Touching the Edge

Margaret Wurtele

Description

Praise for Touching the Edge

"Touching the Edge is an homage to love, loss, and the rising grace that comes when grief is transformed into peace. Margaret Wurtele's bow to her son, Phil, is a story we can all recognize within the context of each family's dance with death. Her words can heal the fall of a human heart."
-Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge, Red, and Leap

"Touching the Edge is an extraordinary memoir. Margaret Wurtele writes of the most painful events a parent can ever imagine, and yet she writes so honestly, so clearly, with prose as lucid and shimmering as cut crystal, that the book shines with a quiet grace. I too have a single grown child. I read this book and trembled. But I also saw, through Margaret Wurtele's eyes, a glimpse of the light that guided her through the darkness. It was a privilege to read this book."
-Susan Allen Toth, author of Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood and My Love Affair with England

"I happened to be climbing on Rainier the day that Phil was killed, and I often wondered who he was, what he was like. Now, thanks to this beautifully told account, I have a very good idea. And I have an even clearer sense of what it means to be a parent, and a child of God. This book will choke you up, but the tears will be more than worth it."
-Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously

"The experience of love and loss, when shared, can become the alchemy of a rebirth of the spirit in others. In this journey to the other side of grief, Margaret Wurtele is fearlessly true to her experience of loss and makes herself available to be an agent of transformation for her readers. This is the glory of the human story: we really are 'members of one another' whether we realize it or not."
-Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Seasons of Grace, The Soul's Journey, and Living the Truth
Prologue.

Questions of Spirit.

The View from the Bottom.

Mountain Story.

Facing Off.

Spirit from Head to Heart.

Phil's Women.

Climbing.

House of Prayer.

Echoes.

Camp Phil.

We Make Our Song.

New Family.

Convergence.

Earthly Matters.

Looking for Answers.

Terrible Glory.

Continental Divide.

The Birthday Visitor.

First Christmas.

Something to Leave the World.

Nancy.

The Body's Code.

Return to the Mountain.

Pilgrimage.

Sacred Space.

No Tomorrow.

Letting Go.

For the Living.

Index.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Vie de famille
• Soutien psychologique et conseils familiaux
• Christian Living
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 17 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470251904
• Langue: English

Extrait

T OUCHING THE E DGE
A M OTHER S S PIRITUAL P ATH FROM L OSS TO L IFE
Margaret Wurtele
Copyright 2003 by Margaret Wurtele. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Design and production by Navta Associates, Inc.
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The author gratefully acknowledges the following for permission to quote from:
The Poems of Emily Dickinson , Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright 1951, 1955, 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Dirge Without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Copyright 1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, literary executor.
A Door in the Hive by Denise Levertov, copyright 1989 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Breathing the Water by Denise Levertov, copyright 1987 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Dream Work by Mary Oliver, copyright 1986 by Mary Oliver. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
If each day falls by Pablo Neruda, translated by William O Daly, from The Sea and the Bells . Copyright 1973 by Pablo Neruda and Heirs of Pablo Neruda. English translation copyright 1988, 2002 by William O Daly. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 96368.
Little Gidding in Four Quartets , copyright 1942 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
The Poems of J.V. Cunningham . Reprinted with permission of Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio.
The Gold Cell by Sharon Olds, copyright 1987 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Cambridge Elegy first appeared in POETRY , copyright October 1981 by The Modern Poetry Association, and is reprinted by permission of the Editor of POETRY .
True Companion , Words and Music by Marc Cohn. Copyright 1991 by Famous Music Corporation. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.
The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry , copyright Wendell Berry. Used by permission of the publisher.
The Essential Rumi , copyright 1995 by Coleman Barks, translator.
For Chris, Andrew, and Heidi, with love
C ONTENTS
Prologue
C HAPTER 1 Questions of Spirit
C HAPTER 2 The View from the Bottom
C HAPTER 3 Mountain Story
C HAPTER 4 Facing Off
C HAPTER 5 From the Head to the Heart
C HAPTER 6 Phil s Women
C HAPTER 7 Next of Kin
C HAPTER 8 House of Prayer
C HAPTER 9 Echoes
C HAPTER 10 Camp Phil
C HAPTER 11 We Make Our Song
C HAPTER 12 New Family
C HAPTER 13 Convergence
C HAPTER 14 Earthly Things
C HAPTER 15 Looking for Answers
C HAPTER 16 Terrible Glory
C HAPTER 17 Continental Divide
C HAPTER 18 The Birthday Visitor
C HAPTER 19 First Christmas
C HAPTER 20 Something to Leave the World
C HAPTER 21 Nancy
C HAPTER 22 The Body s Code
C HAPTER 23 Return to the Mountain
C HAPTER 24 Pilgrimage
C HAPTER 25 Sacred Space
C HAPTER 26 No Tomorrow
C HAPTER 27 Letting Go
C HAPTER 28 For the Living
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book has been a long and valuable exercise. First, I want to thank my husband, Angus, who has supported me every day of our marriage; who patiently allowed me the time and space to write; who faithfully read each page, each chapter, many times. To my mother and father, I send appreciation for taking the time to read, to listen, and to respond and for opening themselves again and again to the pain of grief in so doing. To the members of my family and to my friends who read the manuscript and encouraged me, thank you.
I am grateful to Paulette Bates Alden for providing me with a writing group whose members honest feedback was critical to the inception and early drafts of this project. Paulette was an enthusiastic reader and first editor. Without her support, I might not have taken the plunge.
I am indebted to Mike Gauthier and to Bruce Barcott, author of The Measure of a Mountain, for their accounts of the accident on Mount Rainier and its aftermath. I have relied on Mike s memory and Bruce s reporting in that book for the story I recreated here.
Gail See-as always-has been a cheerleader and advocate of immeasurable value. Without her, the book might never have seen the light of day. I want to thank my agent, Jonathon Lazear, and Christi Cardenas at the Lazear Agency for believing in this book and patiently persevering until it found a home.
My editor, Tom Miller, has been an empathetic partner. He acquired the manuscript from his heart, and he has improved it with talent and critical skill. Tom has been truly engaged-thoughtful, thorough, and enthusiastic-the kind of editor I didn t know existed anymore.
And Phil-you have been and will always be my inspiration and my guide.
Prologue
One hot August night in 1995, as I slept soundly in Minneapolis, exhausted from a day filled with weekend houseguests, my twenty-two-year-old son Philip Otis set off on a mission in Mount Rainier Park. He and Sean Ryan, a young climbing ranger, had been sent to help rescue a man with a broken ankle, stranded somewhere just below the mountain s summit. As they climbed that night, the weather turned fierce. They had been having equipment problems, and at 11:30 P.M. radio contact was lost. At some point, they fell, roped together, tumbling over the icy slopes to their deaths twelve hundred feet below.
I dreamed peacefully that night as my worst nightmare was unfolding half a continent away. I didn t hear the news of Phil s death until almost two days later, a lightning bolt that cleaved my life in two. He was my only biological child, much of what I had been living for.
I was about to turn fifty, absorbed in an intense midlife spiritual awakening. Suddenly I felt utterly betrayed by a God I had only just embraced. Now, I thought, my life was over, and as a massive fog of pain and grief moved in, I could see no way out.
In the months that followed, I experienced an outpouring of love. I was carried along as if borne up on the hands and shoulders of my family and friends. I floated on a wave of letters, small gifts, thoughts, and prayers that refused to let me touch the ground.
One day, in the weeks after Phil s death, I was riding in an open convertible, one of his journals on the seat beside me. The wind flipped the cover open, ruffling the pages, and in a flash-just as I used to reach an arm instinctively in front of my child on a fast brake-I held the book down for dear life. Is this it? I wondered. Is this all that is left: a few photographs that will surely fade, some letters and books of his writing that will turn to dust, the memories cherished by his family and friends, who-like him-will die too?
A year or so later, as I began to consider writing this book, crushing doubts enveloped me. How could I examine a life so intimately entwined with mine and achieve any distance, any perspective? When I searched, at first all I could find were broken bits of memory that came briefly into focus, then dissolved. I felt as if I were wandering the dusty plateau of an ancient Israeli tel, a site of holy ruins. I would pick up a fragment, turn it in my hand, and try to let it be a clue to reveal a wider history, a greater story.
One May evening that first year, I was attending my college reunion in Massachusetts and dinner was winding down. I gazed at one of my classmates, decades older but still oddly the same as when we graduated from this women s college thirty years before. Why were we there? I searched her eyes for some explanation of our decision to come a thousand miles to our reunion, to sleep in bare dorm rooms and drink bad coffee. I come for the stories, she said. Yes, and so had I. My own story of loss had been told again and again that day, hel