Trails End --

I started writing this story in 2008.  My plan was to keep everybody updated on what was going on with Marty.  Many of her friends, our friends, were not aware of what was happening so I thought I would keep everyone informed.

Like so many things the blog evolved and became my guide and a way for me to get my own head around what was happening in our life, what was happening to us.

I wanted a record of our journey for me, for our kids and for our grand-kids.  It sort of kept me sane as I was able to process the joys and heartbreak of caring for my bride after the strokes.  Writing became a catharsis and a way for me to understand myself as Marty and I walked this rather bizarre trail.

The lessons I have learned doing this are endless and all of the things Marty taught me, some without me even knowing it (sneaky woman), are an ingrained part of my soul and I will always carry those lessons with me and I hope they have made me a better human being

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As I let this blog thing (though I prefer journal, it somehow sounds more sophisticated and God knows I’m at the apex of sophistication) die a natural death there are a couple of very basic learnings I want to leave with you. 

 

We all need to get our head around the idea that we will all of us will ultimately be care givers or care receivers in this life.  It is inevitable.  Society has developed so many ways to keep people alive that it is a near certainty we will all somehow experience the pain and joy of taking care of or being taken care of, it’s simply truth.  

Please know, you can and will do it.  It’s not heroic, it’s not amazing, it’s not selfless, it’s inevitable.  Humans have a remarkable way of evolving and adapting, history exists because humans adapted.  You can do it when the time comes, you will figure it out when the time comes, you will make the changes when the time comes and, trust me on this, you will find overwhelming anxiety and pain, and you will find amazing joy and grace.  It is just part of life and baby, somewhere in your inner self, you will find a way to make it work.  That’s what humans do.

I have always loved my bride.  There were times, before and after the strokes, I didn’t like her very much, but in my head and in my heart, I knew, I always loved Marty.  She really was one of my most interesting people, she really was one of the smartest people I knew.  She was, to quote our daughter, fierce.  

She was passionate, she was spontaneous, she had a fiery temper, and she loved like no other.  She respected neither rules nor boundaries, well maybe she sometimes respected them, mostly she simply disregarded them.  She would get in your business and be running it within 30 minutes of knowing you and the disturbing thing  was often she knew better than you how to run things.

She was one of kind, just like we all are, blessed with the grace of a loving God, we are all but children of a God who, regardless of what we do or where we go or what we believe, God’s grace will always embrace us.  That is what my friend Bob Moon taught me a long time ago in a very different life.

 

So, (so is kind a lazy way to start a sentence, oh well.) So, I found myself sitting on the next to the top step of our deck overlooking Richland Chambers Reservoir.  I sat there so I could lean my old back up against a step and really relax.  It was about 6:30 p.m. and the sun was bright and leaking through the oak trees, I could feel the warmth on the left side of my face. 

 

It wasn’t too hot as there was a light breeze gently coming off the lake with just a small tinge of cool. The lake was flat, it was quiet except for the airplane 30,000 feet above going to Houston.  I watched Sharon walking around the yard (Sharon is a dog by the way).  She eventually got tired of sniffing and made her over to sit beside me.  I closed my eyes, felt the Texas sun and the gentle breeze and listened to the quiet as I reached my hand and rested it on Sharon. 

If you need me, I think that’s where I’ll be.

A Summary -- Where I Reveal What I Found

It’s a long way home, if you are coming from Dalhart USA, especially when you must stop and pick up a Sharon, and you have to listen to the Dallas Cowboys lay a stinker of a game in New York.  Come on guys.

I dealt with it by letting Skip drive.  I dealt with my anxious riding while Skip drove too fast and tail-gated too many cars by burying my head and brain in my computer documenting this trip. 

This one I’m doing from home.

We drove right at 3,000 miles on our epic quest.  If you look at it on a map we sort of made a loop from Waco/Austin up to Paris, across to Lubbock and up through New Mexico and Colorado and into Utah and back to Colorado and eventually back to Waco/Austin.  Okay, it’s not really a loop, I just don’t have another word for it….so loop it is.

We witnessed the topographical changes from central Texas to east Texas pine and cedar trees and cotton in dark soil to Lubbock’s scrub oak and cotton in red soil to the pines and colorful aspens in the mountains.  The cotton in east Texas is ahead of the cotton in west Texas and west Texas, Lubbock, was greener and had standing water in the fields.  We saw snow in Colorado (sounds like a song title --- use it if you want).

We saw deer and elk and antelope and lizards and chipmunks.  We saw and heard people from all over the world.  We saw amazing natural, God given beauty, not just in parks but in small north Texas towns and fields and in the faces of the servers and clerks and fellow travelers in Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.  

People are fascinating.  I love people.

We hiked and played golf and wondered and wandered and talked and listened to music that described what we were doing and how it felt.  

We saw where Marty was born.  We saw where she was formed, we saw where Marty and I met and where our babies were born and where we found peace and where we had fun and ultimately where Marty died.  We made the circle and in a particularly fitting way we closed that circle with as much grace as we could muster. 

I started this quest looking for closure.  That’s not what I found.  Hell, closure is just a word that I’m not sure exists in real life, with real things in that real life.  I don’t know.  I found enjoyment in simple things, I found some new friends, talked with old friends and I found good, hard, belly aching, coughing laughter.  Ultimately I rediscovered some marvelous memories and some of what Marty and I were before she got sick.

I sat on a rock in Utah and looked out over this enormous expanse, this marvelous creation that had taken millions of years for real nature to form.  I sat on that rock and somehow found a sense of peace I haven’t felt it a long time.  I walked away from that rock feeling lighter, feeling less burdened, feeling less sad.  It was a healing.

I can’t recommend the experience enough.  If you do it, you have to find a good friend, a friend who will laugh with you and laugh at you, a friend who will cry with you and sing badly with you, a friend who generally smells okay and doesn’t snore.  Mostly you need a friend, someone you love, someone you know loved your wife and someone she loved who was willing and able to go on a quest. 

Then you must make a plan, a flexible plan and just go.  You go to find yourself; you go to remind yourself of who you are and what you have done, you go to honor all that was and all that will be.  Just go.

Taking care of Marty was the most decent thing I’ve ever done.  Taking her around the state was one of the best things I’ve ever done.  Somehow, somewhere, Marty watched, laughed, gave directions and advice, cussed and cried.  It was just right.

Dalhart -- Closing the Circle

We left Colorado Springs mid-morning for the 5-hour drive to Dalhart.  Dalhart is where Marty was raised.  She was born in Clovis but spent all her growing years in a house on Conlen Drive in Dalhart Texas USA.  While I was ready to be there, I kind of dreaded bringing this thing to an end, because it sort of ends in Dalhart, that’s where the circle is closed.  

I haven’t been to Dalhart since 2012 when Marty’s mother, Jean, passed away.  It’s a cool little Texas town in the upper left-hand corner of the panhandle, in other words, a long way from anywhere, but at a highway crossroads that requires you driving through Dalhart on your way to New Mexico or Colorado or anywhere north and west.

We spent Christmases, summers, birthdays and plain old vacations in Dalhart.  We used it for a springboard to ski, we went to the XIT reunion and sat and watched parades and once I had lunch with a Miss Texas.  

I have driven or been driven all around that area.  Marty’s father, Arty, owned farmland and pasture all around Dalhart, so we would always go drive the dirt roads and open pastures checking on cattle, water, chasing coyotes and digging out of snow drifts when Arty drove through huge mounds of snow.  I have hunted pheasant in the snow and one-degree weather, I have even been in Coon Memorial Hospital after Arty shot me when we were hunting birds one winter.  As they said in Monty Python, “tis only a flesh wound.”

I got to know all the Watkin family friends and admired how people in Dalhart often would vacation in packs of Dalhartions.  There were great family friends there, unfortunately, few if any remain.  That’s what happens when your memories, when your connections to a place and its people, goes on for almost 50 years.

Skip and I drove into town and went by Arty’s first farm.  There is a dirt road that runs beside this farm where Marty stuck her car in the sand one time when she was home from college, that’s the folklore anyway. We pulled off and spread ashes and took pictures as the wind blew hair, weeds and cremains.

We then drove past NorTex Feedlot, a lot that Arty started with three other partners and we divested back in 2005.  We then headed past a small feed lot Arty had that was just his and was paid for…. he called it PD4…as in paid for…. that was Marty’s mother, Jean’s, doing.

We made it into town about 3 and spent some time seeing the sights.  We went past Marty’s old house and took pictures as someone peered out the door, we drove past the canyon, past Netha and Charles’s house, past the Phariss’s house, past the Kuper’s house and out to Rita Blanca lake and the city park where they have the rodeo and free feeds during XIT.

I can’t ever go past Rita Blanca without thinking of two things:  Marty and I spent part of our night before our wedding parked down there in her parents big Lincoln and Marty once told me she learned to water ski on Rita Blanca and had a hard time getting her back side up above her skis….she called it the Rita Blanca douche.  I didn’t say it…..she did…. just repeating.

We then drove past the church where we were married.  It was the First Presbyterian and we married there because it had a middle aisle.  It’s now some other brand church.  

We then wandered around the brick streets of downtown Dalhart, we saw the Veteran’s Wall in the park where I had wheeled Marty up to see her father’s name, we saw Coon Memorial Hospital where Jean had been so often and I had had my shotgun shot forehead repaired.  We saw the nursing home where Jean spent her last years and where we celebrated her 80^th birthday right before Marty’s second stroke.

 

We finally set out for the cemetery, the symbolic last spot for our little odyssey.  I drove right to the grave sites, but for whatever reason couldn’t find the huge cross with Watkins on it…duh...it took us a few minutes to find the marker.  On those trips, post strokes, when we took Marty back to see her Mom, Jean, I would always offer to take her to the cemetery.  Most of the time she simply didn’t want to go.  I’m not sure why she didn’t but I couldn’t drive 9 hours and not visit Arty’s grave.  Sometimes Marty got out, sometimes she didn’t.

I figured this spot, where both of Marty’s parents lay, would be the most emotional.  I figured right because I am a man in touch with my feelings.  It’s true, sometimes I’m not sure what that means, but hey…. I’m in touch.

I stood there for a while with Skip and talked a little about Arty and Jean and how important they had been to Marty and how important they had been to me.  I scattered Marty’s ashes over the grave sites and simply said, through my own tears,  “Marty, it’s done, I’ve brought you home to your mom and dad.”

We made our way to where the Holiday Inn had been.  It’s now a LaQuinta, both fine establishments but we had reservations at the Holiday Inn.  June, from Waze, our constant companion while driving, sent us out on the highway to the outskirts of town and we found the Holiday Inn and enjoyed a fine room, watching TTU get rookydooed and still enjoying each other’s company.

Tomorrow we head back to Mansfield and Sharon and then on to Waco.

The circle was closed.