I, too, wanted to live deliberately and see what the river had to teach us. At a sharp bend, the Tioughnioga deepened suddenly, and we hung suspended, looking into darkness with glints of silver below us, river teeming with trout. “Oh! Big trout,” you said.

“Who would have thought?” I answered. 

“There’s so many,” you said, pitch of your voice a little higher from excitement. The trout were so packed together, we could have reached down and caught one with our hands. Then we put our paddles back in the water and headed north.

A few more strokes up river, everything changed. From dream-like, gentle movements to bursts as our paddles struck surface, our awkward movements relentlessly exposed our fears. We had surprised a group of heifers that broke through their fence. Whether out of curiosity or some other instinct, heifers charged us. Trampling tall Brome grasses at the edge of banks and plunging into the river, heifers snorted then stopped for an instant, looking directly at us. 

Whether they were sizing us up or reacting to surprise, they went with curious instinct and quickly moved into the water toward us. I felt my heart beating. We tried paddling backwards. In that suddenly shallow part of the river, heifers and bullocks were gaining. 

You looked for your mother’s direction and protection. “We’re getting out of here,” I yelled, hoping to scare the clamoring animals from slamming into us. 

I hopped out, nearly tipping our canoe over. The gravel bottom made it easy to gain footing. We both had to get out of the canoe and lift it over a few rocks before climbing back in and working hard to get free, huffing young bulls almost upon us. Hot breath on our backs. I am not sure what they would have done had those heifers and bullocks run into us. They are not normally deadly or dangerous, but their rushing bulk and weight presented a threat. I could see us getting badly hurt in the commotion of charging bodies. However unintended, I was responsible for putting my little boy in danger. Guilt washed over me mixed with relief.

You glanced at me with a look that said, “Is that what you planned?” Then you, too, suppressed a smile. We made it, of course, and started laughing out loud once back on the pond. How strange, I thought, my angst from close encounter with some young heifers. I was immensely grateful for our narrow escape. Luck was with us.

***

As I wrote this scene, I found myself back in our aluminum canoe with my brave little boy. I can no longer hear his eight-year-old voice, but I see his face and feel his moods. He must have thought his mother was a little crazy, but he never criticized me. He never even mentioned our semi-dangerous encounter to his dad. 

“It was fun,” he said in answer to his father’s questions.

Only a child, he was a confident explorer, nothing in his healthy aspect, calm voice, or beautiful face betrayed his heart’s early warnings, the peril that awaited in his undetected Marfan Syndrome. Not all of my son’s journeys had such adventurous unfolding, and I found I was less effective at protecting him than that day in the canoe all those years ago. The years of his dive into alcohol abuse and drugs were far more perilous. Even that menace, however, did not approach the unknown threat of his heart. 

***

Blaise still appears to me suddenly. His death has not stopped me seeing him. I was reading and then paused. Sitting in an old leather chair with a broken foot rest, I had been reading an Ann Patchett essay about escaping daily, busy life with her too many visitors. Patchett flew across the country to Los Angeles to hole up in The Hotel Bel-Air where she would write in contemplative, uninterrupted peace. 
I tried to picture myself flying across the country to my reserved rooms in this old Hollywood glamour hotel to write. My smile is ironic as I think about how much time and quiet I have in my house now. We have lived with “shelter in place” orders due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It has been too quiet. Now, with Blaise gone, silence has become eerie, and I long for his footsteps, the quick “hi, heading to work. Love you.”  

When I look up from Patchett’s anthology of essays, I momentarily see Blaise standing in the dining room, collecting his wallet and keys, as he had so many times before. His back is turned to me. He turns his head slightly. We don’t speak, but the fractions of a second image of him is so real. He asks for nothing. Within a blink of my eyes, he is gone again. Light ever changing as the sun works its way through cloud cover to produce sparkling undulations across the lake, reflecting through windows, wavering images along walls of my house. Tricks of light. All part of this disappearing act.

Gulls in the distance take off from the water, not in unison but haphazardly. They appear as scattered leaves that have left their colors behind in damp earth, leaves already half-decomposed, turning into leaf mold, but caught in sudden updrafts, whirling overhead. Gulls turned to leaves, leaves turn to regret. How I perceive the world is now colored by loss of my son, by quiet that is deeper than quiet. 

Even a good life full of love, satisfying work, and relative comfort is too hard a journey sometimes.

***

There are so many things I want to ask my son, but I am no longer able to do so. I tried to refrain from questioning him too often to avoid being the annoying mother. I actually worked at not bothering him because I was afraid my questions would feel like an inquisition. Of course, now, I wish I had asked him every question. I wish I had pressed for more answers. I wish most of all that I had hugged him one more time on that last day. 

Although Blaise lived at home, there was always a feeling that he was about to set off on a voyage, but his boat remains tied to the shore. For all his desire, he could not untether that skiff. His life was finite and shortened, but the enigma of my son, of his longings, his many loves, and the great love he evoked in others, these seem infinite. Even in death, life seems infinite.