Next week a friend of mine heads to Mammoth Lakes for a memorial for one of his good friends, rock climbing master, John Bachar. An international rock star of the climbing world, Bachar was known for his soloing—unroped climbs—and his uncompromising self-reliant style. His poetic purity of vision—one body, one rock—inspired generations of climbers. He died, alone, doing what he loved.

This coming week also marks the one year anniversary of the death of my friend Carlita, who died surrounded by those she loved. Her tumor was diagnosed one day out of the blue, and 6 months later she was buried. This exact day last year, for a few days leading up to her death, Carlita’s 5 year old son stayed with us, and at night I would stand outside the door to my son’s room and listen to the two of them tell stories back and forth about knights flying up into space, and batman saving the world. We went blueberry picking one afternoon and my son wore his batman costume, and her son wore spiderman and when they ran between the rows of blueberry bushes their capes and laughter would billow behind them.

It seems to all billow to me now, the older I get. What was once concrete, now thinning to threads, the winds picking up with each passing year, so that the fabric of my memories flaps even harder despite the grip of my clothespin fingers on the wires of my days. When my sister and I would come home from school, my mother would put on Sergio Mendes, Miles Davis, Paul Desmond while we ate our graham crackers. There was this one tune I remember, and sometimes these days I call it at a gig cause I feel like singing it because it reminds me of my mom, another long goodbye, and because sometimes remembering is the only kind of evidence that counts.  But on the nights I do this the other musicians always look at me with confused faces because no one seems to know this tune, but it’s ironic because it’s the one I have never forgotten, The Trouble With Hello Is Goodbye. Mendes and Shirley Bassey seem to be close to the only folks to ever have recorded the song. The rest of us have recorded it with our lives.

I was in the mountains last week. And it was torrentially raining. And I decided to go on a beloved trail run up the mountain, ascending from the Wallowa River. The trail was about one and half feet wide, relentlessly riddled with rocks, a sheer drop on one side. It felt sort of stupid, but at the same time not; it also forced utter centering, breathing, careful footing, alone, on a mountain, in the rain, listening to the river roar below, cutting above the wind, complete concentration and presence within each single moment so I didn’t careen off the side. In a life filled with what has felt particularly in recent years like many missteps and false starts and lack of vision and wrong choices on my part, I needed a simple couple hours to get it right in some way. Perhaps that was some of the lure for Bachar that kept him pushing himself and the sport he loved to the oneness he sought, grasping a rock or toehold and hanging on the side of hard, cold earth just because he could.

And maybe that’s as close to answers as we get. Or perhaps even looking for answers in the first place is like trying to pin linear synchronicity on history and its human alignment in the first place. The last time I saw Carlita was at the hospital two days before she died. She’d been sleeping every other time I visited, but on this evening she was drowsily awake. I remember, still remember, how it struck me as purely Carlita that even as she was letting go, she was noticing. “You have a sundress on,” she said, her mouth dry, the word coming out haltingly, barely audible, even as I’m leaning down close enough to her face to feel her breath. “It must be nice outside.” 

And it was. Sunny, bright, hot. It was a day, like any other summer day, sky above, earth below, birds in between.