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Outside Magazine September 2003

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The Survivors (Cont.)

I USED TO CLAIM I FELT no anger over Joe's death. Other climbing widows admitted to bouts of rage—one kicked a bouquet of condolence flowers around the house, another slapped the person who came to break the news of her husband's death on K2. I used to say, "At least he died doing what he loved best"—as if that somehow made it all right, both for him and for me.

Ruth always insisted that, at some level, though I certainly knew what I was getting into when I chose Joe, I had to be angry. "Joe and Pete—all the climbers—pursued a passion that was above their responsibility for their family, and which took precedence," she said. "It's like a mistress, really. The anger has to come out somewhere."

A few weeks after Joe died, a trunk of his belongings arrived from Everest. Inside it I found love letters from another woman. It felt like the ultimate betrayal—and I realized that, if the mountain hadn't claimed him, I might have lost him anyway. That was unbearable. I burned those letters, and buried the memory of them for two years. When I finally spoke of them to a friend, I experienced a huge upwelling of anger—for what Joe had put me through, for what he'd expected of me, for what he'd left me with. And then I felt tremendous relief; at last I could move on.

But even when you think you have reached acceptance, when you are sure it's all sorted out, your subconscious tells you otherwise. All these years later, occasionally I'm disturbed by dreams that Joe has come back from Everest, sorry for all the upset he caused and wanting to be together. Grief, for me, has not been in stages or in tasks completed. Rather, it has been like a spiral: At first the spiral was so tight I could see nothing beyond it. Now it is made up of huge arcs, only faintly perceived on the horizon. Some of the old pain will always be there, but mostly I think of Joe fondly, and with gratitude.

Ask mountaineers why they climb and invariably they say that it allows them to live in the moment. Ask those bereaved by climbing accidents if anything positive has emerged from the tragedy and, in one way or another, they usually echo the climber's sentiment. If they love someone, they tell them. If they have a gift to give, they give it. They take nothing for granted.

I understand that sentiment. Joe's death stripped away my desire to live for the future. My life became the past and the present. I lived from moment to painful moment, a vivid and extreme existence where nothing mattered and anything was possible. That intensity, I now realize, was Joe's legacy. It compelled me to follow his example, taking from life what I wanted and needed, knowing that the end can come suddenly, without warning.

Joe's death jolted me alive.

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