Finding the Path Through

I lift my head and I look at the snowcapped mountains. Sleet cuts across my cheeks. The cold is numbing but exhilarating. There is a freedom to being this exposed and this alone.

The rocky stream stretches out in front of me. I'm careful to not misstep and fall in to the frigid water. In the distance, I can see the half-frozen lake. The water from the nearby glacier causing it to be an ethereal green in colour.

I don't carry much with me. I am only out for the day, exploring. But I have my thermals on and my backpack which contains the necessities. Water, food, sunscreen, and the battered little black notebook that I never knew I needed until recently. But now I would never be without.

The call had come just over 6 months ago, in the early hours of a December morning. I had rolled sleepily onto my side trying to shut out the noise before realising it was my phone. Reaching awkwardly for it I glanced at the time. 2.45am. Nothing good ever happens at this time of the morning.

“Hello?”

“Is this Jess Baxter?” The voice is female. Official. Serious. I am immediately fully awake.

“Um, yes. Yes it is,”

“You are listed as the emergency contact for Lily Baxter?” the serious voice continues. I can tell its not good news.

“Yes, that’s correct. She’s my grandmother,”

The serious voice goes on to explain that Nan had been brought into the hospital emergency room earlier that evening. She had fallen at home and been found by her neighbour.

I race through the dark streets. Worry and fear making me fly. My beautiful Nan, who seemed so much younger than her 84 years, was never meant to leave me. Ever. At 25, I know that’s not realistic but my parents had died when I was very little and she had raised me. She was my only family.

Once at the hospital it was obvious that she wasn’t going to make it. The serious woman on the phone had been replaced by a kindly young doctor who marveled at the fact that Nan was still alive. It appeared that she had slipped getting out of the shower and hit her head. He told me to go and spend what little time I had left with her.

I sat beside her and held her hand. I gently stroked her beautiful face. Tracing her eyebrows with my finger. Caressing her cheek. Skin so soft despite her age.

I told her how much I loved her and how loved she made me feel. And somewhere between my heartfelt whispers and the first rays of the morning she slipped away.

The next week was a blur. I made funeral arrangements, accepted condolences and wrote a eulogy that I was only barely able to deliver because my broken heart.

It took me a month to build the courage to start going through her things and packing up her house. That is how I found myself in her kitchen towards the end of January. Removing the old Ajax jars, scouring pads and assorted cleaning products from under the sink.

Part way through this process my hand brushed something taped to the top of the cupboard right at the back. I pulled on it finding it was a plastic shopping bag. Peaking inside, I saw there was little black notebook. I flicked through it and it was empty. Which was strange because its pages where creased and stained in parts. Like someone had used it regularly and written in its pages or poured through its contents.

With a shrug of my shoulders I set it aside and searched the back of the cupboard again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. My fingers touched another plastic shopping bag.

“Omg,” I exclaimed. The sound echoed through the empty unit. Inside this bag were so many $50 and $100 bills. “Omfg,” I said again.

I didn’t understand why the money was hidden there. Or where it came from. Had Nan been saving all these years? She’d never mentioned it and she had never had a lot of money. And it looked like a lot of money.

I pulled it out of the bag and started to count. $100, $2000, $10,000…. By the time I finished I had counted $20,000.

I don’t know why but I started to cry. I thought about my little Nan who had sacrificed everything to bring me up. How she had gone without so much, so I could have opportunities. I sat on the kitchen floor and I sobbed surrounded by money that she should have spent on herself.

When the tears subsided I again reached for the little black notebook. Opening it to the first page, I saw my Nans flowery, cursive handwriting:

Things to Remember:

1. The past can’t be changed

I flicked through the remaining pages and again they were empty. I looked at the words:

“The past can’t be changed”.

I was positive the whole book was empty when I first looked at it. I shook my head. I must have missed it the first time. I was tired and not thinking straight so that made sense.

Nan was right. The past couldn’t be changed. But I honestly didn’t know what a future without her looked like. I couldn't see the path through my grief.

I continued on into February and March. Week by week, the rawness of my grief was lessening but the sense of loss didn't abate. I found it increasingly hard to find joy in things that had previously made me happy.

I finished an on-off again relationship with a rather uninspiring man. He had tried to support me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that his support was not what I wanted. That he was not what I wanted.

I refused invitations with friends that I would normally have accepted. Their absence in the aftermath of my Nans death had rung loudly in my ears. So much so that their olive branches now seemed brittle and ill thought through.

I poured over old photos and I relived memories. Then one day I came across an old scrap book that Nan had put together. She had always wanted to travel. It contained photos of the places she would say she would love to go – Chile, Spain, Finland & the list went on. Glorious pictures of dreams that she never got to fulfill because she took in an orphaned 4-year-old.

A tiny beginning of an idea started to take shape. I could feel it creep along the back of my neck. Tingling down my arms and warming my chest.

What if I were to use Nans money to travel to all the places that she had wanted to go? The money that I opened an account for, deposited and had not touched since I found it. But how was that fair? How could I enjoy it when she was no longer here?

I sat on the idea. Days stretched into a week. Every time the thought tickled at me I pushed it down. Guilty that I would entertain doing all the things that Nan never got the chance to.

Finally, on a Friday night as I sat in bed, I felt compelled to remove the little black notebook from its place in my bedside table. Opening it again, I reread the first page. Then flicked to the second page. And there, where there had been nothing, of this I was now sure, in Nan’s quirky script was written:

2. It is ok to let go and move on

My hands were shaking as I leafed through the remaining pages. All still blank. I turned the book upside down and around. Trying to make sense of something that didn’t make sense at all.

I looked at the 2nd page again. Knowing, without doubt, that what I thought was a mysterious, little black notebook was really my path through. That Nan was helping me navigate life without her. Just as she helped me when she was alive.

So that is how, 6 months after that tragic night, I come to be sitting on the edge of a frozen lake. Staring at the glacier as it towers over me.

I remove the little black notebook from my backpack. Knowing before I open it that the third page will now have a message on it just for me. Knowing that throughout my life each page will hold a message for me.

I turn to the third page and as I thought her writing is there. Beautiful and uplifting:

3. Happiness is found within