All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(62)

“Um, yeah. I am sure it’ll be great, babe.”

This was one of many presentations or meetings that I sought his advice on. For me as a freelancer, it was one meeting after another, with many keeping me up at night. My boyfriend carried a lot of the weight, especially now that my dad was gone. It’s uncomfortable, but sometimes necessary, how we force people in our lives to occupy certain roles. I was frustrated to not even get a glance from him as I spoke; his eyes were glued to the computer screen.

I walked into the bathroom and gently closed the door. I leaned in, putting my hands on the porcelain sink. I stared at myself. I thought I looked older than twenty-eight. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and freckles lined my face even though the sun hadn’t come out yet. It was April, and it had been what seemed like a very long winter. My face looked puffy, and I had the requisite circles of a workaholic underneath my eyes. I splashed cold water on my face and took a deep breath. I said to myself, loudly: You will be great.

The flight was literally across the entire continent, but I started to feel the burn at hour two. I watched movies, wrote a proposal, outlined my next shoot, and still had eight hours to kill. I am rarely alone with my thoughts for this long. They aren’t always the best company.

I finally reached Anchorage, feeling a fresh wave of excitement as I headed over to pick up my rental car. I could say or do whatever I wanted for the next twenty-four hours before my talk. I headed toward the Bubbly Mermaid, a champagne and oyster bar off the main strip. No white wine for me, I told the kind and curvaceous waitress. I ordered enough oysters to feed three, plus some paté, and I felt somewhat like an adult. I realized I was mimicking behavior that I’d observed in my dad. You fly somewhere, ask a local for the best food shack, and overspend on food because you are not buying booze. I even toted my Harry Potter book with me to add to my big-kid status. I thought momentarily about ordering a glass of champagne. No one would know, a mischievous voice inside my head commented. I swatted the thought away. I’d only been sober this time for six months, but I wanted to keep it that way.

I left the restaurant full of oysters and received a call from an unknown number. In my line of work, that typically meant I was about to talk to someone in a prison. My heart picked up its pace as I timidly said “Hello.” I spoke with a young man who had been accused of raping a sixteen-year-old at an elite boarding school. The prosecutor said that he’d lured her via the school intranet and assaulted her and bragged about it to his friends. I had read through hundreds of his chats, and I knew many secrets about him, and yet here he was on the phone, calling me Ms. Carr and asking me about myself. He was awaiting sentencing after a guilty verdict and was very careful not to say anything that would incriminate him, so he couldn’t say much. I hung up and felt my life moving away from my dad’s death and into work that scared me. He would approve.

Over the next couple of days, I spoke to students and drank shitty coffee that somehow tasted fine in one of the truly most spectacular places on earth. Speakers at the conference knew my dad, and quickly said, “Sorry for your loss,” before moving on to the next topic. I found that the righteous anger that had been with me the first year had started to leave me and these conversations. I liked when people mentioned him now. He was in their thoughts just as he was in mine. I felt kinship with the other women and men who had been asked to speak. There was Zoe, a fierce and loud radio reporter from a well-known program; Bob, a blowhard from that same radio organization; and a young man named Bryan who spent time analyzing all the folks who read The Washington Post. I felt instantly crushy toward Bryan, but the feeling retreated as he gave me tips on how to successfully move in with a significant other.

For one night, we were invited to a fancy, secluded resort in Seward. The drive there was dangerous because I was alone and gawking at the sights around me, instead of paying attention to the winding road ahead. When we arrived, we all grabbed drinks. I felt like I was fresh out of elementary school when I ordered a Shirley Temple with extra cherries, like my former self had been exposed as someone who could not handle her liquor. We talked about the start of the year, hard work, and loss. David Bowie had died, and this little group of artists talked it through. I felt myself harden when Zoe talked about the pain of losing a man like Bowie. “What right do we have to mourn a man we never knew?” I wondered out loud.

I explained that it was hard to hear that sort of thing when you have recently lost a parent. Zoe swiveled to face me and whispered, “Wait, your dad was David Carr?”

I looked down and blushed. “Yes.”

She recounted reading The Night of the Gun, listening to his Terry Gross interview, and seeking comfort in his words after her mother died. It became one of many instances in which an individual would hold my hand and say how much he had meant to them. I started to understand the spasm of grief. Once someone close to you dies, you feel loss more plainly, as it is a part of your everyday experience. It feels crushing as the wave hits you, but then you can see the tide begin to drift in and out again after the storm.

The day before I was scheduled to go home, I decided to venture to a glacier to see what the fuss was all about. It was raining outside, but luckily I had a waterproof coat from Costco that my always practical sister Meagan had gifted me. A sign commanded me to LOOK OUT FOR BEARS. I resisted the impulse to put in my white earbuds, and instead embraced the sound of the crunch of rocks and pebbles under my feet in the otherwise silent setting. The landscape was a watercolor of brown, gray, and white. Snow blanketed every mountaintop, and for the first time in a long while, I let go of what was happening that week, even that day. I focused on my breath, in that minute, and the world that I was surrounded by. I took a picture to remember the moment, but I knew it would have been better to leave it—to become untethered to the digital rope that binds me. I put my phone away after I took this photo, knowing that experiences like this were rare and best not seen through a screen.