Until I Say Good-Bye (5 page)

The Northern Lights

W
e had selected a site five hours below the Arctic Circle in Canada's Yukon Territory: a town called Whitehorse and an outfit, Northern Tales Travel Service, which specialized in taking aurora seekers on their quest.

No inside information, just a Google search. Their website's photos of a glorious aurora and a warm cabin intrigued me.

It certainly looked like a place for a “scene denied to other mortal men,” as Byrd wrote. “A place where neglected senses turned to exquisite sensitivity.”

Nancy and I made a grand trip of it. Flying first to San Francisco then Vancouver, leaving warmer-weather clothes at the hotel for our return. Whitehorse was a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Vancouver, mostly north.

We cracked up at the tropical silk flower arrangements at the Air North ticket counter. I asked the agent about the weather up in Whitehorse: “Twenty below and snowing,” he said.

The cold literally took my breath away. When I stepped outside in Whitehorse, my air refused to come out. I wondered if nostrils could freeze shut.

At least we had Northern Tales agent Stefan Wackerhagen to heat us up. Stefan was a German dogsledder and outdoorsman who looked like a rugged Anderson Cooper. “Yay!” Nancy and I telegraphed to each other.

He took us to our hotel, the Best Western Gold Rush Inn, then handed us two large red duffels full of the winter-weather gear we had rented. We went to our rooms and suited up for the first of three nights of aurora viewing.

Or, rather, Nancy did. With my weak hands, I hadn't a prayer of zipping, tugging, lacing, or buttoning anything. After she finished with her own tugging and zipping, Nancy tugged me into my skintight running pants, my jeans, my wool socks, goose-down bib overalls, a nylon skintight undershirt, a cotton turtleneck, a cashmere sweater, a down parka, and a pair of heavy lace-up winter boots.

“What's the number-one pickup line in the Yukon?” I asked. “ ‘I'm sure you're not nearly as fat as you look in that parka.' ”

Over and over on the trip, Nancy would suit and unsuit me, at one point declaring the nylon undershirt “toxic waste.”

I blamed it on the cheap deodorant she kept putting on me.

About ten in the evening, our guide drove us a half hour outside Whitehorse along the Alaskan Highway. We sped into pitch-black, the powdery snow skittering across the road in the headlights. Turned off onto an unmarked snow-packed path through the trees and parked beside a small cabin in the middle of nowhere.

To the north was an open white field, with benches at the side.

And above a vast expanse of sky for Mother Nature to paint on.

That first night the winds whooshed so much we could not build a fire, and we passed the hours inside the cabin, around a black wood-burning stove, glowing orange.

Tacked up on a cabin wall were pelts of fox and bear, the bear shot on the property (a fun fact I really didn't need to hear).

On another wall was a world map where light seekers pinned their hometowns, some as far away as Tahiti, South Africa, and New Zealand. A wooden bench with pillows ringed the cabin. There was a snack bar with ten different kinds of hot tea, coffee and hot chocolate, cookies, chips, and marshmallows.

But no northern lights. That vast expanse of sky remained choked in clouds.

Now what does one do in the Yukon winter when not standing in a field in the middle of the night?

Northern Tales offered day trips—wildlife preserve, dogsledding tours, or a visit to a hot spring. So the next day, Nancy put an extra layer on me: a swimsuit.

Takhini Hot Springs is an outdoor oasis fed by water percolating deep in the earth, then returning to the surface laden with minerals and 104 degrees.

Nancy and I were the only visitors there that afternoon. I stared at the steps leading into the pool. The handrail was on the left side, my weaker side.

Suddenly, this struck me as a bad idea. In warm weather maybe, but not lumbering in a wet swimsuit at ten below. I envisioned Nancy in a permafrosted bikini struggling to hoist me up from the frozen floor.

“I'm not going in.”

“What? Susan! Come on!”

Back and forth like that a few times, then Nancy went off to ask for help from the gorgeous man at the front desk. I overheard him telling her about the eighty-year-old arthritic lady he helps out of the pools. I envisioned him hoisting my failing self.

No way, I thought.

Then I heard Nancy say to him something that moved me: “I've never seen her like that before.”

“Okay, okay, I'll do it,” I hollered from the changing room.

For the umpteenth time, Nancy undressed me—parka, overalls, three shirts, two pants. We headed down the cold-creaking walkway in our swimsuits, laying our towels on a frost-covered rack.

Nancy stepped down the stairs into the water. “Ooh, kinda feels like it's burning you!” she said.

She turned around to help me. We glided in silently with hardly a ripple.

I gasped and clenched my teeth until I realized the water was not singeing me. It was perfectly hot, steaming in the freezing air. We found the spouts where the hot spring water flows into the pool and sat on a bench beside them, up to our necks in a thermal winter wonderland.

The hot springs were a semicircle, offering a fish-eye view of the surroundings. A forest of frosted fir trees. A motionless sky of clouds. It was so quiet, you could hear branches groaning under the weight of the snow.

One by one, the droplets of water in our hair froze. Slowly, Nancy's hair turned white, until she looked like a little old lady.

I thought of sitting beside her at the hospital one distant day awaiting the birth of her first grandchild. Of being beside her at the graduations and weddings and funerals to come.

I had been consumed since my diagnosis with preparing for death: making voice recordings for my children, planning trips, obsessing over finances, trying to preserve my family's ability to live with joy without me. But in those moments, I saw the future on the face of my friend—and me a part of it.

The clouds opened, an azure sky aglow in the sunset, and inside me returned a sense of hope.

T
he second night of aurora viewing was clear as glass and still. Our guide was a Cuban gentleman, Leandro Font. A part-time guide, a new one, who himself had not seen the lights out at the cabin site.

So there we were, two Floridians and a Cuban, waiting. Staring into the darkness, trying to divine the miracle of the sub-Arctic.

We saw a light at the horizon, moving behind a stand of trees. We trained our cosmic zoom and held our breaths. It was a car.

“I tink dat's de northern headlights,” Font said.

After a few hours, I went inside the cabin and lay down by the glowing stove. I awoke from a dead sleep to Font hollering: “It's coming! It's coming!”

I wobbled out to the field, Nancy yelling: “Look! Look! See it there!”

There it was—a horizontal band about 30 degrees high in the night sky. A ghost of the heavens. Is it green or white? I was wondering, when I tripped and fell over in the snow, whacking my head on the way down.

By the time Nancy and Leandro hoisted me up, the light was gone.

On our final day in Whitehorse, Stefan took us dogsledding at Muktuk Kennels, home to 120 or so Alaskan huskies. We were ensconced in our winter space suits and boots when Stefan said, “I don't think those boots will be warm enough. We'll get you some bunny boots instead.”

Bunny boots are a lace-up white rubber creation of the U.S. military for minus-forty-degree weather. They are like strapping two bricks to each foot and about as comfortable.

“Do you have any physical problems?” our amiable Muktuk guide Tori asked Nancy as we suited up.

“Oh, yeah,” said Nancy. “Exercise-induced asthma in cold weather.”

We laughed and stepped out of the tackhouse into minus 10 degrees. Tori and Nancy harnessed eight dogs and swaddled me in the sled—a cushion at my back, a hot water bottle at my torso, and a sleeping bag over me. They zipped up the canvas cover and pulled my wool turtleneck over my mouth and nose, leaving just my eyes peering out.

Tori gave Nancy a primer on operating a dogsled, a gaggle of unintelligible-to-me directions about brakes and snow hooks and vocal commands that only make sense to dogs. All I understood was: “Whatever you do, don't let go.”

Last thing Tori said to Nancy: “There's a hill where you'll have to get off and run. The dogs can't pull all the weight.”

“Wait . . . what?!?”

Too late. We were off.

We soon reached said hill. “Oh, God, I should have eaten my Wheaties,” Nancy groaned.

She moved to the side of the sled and jogged up the snowy hill in her brick bunny boots. Her breathing became louder and shorter.

About halfway up I heard: “I wonder how far.” Gasp. “We are.” Gasp. “From.” Gasp. “A hospital.”

Nancy never let the sled go. She kept hold as it threatened to drag her along. She sounded on the edge of an asthma attack. Finally, at the top of the hill, she was able to catch her breath.

“You're buying me effing dinner,” Nancy eked out.

We laughed and laughed the rest of the ride on level trail, the dogs pulling us through the white fir forest—pines and spruce rising around us in silence. The only sound the
pat, pat, pat
of thirty-two paws on the snow.

I had come to see the silent wonder of the sky. And found wonder in the silence right around me.

This is a dream, I thought. This is a dream.

O
ur final night of aurora viewing was a Friday, and we were joined by a dozen folks who came for the weekend. A Chinese family. A Japanese fashion designer inspired by Jack London novels. A couple from Toronto who said seeing the lights was a bucket-list trip.

I didn't ask them why, nor did I tell anyone my reasons.

I passed about my bottle of Hennessy, drank oodles of hot chocolate and hot tea. Stefan practiced taking souvenir pictures—long exposures where we would stand completely still while the camera captured the undulating curtain of lights behind us.

If only the lights would come.

I had stopped checking the auroral forecast the day before. I knew I couldn't change it. Why worry? What's meant to be was meant to be.

That's how my psychologist advised me to answer my children's questions. When they ask, “Mommy, are you going to die?” I answer: “I don't know what's meant to be.”

But of course I hoped the lights would come.

I looked about the cabin at the framed photos of glorious green auroras. I thought of the delight and extraordinary kindness of every Canadian we met. I watched my dear friend giddily chatting up the ripped Anderson Cooper look-alike.

My friend who spent thousands of dollars to travel eight thousand miles to a freezing place she had zip-zero interest in going with zip-zero guarantee of seeing any stinkin' lights.

We waited until 3:00 a.m.

But it wasn't meant to be.

“Would you rather have seen the lights and not met all these people and not experienced all these things?” Nancy asked.

“No,” I answered.

And then she reminded me: “It's the journey, not the destination, true?”

“True.” I said. “A bit hackneyed, but true indeed.”

She sighed. I smiled.

“Good night, my beautiful friend.”

Wreck Beach

I
n the Yukon, the cold sapped me of energy. I noticed my feet dragging in the heavy boots and being exhausted after shivering. I hoped it was just that—the extreme cold.

In Vancouver, on the way home, I discovered otherwise. Back in the relative warmth, with fewer clothes and cute flats instead of boots, I still felt weak.

We had a one-day layover—hello Four Seasons!—so my friend Nick and his girlfriend Junmin took Nancy and me out for an afternoon. Nick was the producer of a television show on true crime. He had recently filmed a special on my favorite victim—gunshot survivor Heather Grossman, an inspiring quadriplegic I had written many newspaper articles about—and despite my slurred speech, he insisted I be involved.

Nick suggested a spot on the beach, with a view of Vancouver's bay and the surrounding hills. It was a sunny day, but chilly. We could build a fire, Nick said, and watch the sun set.

Perfect!

The entrance to Wreck Beach was a steep bank of stairs descending into forest. Fifty feet below, the stairs twisted out of sight. I could not see their end.

We started down. By the first landing, a canopy of cedar and fir trees covered the sky, with ferns and bushes—electric green—surrounding their trunks. There was a little snow on the steps. Leaves falling silently in the lush air. Spots of sunlight here and there.

A perfect place to fall in love, I thought.

We started down again, slowly, the stairs carpeted in autumn's slippery gift of gold and crimson.

We turned a bend, passed huckleberry and maples, more slippery stairs. The climate changed as we descended, along with the plants too. More ferns. More moisture. No snow.

I thought of how my physical therapist taught me to put my weaker left leg first, then follow with my right.

I parsed each step. Planting left, then right. One foot, then the other. Waiting for Nancy to join me on each step, so I could grab her if I slipped.

I tired. I sat on a bench with her, resting.

“Wanna turn back?” she asked.

“No.”

Hundreds more steps, but I parsed them all, one foot after the other.

We arrived at the shore.

The spot was as divine as Nick described: the bay, the hills, and all Vancouver before us.

Nick lit a fire.

I was exhausted. Too tired to totter across the beach shoreline of polished stones. I sat on a driftwood log. It was cold in the wind. I wondered if we might have to call the fire department to haul me back up the steps. Nancy wondered too.

She covered my legs with a blanket. Eventually, they helped me to the fire.

Nick and Junmin talked of how they met. She had been a florist Nick often visited.

Telling, isn't it, how we always remember how people fell in love?

We rested. The sun began to set. Nancy stood in its golden light, and Nick took her picture. One of my favorite photos of her.

I was too tired to stand and do the same.

“Ready?” Nancy asked.

“As I'll ever be,” I said.

We started back up the stairs. About four hundred of them. Nancy gripped my elbow and added a little oomph up each one. Within minutes, I was panting. We stopped often to rest.

One rest at a time.

One step at a time.

One day at a time.

We made it up those steps. It took more than an hour. At the top, I was too tired to walk to the car. Nick had to pull around and hoist me in.

I have been unable to walk right since. I stumble. I cannot lift my legs. When muscle fiber breaks down in healthy people, it repairs itself stronger. That is the biology behind exercise. When muscle breaks down in an ALS patient, it never recovers. It is gone forever.

I left a lot of muscle on those stairs.

“Do you regret it?” Nancy asked me recently.

“No,” I said.

And I meant it. I do not regret Wreck Beach, not for a second. Because it was beautiful. A moment I cherish and would not trade.

At my next appointment, I told my physical therapist, Kathy, about the Yukon and the beach. Kathy could see how I had weakened in the time I was gone.

“You need to stop,” Kathy said. “The effort of traveling is hurting you.”

Too late. Nancy's trip had given me a plan for my year. Within a week of returning, I had booked a trip to Hungary with John. I had decided to return to Cyprus. I had promised a trip to each of my children, knowing I could give them nothing more precious than my time.

Kathy said the same thing after each of those trips. “You're weakening. You should stop.”

And each time, I replied the same way: “Not a chance.”