Chapter 7 #7
Instead, Jeremy died shortly before his thirty-fourth birthday.
The last time he’d called—a few weeks before—he’d said he was in Washington state.
“You remember that fire watchtower? We stayed there when I was a kid. I think that’s when I was happiest. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.
Think I’m going to head back up there. See if I can stay, get a job or something. ”
“We miss you,” Don said quietly into the phone.
“Yeah, hey, me too. Can you send money?”
He didn’t. He didn’t send Jeremy money. Not because he didn’t want to. He just didn’t know what Jeremy would use it for.
A few weeks later, the phone rang. In the evening, near ten o’clock. Rodney answered. He didn’t speak much after that, the blood draining from his face.
And Don knew. Somehow, he knew. Maybe because he’d been expecting this call for years. Every time the phone rang, he wondered, Is this going to be the call? Is it going to be the one where we realize we didn’t do enough?
It was.
Rodney hung up the phone. He turned to Don. Eyes wet. Mouth trembling. Hands shaking. He said, “Jeremy. Jeremy. Jeremy, he’s … he…”
Don fell to the floor and howled.
A ranger had found him. At a campsite, in his tent. Overdose. He’d been dead for at least a couple of days, skin pale and cool to the touch. Nothing could have been done. It was already too late.
They viewed the body in the morgue of the small hospital, the medical staff quiet and respectful.
He looked … he looked like Jeremy. The body did.
An empty space where a soul like a dying star had lived.
Don held his hand, kissed his forehead, told him he was sorry, so sorry, that he didn’t know it was this bad.
He said they should have done more, they should have forced him into getting help, they should have made him do all the things he didn’t want to do.
And then the police showed them the letter.
It was short, with scratchy, frantic writing.
It read:
I’m sorry about this. I don’t know how to make it stop. I’ve tried everything. I don’t like myself. I don’t like who I am. I hear things. I see things. They tell me I’m awful, that I don’t deserve anything good. Maybe they’re right. It’s so hard being human.
Tell my dads I love them.
Death by suicide, they were told. Suicide by overdose.
And didn’t that beat all? Didn’t that just crush them more than they thought possible?
It did. It was one thing to live longer than your child.
It was something else entirely to find out your child had taken their own life far from home.
A mile from the watchtower, the one that Jeremy had once exclaimed in delight over.
It flattened Don and Rodney under the weight of it all. There were long stretches when it felt like they couldn’t breathe. Grief like a tsunami crashed over them, dismantling everything they’d built.
They had Jeremy cremated. In clear moments, few though they were, Jeremy had said he didn’t want to go into a hole in the ground, didn’t want to be food for worms. “Burn me,” he’d told them at age twenty-three. “Burn me until there’s nothing left but ashes.”
So that’s what they did. And when they were given the box of ashes, Don couldn’t believe how light it was. How an entire universe of a person could fit into a small box as if it were nothing. It wasn’t fair. None of it was.
But they listened. Even with all he’d put them through, even with all the bitterness and heartache, Jeremy was still their son.
They took his ashes and divided them up into seven different vials.
They went to Montana and spread his ashes near the shore of a lake.
They went to Arizona and threw ashes into the Grand Canyon.
They went on the Appalachian Trail. Eight miles in, they left part of Jeremy under an old-growth tree covered in moss.
They traveled to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, standing on a cliff ’s edge, letting Jeremy drift away in the wind.
They went to Utah, the petrified forest. They laid Jeremy to rest near a stone in the shape of a bird.
They traveled to Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, all the way to the top of Mount Le Conte, where they built a cairn of rocks, leaving Jeremy spread around it.
It took them years to do this. Years where the grief sometimes felt like it was fading, only to come roaring back with a gaping maw and sharp fangs, ready to sink into tender flesh. Years of leaving parts of their hearts in places that meant so much to them all.
They couldn’t bring themselves to spread the last of his ashes.
It would mean the end. It would mean Jeremy was really gone.
At least with his remaining ashes, they could pretend.
Jeremy was far away, but he was all right.
He was healthy. He was happy. He was seeing the world because that’s what he should have been doing.
So they kept the last of his remains, not ready to let go, not yet.
And then the end of the world began.
They clung to each other, below the fire tower, the earth trembling beneath their feet. Above them, the broken moon, two large chunks pulling away from the fractured body. The black hole was coming. It was almost here.
“We were good parents,” Rodney whispered in his ear. “We did our best. It wasn’t good enough, but we tried.”
“We did,” Don agreed into his shoulder, shaking. Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? They had tried their best. They had still failed, yes, but oh, had they tried.
Rodney pulled back, gripping Don’s shoulders. “We did. And now it’s time to finish this.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too. But we’ve made it this far.”
Rodney was right. They’d survived. Improbably, with all life had thrown at them, they were still here. Don didn’t know how that was possible, how he had been able to get himself out of bed every morning, but he had. They both had. And that had to count for something.
Don looked up at the tower. It seemed to be swaying slightly. The air was ozone-sharp, like an electrical storm was approaching. He said, “Let’s go. We need to—”
The earth rolled beneath their feet, a fierce tremor that caused Don to stumble to his knees.
He looked down at the ground in horror as a large crack appeared between his legs, the earth shifting with a spectacular groan.
And for a moment, didn’t he think he saw light down in the crack?
A bright light that looked as if the earth was bleeding? He did.
Rodney grabbed his hand tightly. Before Don could speak, Rodney jerked him up. For a moment, Don felt weightless, going up and up until Rodney pulled him back down. “Go,” he said. “Quickly.”
They did. They ran as fast as they could toward the tower.
The earth continued to shake and shatter beneath their feet.
Climbing up a trembling path, Don heard an electrical snarl from behind him.
Glancing over his shoulder as Rodney pulled him toward the tower, Don saw ball lightning rising from the cracks in the ground.
A dozen balls, all blue and white, crackling, snarling.
They rose slowly, arcs of lightning snapping off.
They reached the bottom of the tower as a section of the cliff face opposite the tower collapsed, a loud roar of rock and dust. The plume rose like a mushroom cloud as they began to climb the wooden steps.
The tower swayed dangerously with each step they took, the wood groaning like a scream beneath their feet.
Onward, upward, climbing the stairs that wrapped around the tower.
Had Jeremy done this? Had he come back here and climbed these steps again?
Had he thought about the first time they’d come here?
Back when things were easier, back when things still made sense.
How did that make him feel? What did he think about?
Did he cry? Did he smile? Did he feel a sense of peace that lasted only for a short while?
The top of the tower was shuttered, the door locked, but that didn’t matter. They didn’t need to go inside. They reached the railing that looked out over the valley and witnessed the beginning of the end.
It looked as if the forest was undulating, breathing as the ground rolled beneath it. Trees swayed left and right, up and down. Some fell with distant crashes. Through the trees, ball lightning illuminated fleeing animals: deer, rodents, birds.
“Jesus Christ,” Rodney breathed at the scene before them. “Oh my god.”
Don, too, was transfixed, but then he shook his head.
Setting his backpack on the floor, he began to dig through it.
Growing frantic, he thought Jeremy was gone, either left in the truck or fallen out on the journey to the tower.
He was about to bellow in rage when his fingers brushed against a familiar shape.
Hand closing around it, he pulled out the box that held the last remains of their son.
He clutched it against his chest and swallowed past the lump in his throat. The tower swayed as Rodney placed his hands on top of Don’s.
“Let me,” he said.
Don breathed in. Don breathed out. He nodded.
Rodney gently lifted the lid of the chest. Inside, six empty divots in blue felt.
On the far right of the chest, the remaining vial.
About six inches long with a cork stopper at the top.
Inside, gray ash speckled with flecks of black.
Jeremy, their son. The boy who’d needed a home.
Rodney was right. They’d done the best they could.
It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t Jeremy’s, either.
It was just luck. Rotten, miserable luck.
Don showed Rodney the vial as he stood. “I have him. I—”
Unfair. It was so goddamn unfair, because right as Don held up the vial, the tower lurched to the right, causing them both to stumble into the railing.
Don gasped when his elbow hit first, a flash of bright pain rolling up his arm.
His hand flexed involuntarily, and the vial fell to the floor, rolling toward the edge.
Failed, Don thought even as he began to move. We failed him. We failed then, we failed him now. One last thing, and we couldn’t even—
Rodney moved faster. Just as the vial reached the edge of the platform and began to tilt and tilt and tilt, Rodney fell to his knees, hand flashing out. For a moment, Don thought he’d knock the ashes over, but Rodney managed to grab the vial before it fell.
Neither of them spoke for a long minute.
Rodney eventually stood slowly, face pale. “Now,” he said in a shaky voice. “We have to finish this now.”
And so they did. Here, at the end of their journey, at the end of the world, they did.
Standing side by side, shoulders touching.
Rodney held up the vial. With trembling hands, Don struggled momentarily with the cork stopper.
It finally pulled free with a muted pop.
Bits of ash clung to the end of the cork.
“Oh, the places you’ll go,” Don whispered.
“Where the wild things are,” Rodney replied.
They hadn’t said much the previous six times they’d spread his ashes.
Words felt meaningless, empty, compared to all that Jeremy was.
No matter the outcome, no matter what had led to that outcome, Jeremy was their son.
He was theirs, their own, not flesh and blood but theirs, regardless.
All the darkness compared little to the burning fire that had been Jeremy.
Rodney said, “I’d do it all over again. Even if it would end the same way, I’d do it all over again. For him.”
“Me too,” Don said in a choked voice. “All of it.”
Don closed his hand around Rodney’s, holding the vial. They did not count. They did not say a word. They just stood there for a moment in a swaying tower. And then, without thinking, they turned their hands at the same time.
The ash spilled out, catching the wind. It took maybe three, four seconds for the vial to empty, and yet, a lifetime passed from the first granule to the last.
And then.
There would be no later to think back on what they saw.
There would be no time to ponder, no chance to revel in the mysteries of the universe.
But that did not matter because for a moment, a second or two, really, the ash cloud took on the shape of a face, as if someone stood on the other side and was leaning forward.
At the same time, Don and Rodney whispered, “Jeremy?”
A trick of the light? A wish fulfilled? Or was it there simply because they wanted it to be? The smile widened, and then it dissipated, the ash blowing away. They watched it until they could see it no more.
“He burned so bright,” Rodney said, arm wrapped around Don’s shoulders.
Don wiped his eyes. “We all did. Every single one of us.”
“Do you think we’ll see him again?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
A bright flash of light in the distance. Too bright to look at. Like the sun had exploded. Like it was time.
Don turned toward Rodney. He leaned his forehead against his husband’s. “I don’t regret a thing. Not with you, not with him. All of it, every part.”
“Look at me.”
Don did. In Rodney’s eyes, he could see reflected a large wave of fire. It was coming toward them. Would it hurt? Don wondered. Maybe, but only for a moment. But then, that was life, wasn’t it?
“Don’t look away,” Rodney said. “Keep looking at me. There you go.”
“I love you.”
“Damn right you do,” Rodney said. “Don’t look away.”
He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. How could he?
“Nothing to fear,” Rodney said. “Nothing to fret about. We’ll be all right. We’ll be fine.”
“We will,” Don said. “I’m ready. I’m ready to go.”
“With me,” Rodney said. “Because where you go, I go.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Rodney grinned at him. “I love you too.”
Don began to laugh. At the absurdity of it all. At the sheer audacity. “I loved being here!” he yelled into the blazing sky. “I loved it! I loved it!”
Rodney joined in, and as the Earth began to break apart, as everything they and humanity had ever known began to end, they laughed. Clutching each other under a shifting sky, they laughed.
And for the last time, a dying world laughed with them.