Gone Missing
PDF I ride my bike north on Ogden Street, just east of downtown Denver in one of the more diverse and densely populated parts of the city. When I reach the intersection of East Ninth Avenue, I stop to wait for the endless line of cars. That’s when I realize I’ve been here before. I recognize the King Soopers parking lot toward Downing Street, the row of shops running along Ninth Avenue, the brick houses that line the sidewalks around me.
It takes a moment before I remember that Kay used to live on this street, up on the next block, after she moved down from the mountains, after she had her third and final baby.
That was over thirty years ago.
The last time I heard from Kay was this past April, when she sent me an electronic birthday greeting. After that, we exchanged a couple emails, but that was about it. And then, in May, I got word she was in the hospital, admitted on Mother’s Day for severe abdominal pain. Several days later, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Within two weeks, she was dead.
Kay had just turned seventy. She had celebrated her sixty-ninth birthday by jumping out of an airplane. Parachuting, she said, was as wondrous as being able to fly.
Until the time she entered the hospital, she traveled internationally, led workshops across the US and abroad, and counseled those around her in a variety of personal and spiritual matters. She might have been seventy, but she looked closer to fifty and had the energy of someone in her thirties.
After her death, memorial services were held in Kauai, Los Angeles, and Colorado—all places she had once lived, all places she had profoundly affected the lives of those around her.
I was unable to attend any of those services. I did, however, hold one of my own. Last week, in Grand Lake, I hiked up the North Inlet trail into Rocky Mountain National Park. Kay and I—along with several other friends—used to hike that trail at night. We’d set out around midnight, when the moon was full or nearly full. That was the summer of ’75.
At least two other people who had walked with us have also passed on. Wanda died in 1983 from toxic shock syndrome. Irwin committed suicide by jumping off a train in Germany, shortly after the summer we had strolled under the full moon.
While hiking up the North Inlet trail, as we had 35 years earlier, I reflected on the times I had shared with Kay and the others. I thought about the walks we took, the cross-country trails we skied, the resort where we worked, the retreats we attended, the restaurant we started, the frustration and enthusiasm we shared. All in the Colorado Rockies, surrounded by the lush spread of grassy meadows, the towering rock faces of snow-covered peaks, the icy deep blue of sapphire skies.
Another place, another lifetime.
As I ride my bike up Ogden Street, I try to remember the house in which Kay lived. But there are too many two-story brick homes, all shades of tan and brown, all subdivided into apartments, all a little worn at the edges. Too many years have passed for me to distinguish one house from the other. Too many years of numbers to pick out a solitary address. The truth is, I remember little about her time down here, except that we visited often and never ran out of things to say.
Over the years, I’ve lost family and friends to causes too many to list. I’ve lost them to heart failure, kidney failure, and liver failure. To cancer, Alzheimer’s, and AIDS. To war, accident, and suicide.
The National Cancer Institute estimates that over 21,000 new cases of ovarian cancer will be diagnosed in the US this year and the disease will take nearly 14,000 lives. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cancer kills over a half million people each year. But it’s heart disease that’s the leading killer in the US, coming in at number 1 on the CDC’s mortality list. Then there are strokes, which take the third slot, and respiratory disease, which comes in fourth. After that come accidents, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and an assortment of other illnesses, putting the annual number of deaths somewhere around 2.4 million.
Our time here is tenuous and fleeting at best. And no Armani suit or Lexus sedan or high-definition television or 5,000-square-foot trophy home is going to change that. Nor is our desire for it not to be so.
I continue my bike ride up Ogden Street, heading toward nowhere in particular, a park perhaps or maybe a coffee shop, somewhere where ghosts no longer linger. Yet my ride is not just here and I’m not alone. I ride with Kay and Wanda and Irwin and the others who’ve gone before me. I ride through the mountains and along the canyons and across the desert and into the sky. I ride anywhere the richness of friendship and experience and memory take me. Anywhere that reminds me of the exquisite moments with people and places that have made this journey worth taking.
