I remember the first time confronting death, absent through natural causes. No DNA sequence limiting our age through the compound structure of a telomere.
Habbaniyah, Iraq. In the early morning hours, I leave my room to shave my face before a patrol. Sunlight peaks over the horizon, signaling the start of a new day. Walking through the breezeway to the bathroom, the ringing echo of a gunshot tears through the landscape. What was once a human body, containing the indomitable mortal spirit, is now an empty vessel. What was once the culmination of mortality, is all but removed. The definition of struggle, suffering, and identity. The individual, freeing themselves from all of this.
I wonder if the Marine who took his life will visit Charon, the ferryman to the underworld for Hades? Will his spirit travel across the river Styx? To join all of our brothers that have died in battle? When he stands before the different ancestral clergymen to be judged, will he be absolved of his sins? Will, and can, he be forgiven?
Will he reside in the Nordic Belief of Valhalla? Will the Valkyries carry him, only to see his frailty and offer him penance for taking his life? Should I feel sorry for a man who took his life, and chastise him for conditions I can’t understand?
Should I instead, offer him our forgiveness?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. Under the conditions of death, and the circumstances surrounding each and everyone, it is difficult to explain the next journey. Many religious texts have tried explaining something that is far from thought. When we meet death face-to-face, either through the first-person, or someone we once knew or know; it is turbulent and treacherous.
Over the past month, I’ve been processing the death of Brad Gobright, a very prominent and figurative climber who died in Mexico.
I receive the word and draw a blank. I feel nothing at first, trying to concoct the situation. Painting different outcomes. I can’t draw up a thought, put words to paper, or even realize that he is gone. I sit in silence, only to hear nothing from within. No guiding hand telling me what to do. No mentor or parental figure helps. As I stare outside my window, I see the snowfall hitting the ground, and wonder where is the next step?
My immediate reaction is to at first take-up arms against something I don’t understand. Go for a run, head to the gym. Go climb outside, play a video game. Make the thoughts stop. Cease the coalescing process and high-energy. Rid me of this uneasy feeling.
The process unfolds, and find me somewhere up on the top of a mountain. Unaware of what time of day it is. I’m here by myself because I am helpless to the natural process of death. The temperature hovers somewhere around -5 degrees Fahrenheit. I am cold, and feel it on the surface of my body and skin, a temporary level of punishment and pain I can connect within a healthy manner. I feel slightly better, but I am nowhere closer to finding Mr. Gobright here. I just need to feel some form of pain, some way to connect with this feeling I can’t describe. Most athletes go through it, and our primal nature reveals that pain is a natural process that everyone must experience. Physical and mental. Everyone must experience it to both grow and maintain a healthy relationship with the self.
I’ve been here many times over. This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with a death of this magnitude. I often struggle to try to find the words to encapsulate how I feel. I often struggle trying to relate to the people around me. I decide that the best course of action is to shut them out. To let me process his death on my terms.
Over the past 10 years, I’ve lost about 20 different people. Suicide, drinking and driving, war, falling from the skies in airplanes, drug deals gone bad. Each one having a significant impact on my outlook on life. Each one, each soul, an infinitesimal amount of potential and prospect. Each one was somehow deeply meaningful to me. 20 times, have I taken to heart with me the impact of life.
When I first left the military, I felt a reticent disconnect with the average civilian. I sensed a disconnect in my life experiences over theirs. It was as if I gained 30 years in a short period. I labored every night trying to capitalize on my mental progress, waiting for there to be an answer to the difficulties beset upon me. As time went on, I gained strategies on how to better deal with my emotions and that lingering disconnect. Shutting it off completely though is something I feel will never go away. It’s been 10 years, and I still connect deeply with people that have also experienced some level of trauma. I feel that through my experiences, I’m able to relate to a variety of different people from all walks of life. While I sit and meditate, I understand that all life is surrounded in a struggle. All life is fortified in suffering. The more we try to deny this, the more it eats away and tears at us. Surrendering to ourselves is only the first step.
The depth of any story can take me to the center of the Earth and back again. I interact with people, but at the same time want to maintain a vestigial distance. I have grown scared of relationships. I have grown scared of forging long-lasting friendships for the fear that they will be taken from me. I fear that I’ll revisit my past, watching the weeping widows and the fatherless and motherless children wonder why they aren’t coming home. I’ll watch the tears on their face. I’ll watch them cry. Standing before their parent's picture. I’ll see the varying degree of emotional intelligence play out. The 2-year old that just stands there silently. The 8-year old who holds her mother’s hand, crying during the eulogy. The teenager, trying to stay invincible, with vanishing emotion. Crying only behind closed doors, because this is all so new. I’ll tell myself that the best way to live my life is to be the best version of myself that I can at all times. I’ll tell myself that I must be strong. I must maintain a rigid spiritual structure for others. A metaphysical foundation of answers.
When I got into climbing, I see a scary similarity between those in the infantry and those that climb. Infantry is required to push it to the absolute edge of physical and mental endurance. Opting for a life of immense suffering, forfeit of luxury. The same is said for people within the climbing community.
Those in the infantry, have a quarrelsome relationship with death. People are puzzled by this? We are keenly aware that the line of work involves dying and killing. We don’t immediately want to take our own lives, but if it came for us to rush a hill knowing that we would most potentially vacate our host body, then that is what is required. This is a dangerous game to play with the psyche. Living at the absolute mental limit of existence. Between each footstep, every breath. Sensible that each small movement separates you from life and death. Living on the sharp brink of existence with each second. This is a necessary tool, used to understand the pursuit of living out our lives.
I remember the people I met in Afghanistan. They had very little in the avenue of material possessions. Houses made from the natural landscape, some with nothing but mud and water. Every day a matter of survival. Between the different warring factions, and the power vacuum after the Global War on Terror, there is little in the hopes that they look forward to “The Golden Years,” which most Americans can afford.
If I was allowed to sit down and speak with the Afghan people, I’d collect their stories that would be enough for 20 lifetimes. I’d sit with a notebook in hand, writing all day, of their profound and disturbing stories. Their struggles, their traumas, their detrimental and troublesome world. Most try to make it to their next meal, their next cup of tea. Living on the edge of existence, one breath at a time. One small footstep, one small movement.
In the movie Black Hawk Down, an exchange of words takes place between Michael Durant (a captive U.S. pilot) and a Somali militiaman.
Durant, who was shot down, is the sole survivor of his aircraft. Two U.S. Army Delta Force Soldiers monitoring the situation above in their helo, opt to aid in his rescue. They requested to insert themselves at a drop zone not too far from where Durant’s chopper went down.
Before the insertion, the Delta Soldiers could see crowds numbering into the 100’s. Descending onto Durant’s chopper. AK-47’s and various small arms fire at Durant as he fights to regain consciousness and composure after surviving a helicopter crash.
Amidst the chaos, civilians were killed, along with many Somalians. Bullets whizzing like mosquitoes looking for blood. The two Soldiers did not know Durant on a deeply personal level but aided in his rescue anyway. Offering to secure the crash site until further ground forces could reinforce and evacuate and/or recover the bodies of the dead Americans. They were well aware of the severity, and the small chance they would make it out alive. They were aware that they were going to die.
They were keenly aware that they were going to die. They never had the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones. They weren’t allowed to lie gracefully in a bed surrounded by their loved ones and relive all of their lifelong accomplishments. Fading in and out of consciousness, only to meet their end through natural causes.
“My daughter was born this year.”
“My son was born this year.”
“I remember the first time that I fell in love. We married 50 years ago.”
There is so much potential and measurement in all of these sayings.
The two Delta Soldiers did not survive the engagement with the Somali militia. Durant was captured and taken hostage.
In the depiction of the movie, Durant is played by Ron Eldard. Badly battered and beaten from the angst of numerous Somalis.
“Michael. Michel, Durant?” One of the Somali soldiers reads Durant’s dog tag back for the correct enunciation. The militiaman asks Durant if he is one of the rangers responsible for killing his people. Durant replies no.
“I’m not a ranger. I’m a pilot.” Durant replies.
The militiaman motions his arm outward to offer Durant a cigarette, to which he declines.
“That’s right. None of the Americans smoke anymore.” The militiaman lights the cigarette with a Zippo-like lighter, inhaling the smoke. “You all live long. Dull. Uninteresting lives.”
I think of the deeply woven significance of this saying. Is he saying Americans struggle to live? Even from the perspective of a Somali militiaman, he can see the bigger picture. How do we carry out the correct actions to live a fulfilling life? Two different men, with two different world views, separated by oceans and deserts, hold a conversation and highlight to me the perpetual and colossal problem. Fighting as enemies, but understanding one another more so, than most Americans understand each other. Sometimes we understand our enemies more than we understand ourselves.
To live a significant life is something I struggle with almost every day. I want the people around me to be happy, almost at the expense of my own. I wish that they have children, get married, and live a long, fulfilling existence.
It’s not always that easy. The indomitable power of the human spirit brings people up to the snowy voids of Mount Everest. Across the barren wastelands of Antarctica. To the Moon and back, with no idea, if they will survive. The bigger, larger message? No one will ever know if they are living a significant life. There is no governing body. There is no organization or group of infinite wisdom that will grant you this question. The idea of living a fulfilling, determinate existence is one of nothing but speculation and subjectivity. Every decision you make can be a cloud of doubt and uncertainty. Every outcome, every future decision, starts with an uneasy feeling.
When I think of the idea of starting a family, it plagues me to my core. I have experienced a loving, fulfilling relationship before. I see the frailty people experience when in the presence of a caring significant other. I place my perspective in the future, and wonder what I would feel?
I feel my heart start to elevate. My erratic, uncoordinated breathing cycles come to my attention. My head starts to hurt, and I can’t even scrounge up a word to explain my thoughts. Grief, bubbling its way to the surface, hiding behind the mask of humor. I try to contain my emotions, but it becomes so labor intensified by the maelstrom of thoughts I can’t begin to maneuver in my head.
I look at the empty chair during dinner. The dangling, empty rope in the climbing gym. The empty bloodied uniform of an infantryman. The weathering, aging car being battered by the elements. I look at all of these spaces, and wonder where Brad Gobright would be? I wonder what space the infantryman would occupy, and what they would be doing? I think of all the kinships they forged. The community of personal relationships they cultivated, and wonder if their empty presence will be felt?
Every Christmas and family holiday, I listen to the quiet conversation taking place around me. I listen to everything all at once, without even realizing it. I’m not present here, and rarely am. I’m feeling all of the memories being planted. I’m seeing the seeds of growth and potential around me. A cousin with a good job. The aunt who is renovating a house. The friend who is moving onto a new job. All of these decisions, all of these beautiful potentialities. Every moment, a different concurrence of moment and memory.
I can’t explain the problem I have. As I engage in small conversation, it only lasts for a little while. I step in another room alone, to take a second to stop drifting in my mind. Revisiting the empty chair, the empty uniform. Standing in the room I see all the faces of sacrifice. At first, I wonder if I’m hallucinating? I glance over at the empty chair where Brad Gobright now sits. I engage in a conversation. A conversation that never takes place.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say.
“That depends,” the illusion replies. “I’m not currently here, the only conversation you’ll have is with yourself.”
“What are you?”
“I’m the reflection of what once was. A manifestation of your thoughts. I’m neither spirit, nor demon, but merely a spatial awareness of regret. A level of regret you have, not for me, but yourself. You fill this empty chair with the contrition you feel.” The illusion states.
“You believe me to be a specter? You are wrong. What you see and feel is the embodiment of emotional connection mortals experience through the tribulations of life. The beauty, and profound tenderness we experience through excitement and zest. Through adventure, you experience intimacy on a different scale than most humans can quantify. A love that is substantial as it is significant. Authentic as it is platonic.”
The illusion disappears. I look out the window but still hear the voice inside.
“What you experience is the withdrawal of their existence. That space you feel in your heart is not regret, it is a lamentation. The voice you now hear is your consciousness. Attempting to navigate and explain the way to move forward. The illusion you see before you are the positive qualities you gained through the different shared experiences.”
A Marine in dress blues stands in the corner of the room. I don’t see his face, because his back is turned to me.
“You feel sustenance when in the presence of such affirming energy. You know what it is to stand on the top of the mountains. At the zenith of existence, with an element of crisis and instability. The precipice of our primordial ancestors. Through combat, through climbing, you harvest a parallel connection lost to the ages very few humans can experience in our modern world.”
I turn in the direction of the Marine. He too, has disappeared but still hear the echoing voice.
“The words you hear now to explain a situation so convoluted, so tortuous, requires interpretation and expression. Before we continue, you must promise me one thing.”
Both voices simultaneously speak in conjunction.
“You must rid yourself of penance. That space in your heart, the withdrawal, is not regretted. It is not sorrow.”
I turn to the window and see the reflection of a hand resting on my shoulder, with the aberration of a figure standing behind me.
“It is love.” The voices echo in the distance, as they begin to dissolve deeper into the subconscious. Whispering a final sentence.
“Love once removed.”