This is the only life we have

With spring around the corner, plans are in motion for our summer trip to scatter Chip’s ashes in Wyoming for the one-year memorial of his death. The down payments for George, Henry, Henry’s high school friend Damien (who also lost his dad to cancer), Calli, Michael and his girlfriend Karen, Cat and me to climb the Grand Teton mountain in August have been made. The Airbnb in Victor, Idaho has been reserved. Research for activities for the non-climbers, Eva, Stella and Sam, to spend several days on their own is well underway. For them, there is the possibility of a photography safari, a bike ride on the Victor to Driggs Rail-Trail, and countless hikes in the Jackson Hole and Teton Valley region. Awaiting any and all of us are Yellowstone National Park, the Jackson Hole Rodeo,Teton Valley Ranch Camp, where Chip was both a camper and a counselor, and the Spud Drive-In in Driggs, Idaho.

And, of course, the miles upon miles, more than 1,770 of them, await those of us driving from Virginia to Wyoming/Idaho by multi-passenger van.

Inspired by the road trip movie The Fundamentals of Caring and stories of others’ road trips out west, I am starting to think about Spotify playlists and weird, off-the-beaten path tourist traps. I’ve begun perusing Jane and Michael Stern’s Road Food (10th edition), that Henry gave to Chip several Christmases ago (I have sweet memories of Chip paging through the book to find places for us to eat during our travels to music festivals and other road trips we took that were within a day’s drive of us). I am daydreaming about the people and changing landscape I will see along the way.

Throughout the journey to mark one year of Chip’s passing, the following lyrics from the song “This is the Only Time We Have,” that was part of the soundtrack for the movie The Fundamentals of Caring, will surely be circling around in my head:

This is the only time we have.

There are no more lives left

Take the good and take the bad

This is the only time we have

I will certainly need the reminder to take the good with the bad. Journeying with 10 people, all under the age of 30, and attempting to climb a 14,000-foot mountain with some of them will be as much no small feat as it will be wildly exhilarating. Preparations and plans for the journey, like those I’ve made along my grief journey (many of which I have stuck to and some of which I have not), will help with disappointments and struggles. Mother Nature may say to us at 11,000 feet on the Grand Teton mountain, "You know what, not today climbers. I think today would be a fine day for a lightening storm," or she may say "Tonight seems like a great one for a downpour. So, not today drive-in movie goers!" To be sure, I am going into the journey out west just as I began my grief journey back on May 31, 2020: knowing that others have gone before me to experience challenges along with joy and celebration, and that my unique journey will have some of the same along the way.

At this moment, writer Elizabeth Gilbert’s words seem like the best way to end this post about traveling to new places, both in honor and remembrance of Chip as well as a way to embrace the grief of losing him:

“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.”

Photo by Katie Drazdauskaite