The Dive

Suited up, she waited for the pilot and guides to show for the jump. Beer cans overflowed the garbage cans and littered the ground. Upon arrival, they proudly announced how they had jumped the day before with the crew and stunt doubles for a movie being filmed on location. The scattered empties told the rest of the story of a night of partying. Regardless, this was her day of triumphant jubilation and her turn to live larger than life. Having watched the mandatory safety video and received five minutes of ground instruction, her nerves began jittering, jumping with adrenaline, anticipatory fear shuddered through her muscles.

As the plane climbed, the grandeur of the mountain range filled the view of the open doorway. There was no need for a door with everyone on board packed with a parachute. Once the plane reached its predestined height, the pilot had to circle back around to find an opening in the clouds that now shrouded the mountainous views. The duct tape around the door frame did little to calm her nerves as adrenaline pulsed through her veins. The logic now stood to reason, who wouldn't jump from a plane held together by duct tape anyways? The others were eager to enjoy a free jump on her dime as the cost of fuel was included in her once-in-a-lifetime cancer-free, celebratory experience.

Thoughts of the last eighteen months clamored through her mind. She had overcome a near death experience, having died for ten minutes from a sudden cardiac arrest, post-surgery to remove a kidney stone. Her husband shouted, “Don’t leave me, you’re my best friend, I love you!” To which she revived within seconds. She then fought through sepsis during an eight-day coma. That was just the start of her plight in the fight of her life. Her husband was present throughout her fevered dreams and hallucinations, standing to the left of her, he became a safe, trusted person she looked for during those terrors. She tried to squeeze his hand in rhythm to signal she was there, not to leave, to help her get out of there. He would later say that the medical team only said those were muscle spasms, but he knew otherwise and believed in her. He held on to hope and wouldn’t allow any negativity in the room or in his mind. When offered last rights or discussion on placing her in a rehabilitation facility, he refused it all. She was going home with him, alive no matter what condition. They had taken lifelong vows, and it meant something. When she began to respond to outside stimuli at first it was only to him, then others and finally she squeezed two blue fingers held in front of her face, a lifeline out of the depths of the coma. When she woke it was with a smile, to her husband whom she recognized right away as the man who was always standing by her side.

Once home, she had to recuperate and get strong enough to endure the surgical removal of her nephrostomy tube that was keeping her alive, draining her kidney night and day. Terrified of the anesthesia and the idea of never waking up from surgery, she wept in her husband’s arms. When she woke, she cried out in tears of joy with a beaming smile, in her husband’s arms once again. It was only then that she would begin her journey for treatment of colorectal cancer. It would take twenty-nine days of radiation, additional chemotherapy infusion sessions and three months of chemotherapy pills to eradicate the toxic cancer cells.

All the while she dreamt of previous road trips that pushpins marked their journey on a corkboard map of the states they had traversed over the years. She meditated on the days spent hiking in verdant growth of evergreens and forest floors lush with moss and ferns. She created a goal, to hike once more, to breathe the life-giving air only the forest provides, renewing her sense of self-other than medical compromised. She found a local one-mile trail in need of stewardship that they could assume the role once she was strong enough to. She started with her roll aider, walking the length of their bedroom, home, then driveway and hill. Then she used her cane with stops to catch her breath and rest, becoming less frequent and lengthy. She was ready. The first hike took two hours to complete, hiking past a sedimentary cave, through fern gully, a woodland grove and past a dilapidated barn. Each marker a guidepost for the trail, a guidepost for her journey through her recovery. It took three days to recuperate.

Something stirred in her wandering spirit. She wanted to commemorate the triumphant achievement and resolve it took to live through those eighteen months of medical onslaught. She wanted to see the world from a perspective of grandiosity, proportionate to what she had just lived through. Something that would mark her accomplishment in such an exhilarating way, to indeed state that yes, she is alive. That is when a skydive over the Bitterroot Mountain range in Montana took hold of every fiber of her being. She contacted her best friend from high school and began the drive cross country with her husband.

They would stop and hike on various trails along the way to experience the back country lands. Instead of cowering to her recovery from illness they leaned into her strength to live forward together. They would stop at family-owned restaurants, shop locally and avoid heavy tourist locations. All to see the authentic local cultures as much as possible. They flew in a Cessna over the Grand Tetons as she took her discovery flight piloting the plane. They rented a side-by-side and rode through the back country of the Rocky Mountains. She wanted to thrive on this trip, building core memories and bonds with her husband. He had been her caretaker throughout her illness and deserved to be uplifted into the light of day in whatever way possible.  As they reached Missoula, they were already filled with experiences that would only be had once in their lifetime. The jump was the final destiny, adventure, to be taken.

The rain clouds had closed in on them, and the jump was at risk of being canceled. The pilot circled around several times looking for openings. Finally, the pilot gave the all clear. She placed her foot on the small step attached to the wing and in her ear was the countdown to let go… in three, two, one…As she reassured herself, “There’s no going back now.”