Long Walk

“This feels a bit excessive.” I shift the pack slung over my shoulders. My father and I are about to head out on a hike in the middle of winter to Azure Pond. My father is a few feet ahead of me. His pack bouncing up and down on his shoulders as he walks. He had gotten to pack light; I carry everything of value. Both chairs and our sleeping packs managed to make it onto my back instead of his. I am beginning to resent him and this trail. “I can take something if you want, Chico.” His voice akin to a Puerto Rican mafioso cut through my thoughts. I shake my head. “No, thanks. I got this.” Just because I was whining about it didn’t mean I wanted him to take something from me. “I knew you had those big muscles for a reason.” He cracks a smile. His teeth are stained and chipped, but his smile the same one that had captured my mother's heart. I flex and say laughing. “Yeah, gettin' me into the gym when I was younger really paid off in your old age. Now you don’t have to carry nothing.” He laughs.

My father had taken up weightlifting when I was in my teen years. Being an overweight kid in school was not an easy path in life. It was the one he’d traveled for the nearly thirty years of his life. When he realized I was taking the same path of misery as him, he had come home with two gym memberships. We became fixtures there for years. Hell, my wife, Mary and I met at that gym. Now, years later and with a different gym partner, I continued that same habit with such a fervor my own wife can’t keep up.

“I am proud of you Chico. In my old age I couldn’t keep it up, but it brings me such pride to see you happy and strong. Stronger every day, too.” His eyes met mine, and tears threatened for both of us. He'd always told me stories about the wasted time of his youth. The depression that gripped him as a young man who thought he was satisfied with his life of working for fun. “I never thought about the years. The days were short and over quickly. I don’t remember the years though. I never made lasting memories. I don’t want that for you Chico.” I remember the first time he’d shown a vulnerable emotion, and it was that conversation. It took until I met my wife to understand what he meant.

My father met my mother late in his life. He was mostly through his twenties and hers were just beginning. He always told me that some resentment of her came from the fact that she had him in her twenties and he’d spent them mostly alone. He was jealous of the youthful twenty-two-year-old he’d fallen in love with. “I’ll never understand why she chose this old bag of bones to grow old with.” He said that a lot. It was an inside joke between him and my mother. When he told me this time it didn’t feel like a joke. He met my eyes, his face stoic. My father never felt like the joyous man he portrayed. In his own eyes he was just a man acting happy for the benefit of others. That is not something a child can see. It’s not something a man can see either.

“Alright Dad, how about we stop being babies and get this hike really really started?” He nods at me and gives me a half smile. We’d walked for about an hour so far. We had been paused for a few moments staring at the challenge ahead. The cresting hill was steep. The climb can feel insurmountable. After that, the path was straight forward and well worth the struggle. We pass a few posted signs warning of the dangers of the area and activities long past over. The snowfall steadily picks up its pace. The crunching of our boots and scraping of nylon are the only sounds cutting through the air. My knees ache with fatigue as I climb. My father somehow stays ahead of me. “Yo, you goin' a little slow there Chico!” His voice carries through the wind and snow. I huff and shift the weight of the pack.

The last time I’d been out here was with both of my parents and my wife, girlfriend at the time. This is where my parents had met Mary. They both loved her from the beginning. When my mother toasted Mary and me at our wedding, she went on about how they didn’t know how to feel about her at first. “Mary was beautiful, out of our son's league.” The room filled with laughter. My mother smiled and looked around. Her fingertips ran over the back of the chair to her left. “But she won us over with her wit, and her beauty, and seeing just how much our boy loves her.” My mother grabbed her water and took a sip. She wiped a tear. “My husband always said that they look at each other like we did when we were young.” More laughter. I had started to cry here, I think. “He loved and will love her as much as I do. Everyone here loves you, Mary, and I welcome you to the family, my daughter.” She raised her glass. “To Oliver and Mary!” The room rose and followed the toast. Mary embraced my mother and the two women cried. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

We almost reach the end of the trail; my father still ahead of me. I adjust the pack again. I could feel the its heft starting to dig into my shoulders. We near the end, right at the precipice of Azure Pond. My father reaches the trail's end first and turns to watch me approach. Sun, for a moment, cuts through the snowfall and leaves of the trees around us. My dad standing bathed in it. He appears Christ-like. Hilarious. I catch up and we walk together towards it. He pats me on the back. “I’m happy we made it here again.” I turn to look at him. His mouth smiling, but his eyes flat. I finally notice. “I’m glad we could too.” I match his smile and his eyes. We walk together to the edge of the frozen water. I finally sling the heavy pack off my shoulders. I take the two chairs and set them down. We sit at the edge of the water for a while and just admire the scene.

The funny thing about Azure is that it’s massive. The difference between a lake and a pond is sunlight. If sunlight can reach the bottom, it’s a pond. Azure stretches just to the edge of what eyes can see. It’s like life in that way. At the start of life, it stretches out and seems to go forever. Going to school for six hours a day seems like eternity. People keep telling you as a child that this time will be over in a blink of an eye, and you never believe them. You close your eyes one night and suddenly you’re being handed a diploma at graduation. Most people walk through life without ever getting too deep in the water. I think they’re the lucky ones. Unlike my father who lived his entire life drowning in a pond. I think about all the questions I should ask my father. I think about the advice he hasn’t given me yet. The stories of his youth I will never know because I never thought to ask. I look out into the snowy horizon.

I turn to my father, the question I wanted to ask finally exploding out. The one I needed to ask. “How do I keep going?” My voice cracks with the question. He opens his mouth to answer but I can't hear him. He can’t answer and I can’t pretend he does. I can’t place his voice in my head anymore. The image of my father fades into the snow and I look down into the lawn chair. I stare at the blue and yellow urn sitting in the chair next to me. My father died about a month before my wedding to Mary, and during that time I pretended that he hadn’t. Occasionally, I would call his phone, just to check on him. “This voicemail box is full” would always greet me and I'd tell myself that work ran late, and I’d hear from him tomorrow. When he wasn’t at my wedding, and my mother sat next to an empty chair, I told myself the same thing. I had even been upset that morning. Not that my father was dead, but that he was working late and had chosen work over his eldest son’s wedding. My father had made me who I was. I was the confident strong man he’d molded. I really wished he’d been there. I wish that he could be there for the future. A future including grandchildren and even great grandchildren. Life took my father young. I wasn’t prepared for that. I don’t think anyone can ever be. I thought I’d have years to ask the questions I wanted answered, and more wanting to ask what I needed to know. Now that I sat here alone, I held the urn in my lap and began to cry.

“Hey Chico, how are you doin?” The last conversation with my father before died was short but I don’t know that I can forget it. “I’m good Dad, the Red Sox won again today.” He laughed. “It’s about time, those guys are bums.” I shook my head. “They’re in first, but sure.” Again, his laugh. “You and Mary planning to come for dinner still?” I said that we were, and we chatted idly for a moment about work. Right at the end of the call, I stubbed my toe. He called me an idiot. “You’ll be alright Chico. I’ll see you later. I love you.” I hadn’t heard that from him in a long time. I knew he did, obviously but I hadn’t heard it in a long time. It’s a comfort now but also felt like a cosmic sign, or just one from him. An ominous warning of doom in the affirmation of positive truth.

I turn the urn slowly in my hands. I can feel my father’s presence. I know he is happy we are together in a place that meant so much. I stare out into the heavy snow and try to remember my father’s voice. I open the urn. My father’s ashes mixing in with the snow and floating over the frozen pond. He disappears before my eyes, the man I knew gone forever. I smile, watching my father go. I think I finally hear his voice in the wind.