Thanks for the Memories

If walls could talk your tales would live on the edge of legend in the same way you perched on the edge of epic beauty. The lives that passed through your grand lobby number in the millions. I was just one. But did you remember me?

The first time, I was just tiny with blond curls and a scowl firmly fixed over my inquisitive brown eyes. My father held tight to my little hand as I gazed through your windows at the chasm beyond. My sister, with her long honey brown pigtails, held fast to his other hand as she watched with wide green eyes. We moved out onto your porch, my mother nervously watched my sister and I as we leaned over the railing. But our father’s eyes were fixed instead on the eagle swooping over the faraway rim. Excitedly, he pointed to it and I felt my heart soar as high as the bird. We raced around the trails that wrapped around your base, chasing after squirrels and chipmunks, longing to take a fuzzy little creature home with us. Those days were full of magic and wonder, imagination and adventure.

When I next stood before your panoramic windows, I’d grown taller than my mother and my sister had grown into her striking features. The two of us basked in the beauty of your remarkable view at a table with a deck of cards and all the time in the world. Like moths to a flame, the college boys who worked in your halls were drawn to my stunning soeur. They joined us for hours of Gin Rummy, shameless flirting, and laughter. Do you remember how she stamped her foot angrily on your floor when Dad told her she was too young (only 15) to go to a midnight party with those boys?

I'm sure you remember that moment when we sat on the porch as a family. It was crowded and noisy as visitors clamored for a closer spot, a better vantage for the perfect pic. Dad was sitting in one of the classic log rocking chairs. He was still adjusting to his anti-rejection medication and all the disturbing side effects, like the uncomfortable excess gas. Unable to keep it in, he expected with all the noise and fresh air, he could let one slip unnoticed. Oh, how wrong he was! Something about the shape of the rocking chair amplified the sound, which reverberated with a deep rumbling echo throughout the canyon. Within seconds the porch cleared aside from us and the family in the seats next to us. The father of the other family just said, "That's one way to get a front row seat!" Then we all laughed so hard our sides ached. Dad just beamed proudly as though he'd accomplished an extraordinary feat. I was just glad he was there to clear the porch, having nearly lost him mere months earlier. Those days were full of new peace earned from surviving fear deeper than the canyon outside your walls, punctuated with a new appreciation for the simple moments we almost never got.

I wonder if you recognized me the last time I came to visit. My little one with his white blond hair looking so much like I did that very first time. Now it was my turn to chastise my father as he encouraged the boys to get a little too close to the edge. I stood at your windows, holding my baby and watching his eyes grow wide. My teen stood by my side looking small despite his height of six feet. Not far off my father crouched next to my eight year old and pointed to the eagle that soared past. Later I sat next to my love in the Adirondack chairs on your porch, my feet resting on the edge. We simply enjoyed the perfection of that peaceful moment, grateful to be together surrounded by one of the most remarkable views on earth. Mom joined us and we giggled at the memory of the way Dad had once cleared the crowd from this spot. As we walked together down the paths around your base the rain poured down, chasing us into your lower alcove for shelter. There we huddled together, our boys sitting on the window sill, and took in the beautiful view. Those days were full of appreciation for why my father brought us to visit you so many years before, seeing the wonder before us through the eyes of my boys.

I always planned to return, maybe with my future Grandbabies, maybe just with my love, maybe a girl's trip with my sister and my mom to relive our memories now my dad's gone. There were a dozen reasons I planned to return, one day.

But yesterday I got the news that you'd passed, caught unaware the day before in the raging wildfire ignited by lightning ten days prior. I cried as I thought of all the history you held and the stories you never got to tell. I remembered our time together, the memories settling deep in my heart with the weight of the boulders that once held up your grand entry. Some will say your loss is just one of those things, they'll move on, maybe rebuild. But will they remember that your walls were more than rocks and timber? Your columns were the guardians of family vacations and honeymoons, international expeditions and retirement retreats. Your walls housed the wonder and awe of generations who stood at your windows and felt small next to the grand vista below them. Your roof sheltered my memories, waiting for me to come back and revisit them. Your floors held my father's footsteps when they still fell next to my own.

America lost a piece of its history, a grand architectural beauty. But I lost a piece of my childhood and bid farewell to a part of my father I can never reclaim. I'm only one of the millions who crossed your threshold to gaze upon the wonder you guarded for nearly a century. My stories are just a drop in the volumes your walls held. I cannot be alone in shedding tears at your passing, at the death of all your tales forever untold.