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hotchley · 3 years

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that’s when i could finally breathe

Me: oh yeah, I am definitely going on a fanfic writing break. Also me: this.

As always, I have no idea what I’ve done. I really was taking a break, but then I was listening to Clean and... this happened. All of my pieces have been weirdly cathartic, and I think this one was just like: HAHA PROJECTION!!

I also did not proofread this, and wrote it in one day, so... do with that what you will :)

Also, do not comment on my inability to come up with decent titles. I know. I know this is a terrible title, but I HAD NO BETTER IDEAS OKAY!!!

Word Count: 2289

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, funerals, death, past suicidal thoughts, grief, self-destructive behaviour (Hotch does not pull his hair out, but he does have thoughts about doing so)

read on ao3!

He has always found a sense of peace in the rain.

Where other people would run to try and find shelter, Aaron has always loved to just stand and let it soak through his clothes to his skin, chilling his bones and body. Haley had found it endearing as a teenager.

As an adult, it had concerned her.

He could tell her it was nothing till he was blue in the face, but there was a sense of panic that came with looking out the window to see the clouds weeping, combined with her husband’s lack of presence in their apartment.

More than once, he would come home, shivering and teeth chattering, but smiling. She would force him to change, to wrap himself in a blanket, but he would usually be too dazed to do so without her assistance. He caught a cold more than once.

Jack has inherited his love for the rain. His love, like everything else about him, is childish and innocent though. A love for jumping in puddles and splashing his parents. A fascination with the different types of weather, and a love for the yellow coat that has a duck on the hood that was a gift from Penelope.

Aaron’s love for the rain can be described in one word. The same word Haley has always used to describe the way he loves everything. His love for the rain is complex. It is born from the best and worst moments of his life.

His love for the rain comes from the little boy that wore his heart on his sleeve. Who wanted nothing more than to turn the terrible things that happened into a story, and who just wanted to use his brain to find a reason for all the bad things that seemed to keep happening.

It rained the day of his father’s funeral. His mother and Sean shared an umbrella. Haley tried to get him to stand under hers, but he refused, choosing to stand in it, letting it numb the fire in his stomach. He didn’t shed any tears at the funeral. He had already mourned the death of his father. He had mourned when he was eleven, and learnt that his father did not love him. Not in the way he was meant to. Not in a way that was right.

The rain made it look like he was crying. It soaked his hair and dripped onto the collar of his coat, and when his uncle drove him and the last people that knew the truth about Mr Hotchner, his mother seemed to realise what he had been doing. She chastised him, but it was weak and with no real threat.

Aaron would confess to Haley, months later, that the rain had made him feel like he was being listened to. Like the God he had stopped believing in believed his father was a bad man, and the rain had been to disrupt the final event where anyone would truly care for him. The rain made him feel like there was a happy ending at the end of the tunnel waiting for him.

It made him feel like he could breathe again.

When Haley kissed him for the first time, it was raining. They had been running home from their date, not expecting the summer night to turn out like that, and he had paused because of the stitch in his side.

She had turned around, laughing hysterically because of course this had happened. Of course their first date, which she had spent hours preparing for, Jessica styling her hair and convincing her the dress she had picked was perfect, ended in rain. With her hair coming loose from the pins she had slid into it. With Aaron’s shirt plastered to his skin. If she had stepped close enough, she could almost see the scars on his back.

She wouldn’t ask though. Not today.

He looked at her, slightly apologetic, and she was once again struck by just how pretty he was. His eyelashes were longer than she had first realised, and the rain seemed to drip off of them in a way she had only ever seen in the movies.

His hair was an untamed mess. Her heart had dropped a little when he rang her doorbell, because she liked the chaos of his usual style, and seeing it without a hair out of place made her feel like he was trying to be a different person. The rain had ruined it all though, and it now fell onto his forehead and stuck to his face in a way she loved.

To everyone else in their little town, he likely looked like the villain. Like the demon creeping in through the window to steal the beautiful princess away to their terrible castle. But Haley is not everyone else. And to her, Aaron looks like the dashing prince, ready to save the heroine from the terrible prejudice of her home.

So when he opened his mouth, probably to ask her if everything was okay, she took a step forward, placed her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. It was messy and wet and awkward, but it was their first. And it was special.

Her cheeks were flushed when she pulled away. Aaron just stared at her for a few moments, something like panic written all over his face. But then that panic gave way to something else, and Haley felt like she was watching someone realise they were in love.

It was more beautiful than she could’ve ever imagined.

He smiled at her, still bashful after the events of the evening, and held his arm out to her. She took it, allowing him to walk her all the way to her front door, where he placed a single kiss to her cheek.

He laughed, once he was out of her line of sight. He laughed, and he ran through the puddles, splashing the water everywhere, and he let out loud cheers because the night was silent and only the stars were there to keep him company.

Haley Brooks liked him. No. She loved him.

It made him feel like he could live again.

The moment he felt clean, like the blood had been washed from his hands, like he could breathe again, like he could exist and not feel like there had been some massive mistake, it was raining. Haley had been dead for six months, and it had been six brutal months of cases, of processing his grief, of shutting down in front of the team.

Of teaching Jack that being sad was part of life, and that being happy did not mean he was forgetting Mom, or a terrible person. Of wishing there was someone to hold his hand, just for a moment.

Of flashing Jessica little smiles, because he had lost the first woman to love him the way love was supposed to be, but Jessica had lost her baby sister, and nothing was ever going to bring her back to life. Not his own self-destruction. Not his guilt. Not his pain. Not the way he threw himself into cases that caused the ink to blur before his eyes.

Not the way he was trying so hard to teach his son exactly what love was so he would grow up unafraid to jump in head first, and would always believe in its existence.

Jessica asked if Jack could stay with her for a few days. She had a break in between one project finishing and the next starting, and she was going to use it to look at some of the things Haley had left at her house. Aaron was yet to deal with the things in the house and in storage. He just couldn’t do it.

But Jessica wanted to start, and she wanted Jack to see some of the things. He spoke to Jack, and Jack’s therapist, about the trip, and when both people signed off on it, he packed his son a bag and dropped his son off at his aunt’s for the weekend.

The quietness of the apartment had a greater impact on him than he thought it would’ve. He had gotten used to the sound of Jack racing around. Of Jessica washing dishes. Of their quiet existences that left a mark on every inch on every wall of the convenient location that had somehow evolved into a home- something he thought he’d lost forever when Anderson handed him the divorce papers.

He couldn’t handle the silence. It was suffocating. It reminded him of his childhood house, and of walking on eggshells. It reminded him of the thirty-four days he felt in silence, recovering from stab wounds he wished had killed him, and mourning the loss of his family.

So he drives. And he drives. And he drives.

And he somehow finds himself at Gideon’s cabin. He’d only been there twice since he left the team. Once to pick Reid up once he had the strength to phone and say that he’d found a letter, but he didn’t know what he was meant to do, but Gideon was gone and he didn’t know why everyone always left. Once to pick Rossi up, after the case with the three children that ended with no real sort of justice.

Gideon left him a key. It was in the drawer of his desk, with no explanation. No letter. No apology. Hotch had taken it, and attached it to the keyring that held his house keys. He’d never used it though.

Not before now.

Because that day, when he goes to Gideon’s cabin, he lets himself in. He walks through the different rooms, smiling at the small traces of his former mentor that still remain there, and the pieces of the other team members that have somehow found themselves a home in the various areas.

He exits out the back door.

Haley had taken him here once. After she found out she was pregnant, he was meant to step down and take a transfer. They’d had it all planned out. Then he’d gotten a phone call saying there was a case, and that case had been Adrian Bale so before he knew what was going on, he was pushed into the role of Unit Chief and trying to rebuild a team that was never meant to have been his.

She had taken him here to remind him of all the reasons he couldn’t leave. Of all the lives he would feel responsible for if he acted selfishly. And he had looked at her, with such love in his eyes, and agreed with her. It had been a quiet trip. A peaceful trip. A warm visit. They had been together, still the teenagers that linked hands during the final bows of their performance.

Haley was dead, and he was left to patch up his own pieces. The visit had been tense and silent, but the uncomfortable type, and even as he walked through the cabin, he wondered why exactly he had bothered coming here. He didn’t know what he was trying to achieve, or what he thought this was going to do. He just knew it was something he needed to do.

When he stepped back out into the woods that surrounded the cabin, the rain started.

He had never believed in signs, not truly, but this one was too big to be anything but that. It was pouring. Enough to cause the branches to sag with the weight of water. Enough to create proper puddles that could be jumped in. Enough to remind him of the first time Haley had kissed him, and how that simple touch had brought him back to life. Enough to remind him of his father’s funeral, and how the feel of the cold had reminded he had no longer had to be afraid.

It was loud enough to drown out the sounds of people.

He had one chance to do this. One chance to see whether or not his love for the rain would still help him the way it always had.

He screamed. He fell to his knees, and he fisted his hands in his hair. He didn’t pull it out, but he tugged at it, and Haley wasn’t there to grip his hands till he could trust himself.

He screamed. And he cried. And he begged for an answer. And he shoved his blazer off, not even caring that his trousers were stained with mud that would likely never come out, and not giving a damn about the cold.

He screamed. Until his throat went dry and his words seemed to fade into nothing, not only because the rain swallowed his noises, but because he couldn’t be loud.

He screamed until he was soaked and the rain had caused him to go numb and start shivering.

And then he turned around and walked back inside. As he passed the bathroom, something caught his eye. A towel he had thought he had just misplaced whilst on a case, and a hoodie he’d assumed he’d given to Sean and forgotten about. Almost like Gideon had guessed what he would be doing here, and wanted to apologise for what he had done.

Haley would not want him to get sick. Neither would Jessica. Neither would the team. Neither would Jack.

So he went into the bathroom, and he dried himself off, and he zipped the hoodie up. And then he took a final look around the cabin. He smiled to himself, knowing that, no matter what happens, the team will always have this as their safe haven.

He drives home, despite the rain.

It makes him feel like he could love again.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner #haley hotchner #jason gideon #hurt hotch #hotch angst #tw death #tw child abuse #tw grief #tw self destruction #tw past suicidal thoughts #sumayyah writes cm

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frostedfaves · 4 years

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Promise Me

Pairing: Jake Peralta x fem!reader

Summary: Y/N makes a promise to Jake and luckily keeps her word.

Word Count: 1k

Warnings: MAJOR character death, funerals, super brief mention of suicide

I hate funerals. Everything about them is the fucking worst, and I wouldn't be here if I didn't love him so much that I wanted to keep my word, even after his very premature death.

"Y/N, promise me that you'll come to my funeral if I die before you."

"Jake," I spoke in a slightly scolding to him as I looked up, startled when I realized his case file was closed on his desk and his eyes were already directed to mine. "Please don't—"

"Trust me, I know how you feel about funerals and it's completely valid. But promise me that you'll come to mine and I'll never ask you for anything else."

I quickly walked around my desk to sit in the chair next to his, resting my thumb on the hand that gripped his chair arm.

"Baby, are you okay?" I asked in a much softer tone, trying not to draw any attention to us and accidentally send him into a panicked state.

His lips curved into a small smile as a bit of air burst from his nostrils in an attempted laugh. He turned his hand over, lifting mine to leave a light kiss on my knuckles.

"I'm okay, and I'm even better with you."

Had I known he was going to die in an explosion during a bust not even a week later, I would've called him a liar and begged him to take a few days off to rest and maybe even talk to a licensed counselor about what I suspected him of feeling. Anything to keep his half charred body from showing up in a morgue.

I held my tongue as I was given condolences and well wishes by common coworkers or family members of Jake's I'd never met. Tried my hardest not to scream at them that being dead was not a better place for him in any way, and that anyone else who thought so could take their own fist and shove it into their mouth and out through their anus.

Luckily Rosa came to sit by me in my secluded corner and gave the next approaching person a glare strong enough to make him piss his pants. I shot her a glance and half a grateful smile before turning my attention back to the carpet pattern I'd pretended to find interesting.

"Came to check on you but don't want to be annoying so talk when you're ready," Rosa commented as she leaned back slightly and crossed her legs casually.

"Well I'm not doing too great, Rosa," I snapped immediately, my shoulders slumping soon after. "You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry."

"Nah, I expected it. Look at me." I turned my head to meet her eyes and she continued. "It's not as bad as it seems. Trust me."

She gave just a hint of a smile before her attention was caught by someone else in front of her and she got up, unfortunately passing another grieving stranger headed my way. Her face was covered by a dark veil as she sported your typical widow-at-a-funeral fit, but I could only assume she was one of Jake's older aunts by the gray-haired bun that poked through the veil in the back.

I painted on a fake smile and tensed every muscle in preparation for whatever cliché condolence was coming this time, left confused when all she did was grab my hands briefly. Sliding them away and leaving behind a folded slip of paper with a solid object inside of it. I held the 'gift' tucked inside my sleeve as I waited a beat before getting up and disappearing into the nearest bathroom. Locking the door behind me, I finally unfolded the paper and the object fell into my palm.

A key.

Frowning, I decided to look for another clue in the note, but all that was written was an address. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened up Google Maps, typing in the address with lightning speed.

183 Lorraine Street, Brooklyn, New York 11231 Did you mean Treasure Island Storage?

A storage facility in Red Hook, really? What the fuck? Did Aunt whoever really think now was a good time to hand over her belongings to me? I honestly would've preferred the "he's in a better place".

I look down again, stopping myself from crumbling the note when I notice something under my thumb. I shift my hand and realize that under the address there was "7:06pm" written, a time exactly 6 minutes after everyone was set to depart from the funeral home.

I looked at the GPS again, this time hitting the button for directions to this Treasure Island place. GPS estimates a 6 minute drive from here. Interesting.

Throughout the funeral I sat in the back, which luckily went unnoticed as I'd previously declined to come up and speak in front of everyone. Once the guests were distracted with saying farewell at the end, I slipped out the doors quietly and ran to my car, taking a less busy street and luckily making it to the parking lot by 7:05pm.

The hard part was finding the storage unit. There was a sticker with the number 17 on it so I assumed it was unit 17, instantly letting out a groan when the key didn't work. I looked at the key again, turning it upside down and before I could scold myself for thinking a 1 and a 7 could look different upside down I saw it. The tiniest plus sign squeezed between the 1 and 7. Number 8!

I ran around to unit 8 with a newfound confidence, biting back a cheer when the key actually fit into the lock and turned. That confidence turned into fear when I lifted the door up all the way to reveal someone in jeans and a jacket with the hood pulled up over their head. My heart felt like it was nudging the back of my throat.

"This better not be some joke. Who the fuck are you and why am I here?" I tried to sound tougher than I looked with my hands shaking and my head frantically turning as I searched for a sign of backup potential kidnappers. I was just considering closing the door again and running when the mystery person turned and a face was revealed.

"Surprise."

"Jake?!"

#queue #jake peralta #jake peralta x reader #jake peralta x fem!reader #jake peralta imagine #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn 99 #brooklyn nine nine imagine #brooklyn nine nine x reader #b99 fic #b99 imagine #b99 x reader #b99 fanfic

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nancygduarteus · 7 years

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Transplantees Find Catharsis in Holding Their Old Hearts

Kamisha Hendrix’s heart lay on the table between us. Seventy days ago, this heart had been beating inside of her, back behind the dark scar that plunged into the neckline of her blouse.

“No—my heart didn’t beat,” Hendrix clarified. “It trembled.”

The chemo used to treat her non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had damaged her cardiac muscle irreparably, reducing its strength to 15 percent. She regularly lapsed in and out of consciousness. “I felt like I was moving through mud,” she recalled.

Hendrix looked at the heart on the table, the organ she had carried for 44 years, and spoke in its imaginary voice. “You wanna live?” She gave the heart a whimpering intonation. “Okay, I'll give you another beat.”

She switched back to her own voice, “Thank you, heart. Thanks a lot, friend.”

Three months ago, Hendrix’s mother, Carolyn Woods, had already written her obituary and tucked it away in a drawer. The theme, Woods explained, was For Whom the Bell Tolls. “It was about everyone coming to pay their last respects—and the people are the bell. All that crying and wailing would be the people tolling for her.”

Ultimately, the story of Hendrix’s heart did end in a funeral. Somewhere, on a clear May morning, an organ donor died. Within hours, Hendrix received a new heart.

The transplant saved Hendrix’s life, and yet—it would also be technically true to say that in the process, a part of her had died. We were in Dallas, Texas, at the Baylor Heart and Vascular Center to reunite Hendrix with her native heart and reflect on what it means to live without it.

The idea for this kind of encounter originated with William Roberts, Baylor’s chief cardiac pathologist. In 2014, Roberts began the Heart-to-Heart program, inviting cardiac transplant patients to see and hold their former organs. The primary objective was education. Roberts delivers a health lecture with the patient’s own heart as Exhibit A.

For transplantees, compliance with doctors’ lifestyle instructions is critical to recovery and longevity. One recent study found that in the domains of diet, exercise, medication, and tobacco avoidance, noncompliance ranged from 18 to 37 percent. Furthermore, compliance was observed to decrease over time.

While Hendrix’s heart failure was primarily due to another cause, her condition was exacerbated by unhealthy lifestyle choices—a factor that impacts nearly all heart-transplant patients. With Heart-to-Heart, Roberts has found a way to clearly demonstrate the effect of these choices on the heart itself. According to a study co-authored by the cardiologist, 75 percent of program participants reported that the experience has changed their health-related behaviors “to a great degree.”

James Murtha's heart (Roc Morin)

Roberts begins each session with raw statistics.

“In the United States, there are 6 million people living with heart failure,” he lectures in a honeyed Georgian accent. “Every year, only about 2,200 of those people receive heart transplants. So, you are very, very special. You’ve been given a second chance.”

Unceremoniously lifting the surgical cloth that covers the heart, Roberts describes what he sees. The history of the heart is there, incontrovertibly embedded in the organ. Most are cocooned in hard yellow fat.

“If you dropped this in the Mississippi,” Roberts opines, “it would float all the way to the Gulf.”

“Oh my god!” Hendrix gasped. “Look at all that fat! I guess those chips have gotta go.”

“That’s right,” Roberts replied. “And those cows, chickens, and pigs on your plate.”

In addition to education, the reunion also provides an opportunity for closure—a benefit that Roberts didn’t initially expect. After facing death—what transplantee John Bell prefers to call “the abyss”—survivors are frequently left traumatized. That reality is apparent in the standard warlike medical rhetoric, with doctors and patients alike speaking the language of soldiers. Together they fight their battles, target the enemy, eradicate and annihilate. With the focus on winning, dedicated opportunities to stop and reflect are rare.

Tina Sample’s ordeal began with a massive heart attack that was misdiagnosed as a gastrointestinal issue. After days of breathless agony, she was finally correctly diagnosed at a different hospital. “I had what they call ‘the widowmaker,’” she recounted, “100 percent blockage. I had a massive amount of blood clots throughout my heart. The doctor had never seen anything like it in his 24 years of practicing medicine. He called me a miracle.”

In the months that followed, Sample lived in constant fear of death. “I was just so scared every night,” she confessed. “I had this terror that this could be my last night on earth, so I’d try to keep myself awake. I would keep myself awake until 4 or 5 a.m. I wanted to see my son graduate college. I wanted to know my grandkids. There were so many things I wanted to see.”

James Murtha had been healthy his entire life. “I’ve never broke a bone in my body,” he insisted. “I’ve never really been sick at all, except for the flu once and chicken pox when I was a kid. So this—when it hit, it hit hard.”

Murtha had been driving home from work when he began to shiver and sweat. It was a heart attack. Later, he recalled being in a hospital bed, on life support, his liver and kidneys failing. He says he had a vision of his mother, lying in a similar bed half a century earlier. It was one of his earliest memories.

“I basically went back in time,” he began. “I was five. They brought us all in, the night she passed away. I remember her telling me, ‘You’re gonna be good for your dad now, aren't you?’ There were five of us kids, and she made my dad promise that he'd keep us all together.” She died in that bed, at the age of 25, from a rare cancer.

As Murtha lay suspended between life and death, the visions continued. His wife grasped his hand as he described what he called an out-of-body experience: “I was in this place looking for my older brother Mike. We had been talking about getting together. He was a dreamer. Oh, it had been over 30, 40 years since we’d played together. And then he died. But, I was in this place, like a green forest, meadows, and there were these bright figures all around. And, there was this one figure, I couldn’t—it was just really bright, and he was in a robe like Jesus. And, he told me, ‘Your brother is home, you need to go find yourself.’”

Murtha awoke in an intensive care unit, with a new heart bounding in his chest. His old heart went first to the pathology lab for an autopsy. At that point, Roberts claims, “99.5 percent of hospitals throw the hearts away. They just don’t have the space to keep them.” Baylor is different, however. Their lab contains thousands of hearts in permanent storage, making it one of the most extensive cardiac research facilities in the world. The availability of these organs creates a unique opportunity for a program like Heart-to-Heart. Each transplant patient at Baylor is routinely informed about the option, which is promoted as an educational opportunity.

On the day of a viewing session, clinical coordinator Saba Ilyas carefully retrieves and prepares each organ. The patients come in, sometimes alone, sometimes with their families, all eyeing the tray with the bulging surgical towel.

Hendrix had expected to see something “black and shriveled, probably three times the normal size, and just jello-like.”

Bell had expected a big red ideograph, “like when you open a Valentine’s card.”

“It wasn’t like that at all though,” he continued. “What it reminded me of, was a piece of roast beef.”

Under the glaring examination lights of the Baylor pathology lab, the visceral reality of what had actually happened to these people was an abstraction. I was there, holding a lump of raw meat in my hands, trying to feel the life that had once pulsated through it. Across culture and time, the heart has been a metaphor for love, for valor, for the soul itself—for everything we can sense but never touch. Here too, at the viewing, it was evident, by the gentle reverence it inspired, by the tender way in which it was held—the meaning of this organ transcended its mere function and form. Each transplantee was left to interpret the significance of this experience for themselves.

James Murtha holds his own heart. (Roc Morin)

“The whole time you’re holding your heart,” Bell described, “your brain wants to have a little conversation with you—like you shouldn’t really be doing this. This is not normal. And, you’re like—well, but here it is. I have my heart right here in my hands, and it’s normal to me.” Bell later recalled opening his eyes for the first time after his operation. “In a very poignant moment, I told my new heart that I’d take care of it as best I could for as long as I could.”

Hendrix speculated about the identity of her donor. Based on the frenetic surge of energy she reports experiencing since the transplant, she mused that “it feels like a tennis player.” Afterwards, she spoke again about the borrowed life source she carries inside of her. “It’s like the donor, in some way, is still alive. I think, if the donor was a happy person, they’re still a happy person, it just manifests itself through me.”

For Sample, the heart in her chest feels palpably foreign. She has dreamed about her unknown donor—envisioning him kneeling before her, offering up his heart with his own two hands. She has stopped using the common phrase “my heart” to describe her feelings. She has replaced it, sometimes haltingly, with “my mind.”

Bell held his former heart in front of his chest, with hands that shook from the drugs he must take for the rest of his life to keep his body from rejecting his new organ. The survivor found himself unexpectedly smiling. “To see my native heart, this thing that had caused so much pain and heartache, and to be able to walk away [from it]—I felt victorious.”

Hendrix thought of God, and of all her mother’s fervent prayers. “It made me feel how truly blessed I am to be here.”

Sample’s emotions overwhelmed her. “When something is gone that’s been a part of you—the thing that gives you life—there’s a sense of loss. There’s a grieving process that you have to go through. It’s crazy, but it’s like a person. It’s dead. My heart is dead, and there it is, lying on the table right there. If your mind goes to that place, then you can’t help but feel that loss. I told my heart ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t take care of you better.’ It brought tears to my eyes, truly. I needed to say goodbye.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/heart-to-heart-transplants-therapy/537504/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 7 years

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Transplantees Find Catharsis in Holding Their Old Hearts

Kamisha Hendrix’s heart lay on the table between us. Seventy days ago, this heart had been beating inside of her, back behind the dark scar that plunged into the neckline of her blouse.

“No—my heart didn’t beat,” Hendrix clarified. “It trembled.”

She switched back to her own voice, “Thank you, heart. Thanks a lot, friend.”

Ultimately, the story of Hendrix’s heart did end in a funeral. Somewhere, on a clear May morning, an organ donor died. Within hours, Hendrix received a new heart.

James Murtha's heart (Roc Morin)

Roberts begins each session with raw statistics.

“If you dropped this in the Mississippi,” Roberts opines, “it would float all the way to the Gulf.”

“Oh my god!” Hendrix gasped. “Look at all that fat! I guess those chips have gotta go.”

“That’s right,” Roberts replied. “And those cows, chickens, and pigs on your plate.”

Hendrix had expected to see something “black and shriveled, probably three times the normal size, and just jello-like.”

Bell had expected a big red ideograph, “like when you open a Valentine’s card.”

“It wasn’t like that at all though,” he continued. “What it reminded me of, was a piece of roast beef.”

James Murtha holds his own heart. (Roc Morin)

Hendrix thought of God, and of all her mother’s fervent prayers. “It made me feel how truly blessed I am to be here.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

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randomconnections · 7 years

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Washington State – the Non-Funeral Stuff

This recent trip to Washington State was mostly taken up by the funeral for Laura’s mother, Merline Wright. However, we were able to do some things not related to funeral services. These included some shopping expeditions, meals out, and one trip up into the mountains.

Flight to Seattle

The trip out was one of the best we’ve had in a long time. We flew Delta from GSP to Atlanta, then on to SeaTac. Due to the nature of the trip we had planned to fly First Class, but there were no seats available for this quick trip. Comfort Class was our next-best option, and it was more comfortable than Economy.

The 737 had the seat-back video monitors, which meant a full range of distracting entertainment. The thing I liked most was that it had a map to monitor progress across country. Being a map geek this fascinated me more than any movie or TV re-run. What’s more, the plane had free WiFi. I could pull up Google Maps on my iPad and find our location. For the first time ever I was able to look out the window of the plane and find a matching view in Google Maps in real time.

OK, so I’m easily amused. I still watched a couple of movies. It was a long flight.

I had already mentioned that the weather was spectacular on the island. It rained on us in Seattle, but cleared as we approached Mount Vernon. The next day after our arrival, Wednesday, was the Summer Solstice. This far north the days were VERY long.

With the clear air we could see the Olympic Mountains to the southwest, Mount Rainer to the southeast, the Canadian Rockies to the north, and Mount Baker to the northeast. We took several walks with Duff and Linda McDaniel, just enjoying the views across the bay.

Shopping

OK, so quite a bit of this was funeral-related. We had to get food for the various family gatherings and had to restock the house for our visit. One of our usual stops is Fred Meyers, which we don’t have back east. This time it struck me as overcrowded and overpriced, although you can find almost anything you want there. We tried to buy a deli platter from another regional grocery, Haggen. They would only let us order online. Forget that. Finally we found what we needed at Safeway. They were also the first place we found that carried Lindsay Queen Olives, my preferred olive for martinis.

We also shopped for other miscellaneous items – a new fire pit for the house from Home Depot, flowers and plants for around the house, and a sport coat for me for the funeral.

After Saturday’s funeral Amy, Laura, and I needed to get out and do something different. Amy had found a place that sold kites in Mount Vernon, so we decided to check it out. Tri-Dee Arts in Mount Vernon mostly sells art supplies, but they have an eclectic collection of weird side items. It reminded me of the now closed Junkman’s Other Daughter in Athens. There were some similar items.

In addition to the Anti-Gravity Mints (which did not work as advertised) I bought a stunt kite to leave on the island and Amy found a regular kite. We tried flying them but the wind was too inconsistent.

Music

Mrs. Wright loved music, and I was disappointed that I could find a way to bring either my banjo or guitar out for the funeral. I guess I could have – folks travel with instruments all the time, and we saw quite a few in the airport. However, I had felt the need to travel light this time. Even so, this trip turned out to be full of musical encounters, and not just the stuff we put together for the funeral.

I managed to make a trek to the premier music store in the area – Hugo Helmer Music. Hugo Helmer, the man, deserves his own blog post, and I’ll mention more about him in a bit, but for this trip I was just trying to get a general feel for what they had.

I played a few acoustic guitars. They had an electric classical guitar by Yamaha which really caught my eye. I spotted a small tenor banjo and played it a bit (poorly), and next to it was a standard-sized Gibson banjo. I picked it up to play and discovered a problem – no 5th string. It was actually a six-stringed banjo tuned like a guitar. While I was able to play it with no problem, it just didn’t sound…right.

I enquired about amps and keyboards, looked around a bit more, then headed on back to the house without adding to my growing collection of instruments.

That’s not to say that I DIDN’T add to my collection…

While looking for a vacuum cleaner in the house I discovered an old violin. This had belonged to Laura’s grandmother. It has the name “Stradivarius” on the inside, and her grandmother thought she had a real treasure. Of course, it wasn’t. It was/is a student violin with the Strad label. My grandmother had one and it’s now in our storage unit, missing strings, bow, and a bridge.

This one had a case, strings (including some extras) and two bows. The bows were in bad shape, but it looked like this one could be brought back to a playable condition without too much expense. I think I will do that while we’re out here.

I’ve not tried to play the violin, but, then again, I’d never played a banjo until a a couple of years ago.

Saturday morning was the day of the big island-wide garage sale. I had a bit of time before the service, so I walked to some of the closest sales. My goal wasn’t so much to shop as it was to meet the neighbors before we move out this way. A couple of houses down I met Jackie Stegner, who had been a friend of Mrs. Wright’s. Turns out that we had a lot in common. She had also been a middle school choral elementary music teacher.

Jackie had lots of music in her sale items, but the thing that caught my eye was a rosewood soprano recorder. I had to have it. I probably could have gotten it for less than I offered, but I considered it an investment in making friends with the neighbors. It was worth it to me, and it is a fine instrument.

And I still wasn’t done with musical instruments…

Linda McDaniel had taken accordion lessons with Hugo Helmer himself. According to Linda, Helmer had founded the first (and only?) marching accordion band. That must have been a sight to behold. Linda had just come across her old accordion and brought it over for me to play.

Since it’s basically a keyboard instrument I could do OK with that side, but getting the hang of the buttons took a bit more effort. I understand the general principal, but just had a hard time coordinating everything. Playing a tune was pretty much like playing my melodica, and I could do OK as long as I didn’t have to play chords. Linda left this at our house on loan so that I could play it some more when we get back out here.

Now that I have a banjo and access to an accordion, I just need a set of bagpipes to complete my Axis of Evil.

Dining Out

The Old Edison Inn is quickly becoming one of our favorite stops. It’s the closest eatery to the island, and the food is good and not too expensive. Amy, Laura, and I joined Duff and Linda for an evening meal. Duff and I split an order of oyster shooters, while the others had something less adventurous.

As we ate we watched a couple of regular barflies play shuffleboard. According to Linda, Long board shuffleboard is quite the thing here in the Pacific Northwest, and people take it seriously. I made a note to explore it as another possible blog topic.

We didn’t have many other dining experiences this trip. Most of our meals were spent consuming funeral food and visiting with relatives. We did make one trip to a Mexican restaurant and Laura and I tried a Panda Express, which turned out to be quite tasty.

Island Life

Every time I’ve been up here I’ve been impressed with how laid back everything feels. I think that’s one of the reasons why we want to spend more time on the island. The last time we were here with Mrs. Wright we went to the Fourth of July parade on the island, and it was a delight. There really seems to be a close sense of community.

I’ve already mentioned that the Saturday of the funeral was also the day of the island-wide yard sale. We noticed that the next-door neighbor had festooned her house and yard with pink flamingoes. We had found a couple in our storage shed, and decided to do likewise. That Friday evening as we sat with family in the yard folks started to gather next door. At first we thought it was just a party, but then folks started to leave with flyers and a flamingo. I quickly told Laura that we needed to hide our flamingoes. Apparently these were the street markers in indicate that a residence was participating in the yard sale. We certainly didn’t want random folks showing up in the yard on the day of the funeral!

In addition to meeting Jackie and getting a very nice recorder, I stopped by a couple more homes and met a few more neighbors. Duff joined me for a couple of them. He has lived on the island his entire life and served as an introduction to the folks. I’m looking forward to spending more time with them.

Going Upriver

Amy wanted to get away once all the funeral stuff was done. We decided to pack a picnic and head up the Skagit River Valley toward the Cascades. After a brief stop by the cemetery, we headed on upriver along Highway 20.

Often Laura and I take 20 on up through Marblemont and beyond into Cascades National Park, turning around once we get to the Diablo Lake area. Since we all had a long drive and travel on Monday, we decided for a shorter trip. Before we got to the town of Concrete we turned toward Baker Lake.

The first time I visited this area in 1988 Laura’s father brought us up here with his small motor boat. I remember running all over the lake with Laura, then looking at the glaciers on Mount Baker through her father’s telescope. We were hoping to find that same spot for our picnic.

Sadly, it seemed everyone in the valley had the same idea. This being the first really nice weekend of summer, the place was crowded. We couldn’t find parking anywhere. I did pause at Panorama Point to take photos of the boat ramp and lake for future reference. I do plan to bring my kayak up here.

Eventually the pavement ended but we kept going. Every campground and access point had the same story – all full. There were even RVs pulled over where there probably shouldn’t have been camping. Eventually we found a wide spot in the road and pulled over. There was a nice view of the lake and foxglove and other flowers lined the banks.

At one end of the lake was a huge log jam. Many logs had drifted free and were floating in the lake. As we watched boats and jet skis zip around I had to wonder about the navigation hazards these might pose. As a kayaker they wouldn’t be a problem for me, but I’d hate to hit one at speed.

We finished our sandwiches, but the dust from the road traffic and the heat started to outweigh the spectacular view. We packed up and headed on back down the road.

When Baker Lake Road crosses Bear Creek there are great views back toward Mount Baker. We paused for a few more shots.

I really had packed light for this trip. Apart from my iPhone, the only other camera I had was my Panasonic Lumix. I hadn’t brought any of my other cameras or lenses, and at times I wished that I had them. The weather and scenery couldn’t have been better.

On the way in we had passed by an area in the Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest known as “The Shadow of the Sentinels.” This is a stand of old growth Douglas fir trees. A half-mile boardwalk and pave trail leads through the tall trees. As we were headed back out we decided to stop and hike the short trail.

Amy was on the hunt for signs of Sasquatch. We came to a bridge-like area on the boardwalk and she did her best imitation of the Patterson film of Bigfoot.

We had the place to ourselves when we first arrived, but even here, while we were on the short trail, crowds had started to gather. We headed back to the car, then continued on our way.

Our plan had been to drive back along the south side of the Skagit River. That road is a bit less crowded than Highway 20. When we got back to 20 there was a bad accident right at the intersection with Baker Lake Road, so we were forced to detour. Eventually we did find our way across to the south side of the river.

There are several pull-outs along this stretch. During fishing season these spots can get quite crowded, and I was surprised no one was here on this lovely day. We pulled into one and walked down to the water. As it turns out, the river was running VERY high. The little beaches we normally see along this stretch were under water, which might explain why there was no one here.

From there we headed back to the island for one last night. Monday we both had flights back east. Amy would be leaving very early, and Laura and I would be flying out about noon. The flight home wasn’t quite as pleasant as the flight out, but it wasn’t too bad.

Overall I think it was a good trip. The funeral turned into a good gathering and celebration of Merline Wright’s life. It was sad, but brought some closure for Amy and Laura. Being out here for this short stint reinforced our decision to move out this way this fall. Now I’m really looking forward to it.

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