I sometimes wonder if his life flashed before his eyes down there on the shipwreck under 60 feet of water. People say that happens. What scenes swirled past his consciousness; what were his last thoughts? Me in my wedding dress with the veil swept back, a picture he always kept within reach on his desk so I would never be far away when I worked long hours downtown. Us together on that wind-blasted Newfoundland bluff where we camped within sight of an iceberg, glowing with an eerie pale-aqua phosphorescence in the moonlight, and wondered what it would have been like to be a passenger on the Titanic, which sank a few hundred miles offshore. Perhaps it was one of those moments at home, watching for whatever could be construed as wild in our suburban life: a few rabbits, two orphaned raccoon kits. A week before he died, we just had to tell each other out loud how grateful we were for our home, for being together, for all that had been given to us. In the previous year, we had traveled to Greece, England, New England, Newfoundland, Tasmania, Tahiti, the Philippines, and the Great Barrier Reef. Which picture—and he had taken thousands as an on-location photographer—which picture flashed the brightest before water drowned out the mortal flame of his body? When the tragedy of that last underwater photographic assignment was over, nothing was left of him but ashes, as brittle as coral sand on the South Pacific beaches we had just explored not knowing that what was under our bare feet was what he would soon become. “You can’t imagine how much I love living,” he wrote me shortly after we met, “Or how much pleasure I derive from seeing.”
I browse through his pictures and letters from time to time, and a memory flickers across my senses: the clearness of his gaze, as attentive, calm, and unselfconscious as an animal; the passing shadow of an embrace; occasionally I imagine I hear his voice calling my name in an around-the-house manner. But the memories that stir me most as I go on are memories that motivate me to accept hardship. These are his greatest gift to me.
Location: A frozen lake in the snowy fastness of northern Minnesota. It is 46 degrees below zero, and we have to set up a tent, but it’s already almost dark. My fingers ache as if they have the flu while I fumble with tent poles and seam pockets. I am crying in pain and fear I really will freeze to death. My husband, a former wilderness guide, wilderness survival expert, and author of a book called Comfort at 50 Below (which the publisher changed to Comfort Below Freezing because 50 below sounded too cold to elicit any commercial interest), calmly proceeds from one necessary activity to the other, wasting as little energy as possible. His years of fascination with the North Woods, and his equal fascination to see what new limit of cold-induced pain he can withstand, pays off. In less than a minute the tent is up. I dive in and bury myself under layers of sleeping bags. In the morning, the tent is frosty from our breath. Years later, I tell our friends at a dinner party how wonderful this snow-camping experience was. “That’s funny,” he said, “I don’t remember you thinking it was so great at the time.” Lesson: Our fondest memories are the ones where we endure hardships together, so accept pain willingly.
Location: Zamboanga, Philippines, a former Spanish colonial city that has since acquired a Muslim population equal to its Catholic constituency. It is also a duty-free port, and so attracts a lot of pirates. Someone gets killed nearly every day. The State Department prohibits Americans from traveling to Zamboanga, but my husband is here anyway, on assignment. A Molotov cocktail explodes during dinner, its flash reflected in the tranquil sea water not far from our table at a waterfront restaurant. We book into a medium-priced hotel that looks and smells suspiciously like an opium den. We’re tired, but decide that despite the cockroaches and the fact that the toilet doesn’t flush, we’ll stay because it’s too much trouble to go any farther. Mosquitoes circulate around our warm-blooded bodies like a flock of tiny vultures. This doesn’t prevent me from falling fast asleep. In the morning, I find my husband slouched against the headboard, a bloodshot and exhausted expression in his eyes, because all through the night he had valiantly swatted every mosquito that dared approach us lest we catch malaria. Lesson: Our fondest memories of others are those where they have endured hardship for us, so accept pain willingly.
Location: Zamboanga, an air-conditioned room in the city’s only first-class hotel. I haven’t seen a mosquito for days. Nevertheless, I am curled in a fetal position under a sheet on the bed. I’ve pulled all the shutters, and the room is dark. I am alone. My husband is at the harbor photographing a thatched-hut village on stilts. The village is an ominous place where pirates hide out and a few months earlier a German tourist and his Swiss girlfriend were kidnapped. Last night, not far from the hotel, a man was shot point-blank in the head. He was the leader of a group of locals who had appointed themselves to keep the peace because the authorities have given up.
I run through the scenarios of what I would do if my husband should not come back alive. The options seem distasteful and frightening. I cry; I clench my fists into the pillow. Grief comes over me like a wave, and when the feelings subside, I find myself calmly slipping on my shoes and walking out into the tropical sunshine. I walk straight down the middle of the street, my eyes blinking, my nostrils flaring from smoke wafting from street vendors’ pits. I walk oblivious to the bicycle-pedaling taxi drivers tooting their horns. My heart is pounding, and somehow I feel more incredibly alive than I’ve ever felt, and I ask myself: “Why am I so happy right now? Why is everyone else so happy in Zamboanga? Is it because they have to live facing fear every day, take each day and just live it?” I start to think about moving here for awhile. As I reach the stilt village, children swarm around me and escort me through the gate. Lesson: Walk toward fear, face it straight on. Your fondest memories of yourself are when you face fear, accepting the hardships you risk . . . accept pain willingly.
One day, after five years of marriage, the radio played a song called “Hungry Years” sung by Rita Coolidge. Sprawled on the floor in front of the stereo in our comfortable home den, my husband clutched me tightly in his arms as he listened to the lyrics. After the song was over, he talked about how much he missed the hardships of our early years of marriage: the struggle to come up with a down-payment for a house, then to rebuild it and somehow keep careers going at the same time. To the “Quality of Life” list he kept at his desk, he added “Periodic testing of our limits.” It was the last entry he made. This last one should have ranked closer to the top, along with his first entries: “a relationship with God,” “freedom,” and “friends.”
My husband died because he faced and conquered his fears so routinely that a severe-weather dive warning didn’t prevent him from going down. He was so accustomed to testing the pain limits of his cold tolerance he ignored a leak in his dive suit.
A few weeks after he died, a woman called and in some form of misdirected condolence said to me: “Gosh. Why couldn’t he have died in a car crash or something? Why did he have to die that way?” I told her I thought it was a privilege for him to die on assignment, his “camera in his hand,” as the headlines read. Although it was too long a story to explain to her, I thought at the time the medi-vac helicopter lifted his body away leaving me alone in its blustery wake, and I have always thought since, there is something valuable in dying consistent with your passion, with all you love and feel worthwhile.
The daughter of a friend got married recently. We married women were asked to put a few words of advice on a card for the bride-to-be. I wrote: “Be best friends; build memories.” I would have added “Face fear and accept pain willingly—you’ll miss the hungry years,” but I thought the advice too sobering for a wedding shower.
For myself, I think I will miss these last few years since my husband died. My limits have been tested. It’s a quality of life I’ve never experienced before, and could never have experienced, unless the worst had happened.