the service, Tyler came out to the cabin. Initially he hesitated coming in the cabin as he thought this was for only intimate friends and family. I welcomed him in with open arms and said any friend of Baxter's is a friend of mine. Baxter was in his box, and it was closed and at this point. Tyler was hesitant to see his dead friend. Tyler did end up staying for a while and we told stories about growing up.  It turns out that I had met Tyler 14 years previously. He suggested that because of this event he has a different perspective about death, and has attended many funerals, and spoke at a few of them. You see, Tyler had experienced his own near death when he almost drowned in the Fraser River. I won't bore you with all the details, but when he came in to the hospital,he was misidentified. I was the emergency social worker, and it blew him away that I had been the person that broke the news to his mom and had provided support to his family while he was in hospital.

The other 'coincidence' was that he had lived in Saskatchewan crossing, and was able to give me some nice places to see when I returned there next. (this was the scene of the Baxter's MVA) After a while we needed to move the box so my friend Crystal could paint a piece inside the footboard. He helped move the box, the lid was removed and he ended up spending time face to face with his friend and before he tucked a beer into the box ...

I am not your therapist … but you are welcome to join me on my journey

I had realized right from the beginning my needs to care for others and my own needs to heal were not always incompatable. I told many of Baxter's friends, "I am not going to be your therapist, but you are welcome to join me on my journey." I also said numerous times, "Just because this is hard, doesn't mean it is not healthy." These are phrases that I have learned the wisdom from in the past and had many opportunities to put it into practice the last three weeks.

I gathered together with some co-workers yesterday and shared some of my story. One of the things I was extremely grateful for was that throughout this journey, I never experienced ambiguity as to my next step. That is not to say I experienced total chaos when I ventured far beyond my own nose and started to plan a few steps in advance. I was careful in my use of language and the words: needs, wants, preferences, and indifferences. I also had an amazing support team that really meant it when they said, "Anything we can do to help," as you can see in the above picture.

Now that the dust has settled, in my first few baby steps of grief, I wanted to celebrate the choices that worked for me. As you will read in the blog, I had many opportunities to connect one on one with people. My nature was to just rush out and do it myself. However, when I took a breath and listened to my intuition, I realized that I could invite individuals to join me. I realize now that they were not only helping me, they were helping themselves.

Bike ride

Eight years ago almost to the day, Bax and I headed out on a father-son motorcycle trip. You see, I was a fan of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The story talked of how a father and son had found themselves while traveling the roads of the northern United States, about the same year that I was born. I had also been a child protection worker and intervened in hundreds of parent-teen conflicts. The common thread to those interventions is that the parents had lost touch or connection with their teenager and yet they still placed expectations on them. It hit me: parenting was all about having a relationship with your kid, a connection so that when challenges arose, it was the connection that assisted you in weathering the storms of the teenage life. It is funny now that I reflect back on each one of my boys' transition to adulthood and, although my last one hasn't yet emerged from the forest, we never really had to shelter any storms.

I packed up my 1982 Honda Silverwing (truth be told, I probably doubled the weight rating on that old girl) and we headed to Williams Lake, Bella Coola, took the discovery inland ferry to Port Hardy, intersected the island at three points to get to the east coast, and then came back via the Sunshine coast and Highway 99. It was an unforgettable trip: we never had one drop of rain and we talked about that trip for the rest of his life.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author would always travel with classic books that he would read to his son. I decided to do the same, using his book as one of my favourites. I remember during the trip struggling to keep up; I had the goal of reading the entire book on the trip. If you have ever travelled on a motorcycle and camped, you would know that there is never enough time. After engaging with some of my expectations, I remember relaxing and just reading a few choice passages. I always wondered what my boys thought during the endless miles and drone of the motorcycle. Baxter told me that he would play songs in his head. Maybe that was their first opportunity to practice the gift of meditation, connecting thoughts, and enjoying nature pass by. A day before his 18th birthday, I sent Bax a hardcopy of that book. I know that because he had kept the Amazon gift receipt as a book mark in the book and his friends had given me back his book a few days after his death. As I was sitting with his friends in the kitchen discussing Baxter's life, they started asking the question, "Where is Baxter now?" I asked them if I could read a passage from the book. I turned to the afterword in one of the later additions and read.

Afterword

The receding Ancient Greek perspective of the past ten years has a very dark side: Chris is dead. He was murdered.

At about 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 17, 1979, in San Francisco, he left the Zen Center, where he was a student, to visit a friend's house a block away on Haight Street. According to witnesses, a car stopped on the street beside him and two men, black, jumped out. One came from behind him so that Chris couldn't escape, and grabbed his arms. The one in front of him emptied his pockets and found nothing and became angry. He threatened Chris with a large kitchen knife. Chris said something which the witnesses could not hear. His assailant became angrier. Chris then said something that made him even more furious. He jammed the knife into Chris's chest. Then the two jumped into their car and left. Chris leaned for a time on a parked car, trying to keep from collapsing. After a time he staggered across the street to a lamp at the corner of Haight and Octavia. Then, with his right lung filled with blood from a severed pulmonary artery, he fell to the sidewalk and died.

I go on living, more from force of habit than anything else. At his funeral we learned that he had bought a ticket that morning for England, where my second wife and I lived aboard a sailboat. Then a letter from him arrived which said, strangely, "I never thought I would ever live to see my twenty-third birthday.'' His twenty-third birthday would have been in two weeks.

After his funeral we packed all his things, including a secondhand motorcycle he had just bought, into an old pickup truck and headed back across some of the western mountain and desert roads described in this book. At this time of year the mountain forests and prairies were snow-covered and alone and beautiful. By the time we reached his grandfather's house in Minnesota we were feeling more peaceful. There, in his grandfather's attic, his things are still stored.

I tend to become taken with philosophic questions, going over them and over them and over them again in loops that go round and round and round until they either produce an answer or become so repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now the question became obsessive: "Where did he go?'' Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. He had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of these answers made any sense. It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn't just imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always appear, but where would he appear now? After all, really, where did he go? The loops eventually stopped at the realization that before it could be asked "Where did he go?'' It must be asked "What is the 'he' that is gone?''

There is an old cultural habit of thinking of people as primarily something material, as flesh and blood. As long as this idea held, there was no solution. The oxides of Chris's flesh and blood did, of course, go up the stack at the crematorium. But they weren't Chris. What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, and that although the pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of. Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the centre of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything. That's probably why grieving people feel such attachment to cemetery headstones and any material property or representation of the deceased. The pattern is trying to hang on to its own existence by finding some new material thing to centre itself upon.

Some time later it became clearer that these thoughts were something very close to statements found in many "primitive'' cultures. If you take that part of the pattern that is not the flesh and bones of Chris and call it the "spirit'' of Chris or the "ghost'' of Chris, then you can say without further translation that the spirit or ghost of Chris is looking for a new body to enter. When we hear accounts of "primitives'' talking this way, we dismiss them as superstition because we interpret ghost or spirit as some sort of material ectoplasm, when in fact they may not mean any such thing at all. In any event, it was not many months later that my wife conceived, unexpectedly. After careful discussion we decided it was not something that should continue. I'm in my fifties. I didn't want to go through any more child-raising experiences. I'd seen enough. So we came to our conclusion and made the necessary medical appointment. Then something very strange happened. I'll never forget it. As we went over the whole decision in detail one last time, there was a kind of dissociation, as though my wife started to recede while we sat there talking. We were looking at each other, talking normally, but it was like those photographs of a rocket just after launching where you see two stages start to separate from each other in space. You think you're together and then suddenly you see that you're not together anymore. I said, "Wait. Stop. Something's wrong.'' What it was, was unknown, but it was intense and I didn't want it to continue. It was a really frightening thing, which has since become clearer. It was the larger pattern of Chris, making itself known at last. We reversed our decision, and now realize what a catastrophe it would have been for us if we hadn't. So I guess you could say, in this primitive way of looking at things, that Chris got his airplane ticket after all. This time he's a little girl named Nell and our life is back in perspective again. The hole in the pattern is being mended. A thousand memories of Chris will always be at hand, of course, but not a destructive clinging to some material entity that can never be here again.

We're in Sweden now, the home of my mother's ancestors, and I'm working on a second book which is a sequel to this one. Nell teaches aspects of parenthood never understood before. If she cries or makes a mess or decides to be contrary (and these are relatively rare), it doesn't bother. There is always Chris's silence to compare it to. What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on. In terms of this larger pattern the lines at the end of this book still stand. We have won it. Things are better now. You can sort of tell these things. ooolo99ikl;i.,pyknulmmmmmmmmmm 111 (This last line is by Nell. She reached around the corner of the machine and banged on the keys and then watched with the same gleam Chris used to have. If the editors preserve it, it will be her first published work.) -Robert M. Pirsig, Gothenburg, Sweden 1984

 It was funny because a few days previously I couldn't sleep. I shot out of bed because I remembered this passage and was curious how old Chris was when he died. As I read the passage, my first reaction is that I had been cursed by this book. After a few days, however, a new perspective emerged. I realized that this book and the above passage was a gift; many parallels existed between Chris and Baxter. The time we shared riding motorcycles, well, I suspect it was that experience that gave Baxter the perspective to travel and live a full life. He had bought a ticket to South East Asia and was excited to learn more about Eastern mysticism. Today, two weeks have passed since I learned about Baxter's death. I think it would be fitting to combine a motorcycle trip and a bicycle trip around the place of his accident.

ZMM Motorcycle reflections ...

Building a cabin with Bax and community

Reading Huck Finn and rafting down the stuart

Assembly

Basic transportation box

swallowed by a snake

A long time ago there was a small village in the midst of the rain forest. Most of the days were filled with life, laughter, and daily tasks of life. At night, however, the entire village was transformed to chaos and panic. You see, each night a giant snake would slither into the village and swallow one of the villagers. Each evening the villagers would board up their shanty shacks and hide in the shadows, praying to whatever God or form that would listen to keep the snake away from their home.  

One day the creator heard their cries and sent a prophet, a shaman, a traveller. He meandered into their village, his face covered by a long grey beard, his body clothed with natural hides made from the indigenous animals of the forest. He weighted about ninety-five pounds soaking wet, he had no weapons –  in fact the only metal tool in his back was a fork and a dull pocket knife no longer than two inches long. Some villagers believed the traveler had mystical powers. Maybe he had some magic in that bag that could make the snake disappear or, better yet, explode into a million pieces. Maybe he had a special communication device that could control the power of the weather. He could hit the snake with lightning, or create an earthquake that would consume the snake.

Dusk was drawing near within the village. Most of the villagers ran into their shacks, boarded up their shanties, but this time left open a crack to see what the traveler would do.  He sat in the village square cross-legged with his eyes closed and he waited. Some of the villagers yelled at the traveler to get out his magic, to summon the power of the universe, to pray to the lightning gods. But all he did was sit – almost like he was waiting for something, someone.  Minutes turned into hours and all of a sudden a dark shadow emerged out of the jungle. Most expected the traveler to jump up and do something...say something...grab something out of his bag, but there he sat, motionless. The snake inched nearer to the traveler, opened its mouth and in a fraction of a second the old man was gone. The villagers who saw the event gasped; they were not magically saved, natural disaster didn't fall upon the snake.

Many felt more hopeless than before.  Days passed to months and the snake continued to come into the village each night. However, something was different. The snake didn't seem to be as hungry. There were many days and weeks that passed and no one was snatched away and disappeared.

One day the snake appeared in the middle of the day. Panic ensued. Most of the villagers ran into their protective shelters. A few looked more closely at the snake – it seemed different. The snake was smaller it seemed. The snake was more pale, less slimy looking. Its eyes were no longer bright, hyper-vigilant, and scanning for food. It slithered into the middle of the town square and stopped. Its body coiled up as if in pain. Some walked closer to the snake, poked it with long sticks. It didn't move. Its eyes slowly became clouded. More villagers came out of their shacks. They waited and waited. Minutes seemed like hours. All of a sudden they noticed the belly move ever so slightly, then again more purposefully. They stared at the spot of movement. Then, all of a sudden, something exploded out from the skin. Everyone jumped back, thinking they would surely all die.  They looked at the lump of slime. It looked kind of familiar. They recognized some of the outer skin as animals of the forest. Maybe the snake had swallowed a predator. They looked more closely and noticed that the skins were stitched together and contained the skin of different animals.  They realized that this jacket resembled the one the traveler had worn. He had spontaneously emerged from the snake's belly. How was that possible?

And then it happened. The lump moved ever so slightly. All of a sudden, an arm appeared, holding the fork. The traveler stretched out his body. His belly now extended and fat, they estimated that he was over three hundred pounds now. They helped the traveler up, dragged him into the shade, and begged for him to tell the story. The traveler started to speak slowly, forming the words carefully. He told how the snake had swallowed him, how he was encased in darkness.  His nostrils filled with a putrid odour of rotting flesh. His skins protected him and he was able to find his fork and knife. Each time he got hungry, he cut off a small part of the snake's insides. He slowly chewed and waited. He knew if he ate too quickly, he would be consumed by the mass of the snake. His belly would explode and he would die. So he waited patiently for hunger to come and he would eat one bite at a time.

Please note that I give full credit that the original idea belongs to Tom Golden who wrote the book with the same name… I would like to provide a paraphrase of the story in order to explain one tool that may be necessary when the work of grief appears to be too intensely large.