Shadowlands

Before going back to work, I decided, rather impromptu, to take the remnants of my family on a roadtrip. We went to South Dakota. Why South Dakota? Before the decision to go, I was not sure why. I think the main reason for the choice was that I wanted to go somewhere relatively close and familiar ... and isolated from normal life.

I mainly just wanted to drive. The journey was important, not the destination. The wonderful simplicity of knowing what you are supposed to do for the next nine and half hours is liberating. No matter what happens in the back seats, you gotta keep driving. (That being said, there was no trouble from the back seats. Monica and Bastian were excellent helpers, and Margaret travels exceedingly well. It's really quite amazing.)

We stayed in the Black Hills. I'm not a fan, but the kids are, and so is Uncle Geoff. They enjoyed them.

No, I'm a fan of plains and deserts. I like seeing my horizon, unblocked by mountains or trees. (Rolling hills, such as are abundant west of the Missouri River, are allowed).

Heidi knew this about me all too well. Even when we were dating, she noted that some of our fellow students at the university were like winding baroque libraries, with layers of complexity unknown to any visitor, abounding in unexpected twists and turns. But she always said I was "like St. Paul's Outside the Walls", a basilica that is technically smaller than St. Peter's, but feels much more open and large on the inside (mainly because it was rebuilt exactly to its original Constantinian plan, and those late antique Romans liked to try as much as possible to enclose wide open spaces). Those who have been there probably know what I mean.

Now, open plains and wastelands were not Heidi's preferred form of nature. Her favorite state was Minnesota. Not mine (apologies, again). She liked lakes, rivers, and trees. To get her goat, I would often refer to Minnesota as a "swamp state", the "land of the Marsh-wiggles." She would retort that I saw trees as nothing but "obstructing woody fungus." Ah, marriage.

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Though we stayed in the Black Hills, we drove through the plains. And aside from the simplicity of just driving, the trip turned out to be unexpectedly helpful in other ways. In the long silent hours of driving when the kids were asleep or pensive, I had time to reflect, to pray, to contemplate, to grieve. I spent much of that time remembering Heidi. That was easy to do since we had all taken a similar trip as a family in the summer of 2021. As I drove past various towns or sites on the I-90, I remembered what Heidi was doing at those places. Our time together, in those places. I remembered the restaurant in Murdo she wanted to stop at for dinner because it used local beef in its burgers. I remembered shopping for groceries with her alone in Spearfish (Uncle Geoff and Uncle Father Frederick were on that trip, too, so they were with the kids). I remembered Heidi joking that we should pose as honeymooners at Wall Drug to get a free doughnut.

This sounds like something that should be painful. But for some reason, it wasn't. I don't know why. There may be a day in my future where I must to do the same thing in Rome.

Most of all, the thing I remember from that trip with Heidi in 2021 was passing by the Badlands at dusk.

Dusk is already a wonderful time; and especially, a wonderful time to drive; and especially, a wonderful time to drive in the Great Plains. Heidi was driving. She had been looking forward the whole trip to introducing me to the Badlands. She knew they would be the kind of topography I would love. When we were planning our trip, she was surprised that I had never been there before. As we went by, I was silent. Partly because I am always inclined to silence at dusk. Partly because the strange, round, yellow hills west of the Missouri River had already caught me off guard. Mostly because of the Badlands. I had really never seen anything quite like this moonscape, this Mars-scape, these fictitious looking crags and canyons and peaks painted in straight rows. Heidi smiled, in apparent satisfaction and new awe. She had been to the Badlands before. But I think she appreciated them more that time, seeing how much I was moved by them.

Thus it was that in this trip, in the wintry Spring of 2023, we returned to the Badlands. I indulged in silent memories.

What I did not expect this time around is how different the Badlands are in the winter from how they are in the summer. Sure, I expected the presence of snow would make some difference. But it wasn't just that. The entire color scheme was different. The Badlands are known for their colors in almost perfect layers: reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, etc. These colors are, I think, part of what makes them so imposing.

But that is not what they looked like this time around. This time, they presented themselves as gray. I imagine it's largely a function of the oblique sunlight that the Northern hemisphere undergoes in these months. The difference was quite striking. The Badlands were still imposing. Just tinged with a bit of sadness.

It was impossible for me to avoid the comparison to my experience of life right now. It was as if the Badlands without Heidi were reflecting my life with the loss of Heidi. There is a filter under loss that turns even the brightest colors into monochrome, that turns even the sweetest things into bittersweet. Lewis talks about this in A Grief Observed:

There is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs — nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast-time — but the atmosphere, the taste, of the whole thing is deadly. So with this. I see the rowan berries reddening and don’t know for a moment why they, of all things, should be depressing. I hear a clock strike and some quality it always had before has gone out of the sound. What’s wrong with the world to make it so flat, shabby, worn-out looking?

He gets it. My experience was not that glum. The Badlands were not depressing or deadly-tasting. But they did feel a bit wrong, a bit amiss.

If life is a bittersweet symphony, I used to think that meant there were discrete movements in it that were sweet and discrete movements that were bitter. Or, more correctly, it's not that I used to think that; it's that, in my youth, that's what it was. But we all will reach a point some day where what the bittersweet symphony really means—what it really is, for a time at least—is that all sweetness is mixed with bitter.

When Nina says something hilarious, it is sweet. But then, I yearn to see Heidi's reaction. When Grace laughs uncontrollably. When Meg seems to be doing so well, there is still the wonder: "Yes, but what kind of person would she be if Heidi were here taking care of her, helping me raise her?" These are silly thoughts, the kind of thoughts that I would have probably advised others to try to get away from. But yet, they come. Every smile quickly turns into a smile covering a sigh.

But I guess the obverse is also true. There begins now, I guess, to be some sweet in the bitter. Perhaps that is why this experience, which I would have predicted to have been only painful, turned out to have its own peace. Sometimes a great peace. I am glad we went on this trip, retracing these steps. Heidi, it was good to be with you again in South Dakota.

 

 Have a good Triduum, everyone.

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