Summer House VII

I could feel my bones burning. There was no comfort to be found within my own body…only a terrible ache that didn't discriminate, it gnawed at every joint, every tendon…every thought.

I could feel myself screaming yet I was voiceless, a disconcerting reminder that even if my screams were real they would never be truly understood.
I hunkered down in anguish unable to see and unfit to respond. This wasn't darkness or blindness; this was the absence of all light.

Yet it seemed as if I was encased within a solitary flame, churning inside the flares' centered blue flicker. Fire that mockingly called attention to the stillness and the power it retained despite being surrounded by a wild magenta madness.

The heat was as unceasing as my pain. Although surrounded by blackness I was fully aware that anger and hopelessness lurked in close proximity. Eventually I reached out to them, if for no other reason than they were familiar. As always they provided no solace or foundation. Instead I was greeted by what felt like jagged embers jutting toward me in a senseless pattern. The ground was tormented too…molten, craggy and unforgiving.

Unable to stand, I forced myself to crawl and my skin shredded against the coarse landscape. The pain seemed petty now; my flesh was seared and blackened. Part of me actually hoped those scrapes might enlarge into gaping wounds. Such injuries would truly bleed. I longed to bathe in blood…thick, cool and red.

There was no process to my movements, I snatched out blindly and whenever I was able to claw hold of anything I pulled myself in that direction. Even so I could tell I was gradually moving upward.

For a passing second I thought I might rise above this inferno of agony, but the darkness did not lift, there was no end to the burning shards of torture. I used the rising elevation to motivate movement and tried to ignore a growing sense of pleasure in the constant pain.

I inched upward and it seemed as if days were passing...maybe years. My sense of time was burning out. All hope flamed out in a more spectacular manner as I occasionally lost my grip and slid downward helplessly... I could hear my skin rupturing against the flaring rocks.

At no time could I see, but I was haunted by a vision of a summit. Whether it was instinctual or simply luck it eventually proved true...

Without warning I reached out and there was nothing left to grab. The ground still smoldered but it was flat.

It was only then that I came to realize my location…even in the pitch dark it became obvious. What was most shocking was the false sense of solitude.
I wasn't alone, a legion traveled with me. They had been with me long before I arrived. I had carried them willingly.

I sat in the stillness of that recognition.

It didn't matter. I was being offered a way out. An end to the ache and bitterness. A conclusion to the constant fear and heartbreak which no one could really understand.

I didn't need light to see this…it was clear. That which I had spent years in prayer seeking was now only a few feet away.

No more suffering.

Or memories.

Her memory.

The memory of Him too.

Where was that chill coming from?

The pain seemed more bearable now. The darkness was fading.

There were plenty of others here after all.

How could I ever think Hell would be lonely?

SUMMER HOUSE VI

I came seeking solitude but was confronted with torment. My cries to God were unanswered or met with what I could only interpret as a mocking response. The blister on my cheek burned with an intensity the wound did not merit.

Until three years earlier torment was unthinkable here. This had always been a place of spiritual renewal...somehow I had let it become a prison of fear and regret.

When she died it was easy to run from all that was familiar. I avoided restaurants we loved, relationships we shared...in truth virtually anything that might constitute joy. Hence, Summer House was off limits.

I was undeserving of happiness. I believed God had made that point ...very convincingly.

There was no diagnosis that prepared us. Instead we were met with medical uncertainties and theories. Those were followed by medications, surgeries, more medications, consultations and consternation. Eventually it produced a jaded sense of bewilderment...but no cure. It seemed to feed on a litany of ill defined medical procedures that produced nothing with the exception of astronomical bills. I paid and protested until it became apparent to all that technology offered no answer and worse yet no hope. At that point the doctors abandoned us. I took some small consolation by giving the same treatment to their collection agencies.

The chaotic din of my fears became a welcoming chorus...for death.

I retreated to the only unwavering force I knew. I prayed.

She died.

Her faith was unshaken as she left me. I believed with her that night....the question was whether I could believe without her.

It seemed like only seconds had passed before lawyers lined up offering me comfort...in the form of cash.

I eventually hired an attorney with only one stipulation: no matter the offer the lawyer had to refuse to settle for at least three years. I wanted to inflict suffering on others. I could think of nothing to ease my pain, but if such a thing did exist I knew it wasn't money.

That third night at Summer House I continued to fuel the fire, but I was unable to incinerate my anger. I raged at her...at doctors...at lawyers and God.

I doubted all of them...except her. She was real...I knew that from my pain.

The next morning the fever set in...Misery may love company, but I was alone with mine, at least it felt that way.

Summer House V

It had been three years since she died. On my third night in Summer House that winter she came back to haunt my memories.

My sense of the injustice of it all had not subsided with the passage of time, if anything it had fermented into a brew perhaps less identifiable yet more toxic. Fueled by frustration and helplessness my feelings had merged with my worst fears and had begun to manifest themselves in cynicism and self pity.

Summer House can at times evoke the image of an old man, creaking and groaning for no apparent reason. When hit by gale force winds hurling ice and snow the noise escalates, the beams and boards seem to scream in an unnerving unison. That third night it was almost a constant howl, still it couldn't drown out my thoughts.

I had quickly discovered that the Summer House furnace was adequate enough to keep pipes from freezing, but during such a harsh storm it couldn't keep the frigid conditions at bay. I blamed the cold for my unease as I bundled up and made camp in the third floor bedroom. The room had a small fireplace which I stoked incessantly. Still I felt chilled...and alone. Occasionally an ember would escape the brick chamber and drift free in my direction. Without fail it would burn out an instant later.



I tried to resist her memory. I was certain that was the only true cure. Blot her from my thoughts and then my mind would be at peace. It was a strategy which had failed me often, and which nonetheless I unceasingly repeated.

She was 23 when we met. She had brown eyes highlighted with specks of green, something you wouldn't notice unless you abandoned all sense of propriety and stared at her features. I did that the moment I met her. Soon I learned she also had a deep and abiding faith which was pure and unblemished.

She died at the age of 35. I watched as she closed those beautiful eyes for the last time, her faith still in tact. I had been changed by her...now I was being changed by her absence.

"Explain it to me God", I muttered the words quietly at first. It was not the first time I had begun this one sided conversation. "Explain how You can give me all that I have ever wanted, and then rob me of it an instant later. Time means nothing to You, but it was all I had and I didn't have near enough."

I cursed the Lord loudly that night as the storm bore down on Water's Edge with training bands of sleet and snow. I hadn't looked up, much less outside. I didn't have to see out to know I would be trapped in Summer House now.

One trap was the same as the next.

I kept ranting at God and feeding the flames. I had no desire to sleep and no expectations of answers.

A bright red ember spun wildly out of the heated current of air. It stung my cheek to the point where I was certain my skin would blister.

"That's Your answer, isn't it God? More pain...always more pain."

Summer House Part IV

I spent the first two nights at Summer House adjusting....to the quiet. It seemed impossible to sleep. In all the years the home had been in my family I couldn't ever recall being completely alone there. Summer House was a constant chorus of children running here and there, people cooking, reading, singing, playing cards, having great debates over minutia and meaningful moments of heartfelt prayer. Silence was a stranger here...perhaps now so was I.

I busied myself making sure there was an adequate amount of firewood and that the heating oil tank was supplied as well. Without proper planning I imagined I could freeze to death in this old house and no one was would notice until a few weeks into the spring thaw, especially since I hadn't told anyone of my plans. I was hoping for moments of peace, but I had only discovered new forms of discomfort.

On that third day the storm came. From the widow's walk I watched it wake across the waters...churning and groaning. A bitter blast erupting out of what had hours earlier been a grey stillness. It was alternately fascinating and frightening...like watching a birth and then realizing you were unsure exactly what was being spawned.

I sheltered the car and shuttered the house. For the first time in months I prayed.

"Heavenly Father I am trapped. Confined by own devices. The storm is coming and I feel alone."

I didn't hear an answer.

Summer House Part III

I pulled into the driveway at Summer House and stared. The three story home stood as a slightly crooked makeshift tribute to my ancestry which was probably fitting.

With the exception of a coat of paint in the 1970's, the house had not changed at all since my childhood. Although it had been modified significantly over years previous to make room for children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, the original structure was still easily identifiable. It was almost comical and haphazard the way the house had been altered by various generations. I felt a passing moment of regret that there was no family archivist to chart each modification and the events which prompted them.

The most notable features of Summer House withstood almost all change. The wraparound porch where family members had watched their children grow, and where children had watched their parents grow old, also provided an unobscured view of the alternately roiling tumult and passive allure that was Lake Erie. The only porch modifications had been screens to give the May flies some place to die in the summer and shutters which attempted to seal the home against freeze and fury in the winter.

Outside the front room on the third floor was a small landing, or Widow's walk. That room had traditionally been claimed by the reigning family patriarch and his bride. The landing provided a place to pace when loved ones were still fishing or sailing the lake's waters perhaps unable to see the storm clouds rising. The height provided a better view, but never any real comfort.







I eventually emerged from my wistful thoughts and my car long enough to stroll around back to grab the door key from inside the clapboard storage shed, built long ago by relatives who never considered installing a lock...they didn't have anything worth stealing. In the decades since, although jaded by city life, no one in our family ever dared to put a lock on that shed out of an unspoken fear such a move would signal something akin to surrender. I suppose it's the same reason we had no telephone or TV. Summer House was a haven. Time and progress were intruders.

As I opened the storage shed door I was at once engulfed by musky recollections - meals being prepared for a virtual multitude, bicycle tires that needed repair, and a cacophony of carefree children at play. Water's Edge was the only place on earth where I could actually breathe those memories. Why had I been away so long?

I immediately knew the answer to that question. I wish I didn't, but that's why I was here. I had been called by memories deep and the hauntings which had wrestled me nightly for several years now.

I would either mediate a truce with my demons or submit to them. There was no turning back...I could feel the winter winds.

Summer House Part II

Water's Edge is where Summer House has been for nearly 100 years. It's the only way we could afford to have a house there now, real estate prices are way out of line with reality. Relations from long ago literally pitched tents there and prayed. Eventually they claimed the land as their own and the family home was built on that same plot of ground...that parcel of prayer.

Those ancestors are long dead, but many of their prayers are answered each year when family members converge on Summer House to share its quirks and comfort.

We call it Summer House, but improvements made over the years actually would allow it to be used year round. Occasionally some family member will spend a weekend there in the fall, but a winter's stay at Water's Edge takes far too much commitment. The fast striking lake effect snowstorms can easily turn a night around the fireplace into a month or more of isolation.

For years I had a fanciful mental dalliance of returning to Water's Edge in the winter deep to close in my thoughts...to read, to write, to make love. Until now the lurking fear of my response to isolation coupled with the cowardice provoked by everyday responsibilities always managed to cripple that dream.

This winter was different. I had danced with loneliness for months and now I was ready to take the relationship a step further. I was craving seclusion.

From Summer House you can look across the vast waters of Lake Erie and see the Johnson Island lighthouse, built by men held captive far from home. They were prisoners of a war within the borders of their own nation. The lighthouse is now merely a curiosity. It had been modified over the years, but eventually lost its usefulness. During the tourist season the bright lamps that once guided cargo vessels, warships and smugglers are occasionally set ablaze to give visitors another reason to linger in town until nightfall and spend their dollars.

Most of the men who built the lighthouse are buried nearby...but out of view. It's the rare tourist who treads their graves.

From the wraparound porch of Summer House you can also look across the waters and see another land-another nation with its own stories of hardships and horrors.

In the winter there is an odd dichotomy to that separation. The distance is still there, but by mid-winter the lake is frozen solid.







A man with enough fortitude, long johns, and a distinct lack of common sense could walk to that other land in the bitter cold. It had been done by some...and failed to be done by others.

I was headed to Summer House the day I passed the little girl with the bright red Mary Janes, a Popsicle stick and eyes that seemed to betray more than her age would allow. If I took my mind off the road, my thoughts could still easily be haunted by those eyes. It was silly.

Although many of my family members still gather there collectively each summer, I hadn't been to Water's Edge for several years. Having lost my wife to the unspeakable ravages of disease and medical admissions of helplessness, I had allowed family traditions to fray.

I was going back now for a reunion with fears un-faced, not family.

I had nothing but time...and a two lane road.

Summer House Part I

She wore bright red Mary Janes.





The first thing I noticed as I topped the hill - those shoes. It was a one stop light town in rural Ohio, and I was on my way to better places...but I wasn't in a hurry.

The little girl with straight bangs was sitting on the curb focused on the task at hand. I watched her closely, since the odds being what they always seem to be, the one stop light in town turned red as soon as I neared.

She was vigorously rubbing something against the sun bleached pavement, but it took me a while before I understood. Of course... a Popsicle stick.

On the side of this pseudo two lane highway which had slowed to a momentary crawl, a child sat in shadows of the day...only a Popsicle stick for entertainment.

The light turned green and I sped away, noticing that the girl barely took her eyes off the task at hand to briefly glance in my direction.

She had old eyes.

I drove off thinking how she must have wanted that Popsicle stick to be as sharp as possible.

It was Sunday, that explained the Mary Janes. Bright red seemed an odd color though..especially for such a little girl in the winter.