Continuing Saga
Can't Make This Stuff Up
So, it took her death to reveal her life.
And with hers, mine was, for some reason, inextricably intertwined. I would have had it otherwise.
“Stop obsessing about it,” some recommended. “Move on!” But I knew there was an unusual conduit between waking life and the inner soul that without exploring the details, might have been overlooked.
It was bad soap opera until the layers were peeled back.
I have moved on. There was a lesson there I was eager to learn, or at least articulate.
There was no obituary for either her or her husband. No requiem, no celebration of a life.
Perhaps she would have objected to my curiosity, or my intensity.
I don’t converse with her: there is the occasional dream where she appears as she once was, and her shade is sympathetic to a certain extent.
It may come as a surprise, but there are damn few people who will remember you or me. Considering all the people you meet in the course of a life, and all the conversations, sure, the emails may last, but your memory will not.
In this part of the country, the roads, if you seek their origins, are historic.
They follow the geography.
The general population incursion from the 1720s on, was to follow terrain most forgiving to horse and wagon, in many case from Bucks County, Pennsylvania along the Shenandoah Valley, passing eastward where there were gaps.
Since the gaps tended to focus what little traffic there was, traders took advantage to establish trading posts at areas that funneled commercial traffic.
****
Prior to 1980, the sale of wine required municipal middlemen and state-operated storefronts, both cutting profit margins.
Legislation then allowed farm sales directly from the wineries to the public.
What that meant was a community of several hundred wineries state wide were allowed to thrive and add to the rural farm economy.
There were wineries and established routes to them.
Roads which had been intended for hay wagons not so very long ago, are not always adequate for local traffic as more urban dwellers opted for the rural life.
The roads twist and turn; there are blind entrances fraught with hazards even in the best weather.
Harvest is often a time of sleeplessness and exertion.
It always reminded me of the habits of pre-season training for high school football in late August. It is important to train before first contact to avoid physical injury.
So it is with harvest.
I had just gotten word from her sister that she was dead.
It should not have mattered as much, but there were sudden moments when grief descends with such weight, it interferes.
Such it was that, after checking fermentations on Saturday morning, I drove up slowly and distractedly to the exit from the winery to the farm road.
It was habitual and automatic: pull close, check to the left for oncoming traffic that often came unexpectedly around a blind curve in the road. If clear, proceed. If not, wait.
It was mid-morning but I must have been daydreaming.
The grief was fresh and distracting.
I paused at the exit a moment longer than usual thinking of her, then pulled out into the proper lane.
There was a weekend bicyclist behind whom a long line of traffic had accumulated from the opposite direction.
As my head swung back from checking my lane, there was a sudden blur.
An impatient motorist had left the line, pulled out into my lane across a double yellow, and was in process of zooming past the stalled traffic when he came mere inches from hitting me head-on.
It took hours to recover pulse and breathing.
I eventually learned the same motorist, moments later, after speeding away from my near collision, had taken a local byway, had been chased by police, had dumped the stolen car near a gas station and had fled on foot.
Had I not paused, thinking of her death, before exiting the winery driveway, it would have been a head-on at high speed.
***
We had talked in our youth what might happen if one of us died first, and agreed to get a message back if possible.
It was impossible not to remember that, as I drove home.
Coincidence?
Perhaps.