He is sitting in the coffee shop, watching the Saturday shoppers hurry along Market Street, when his dead wife sits down across from him. She looks as she did in his memory, around the time they were married: brown hair tinged with auburn, face still shaped like an almond, only a few laugh lines showing around her hazel-green eyes. She looks at his near empty plate: a few blackened french fries, half of a rare cheeseburger oozing blood and grease. 'You've gone back to your old ways,' she says. He shrugs, takes another sip of the steaming coffee. 'Remember we used to come here every Saturday afternoon?' he says. 'You'd always order a cottage cheese plate and iced tea, even in winter. We'd talk about what we'd do when I retired. We'd take a cruise to Alaska, buy a little summer home in Maine, pick blueberries and go fishing.' He laughs. 'Now every afternoon I just sit in this same booth.' He looks into her eyes. 'So tell me, what's it like?' She smiles, reaches over and touches his hand. 'Every afternoon, I sit here with you, watching you eat bad things and stare out a plate glass window at the world. For now, it's as close to heaven as I want.'
From the street, a passing shopper looks through the coffee shop window and sees an old man whispering into his coffee, the steam rising and, apparently, tearing his eyes.
two years gone-
her side of the bed
still
untouched - Rich Youmans
Still untouched, this part of the Himalayas where few travel. There is little here for tourists to write home about. No fabulous hotel with Tibetan carpets and swimming pool, no neo-Nepalese cuisine or classic Buddhist art. Just a hut at the base of a mountain, a trail carved by pilgrims and traders over the centuries, and the hospitality of Sherpas who have lived their lives isolated from the modern world. It has taken a week to get to Dingboche from our base in Namche Bazaar, every step by foot under the weight of our backpacks. Inside the packs are sleeping bags, clothing and food treats such as peanut butter, chocolate and Nebico biscuits to augment the basic Nepalese diet of daal bhaat (rice and lentils) that we are offered at the end of each day.
John and I decide to rest here, to acclimatize before continuing to a higher elevation. 'Rest' for John means to stay near the village, not to relax and read paperback books like other trekkers. On his topological map he spots a nearby hill, which he calculates is about 14,000 feet. This would be a good practice run, he says. And so we head out for an early morning climb.
It takes us three hours to reach the top. John wants to explore. I am happy standing in one place looking out at the panorama -- a pallid canvas of sky, mountains, snow. At this elevation, there are no boundaries, no edges where things can be defined, given names, shapes, or colors. In the absolute silence I can hear my breathing, shallow and light. Suddenly I am filled with a profound loneliness. An ache, like hunger, an emptiness as bleak as the landscape. What would it be like to die here? My heart beats faster at the possibility. And then I see them, a flock of snow pigeons flying in formation -- Escher birds that morph into black and white shapes. Back and forth they move across the blank sky, then blurr into nothingness.
top of the mountain
snow, sky, the outlines of
birds
I disappear - Margaret Chula