My Year with Eleanor (30 page)

When I got back to my hotel room, I shut the blackout curtains so no one walking by could see in. Then I took the pillows off my bed and settled down on the greasy bedspread, my back straight against the headboard. Dr. Bob told me that meditating didn't just have to be about observing your breath and detaching from your thoughts. You could also meditate to receive insights on things you don't understand. I began by stating my intention:
“I want to better understand my fear of death.”

Then I closed my eyes and let everything that came to my mind rise up, without trying to block any thoughts. Surprisingly, what came up wasn't a thought, but a story from a book I'd bought at the beginning of the project called
Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously
. I'd almost forgotten about that book. It contained an Indian fable about a powerful emperor who died and went to heaven. According to the legend, every thousand years when a very important emperor died, he was given the honor of engraving his name on the highest mountain in heaven, which was made of solid gold. So the emperor hiked all the way to the top but was baffled to find there was no space for his signature. The whole mountain was engraved with names of past emperors! The emperor was crushed, having finally understood his insignificant place in eternity. Heaven's gatekeeper, who was watching with great amusement, suggested the emperor erase one of the other names to make room for his own.

“What is the point?” the emperor replied bitterly. “Someday somebody will come and erase it.”

That was what it meant to face death, I thought. Having to face your own impermanence. Fear of death was the fear of being nothing. The fear of being so easily erased, your presence on earth replaced by someone else. Eventually, everyone who remembered you would die and you would be forgotten. It would be as if you were never there at all. It was a terrifying thought. I felt the clouds part in my mind slightly, some larger understanding beginning to shine through. It wasn't dead bodies or the physicality of death that I was afraid of, not really.

“Accept uncertainty,” Dr. Bob was always telling me. Death was the biggest uncertainty in life. You couldn't prepare for it. You never knew when it would come for you. When it did, you were stripped of everything familiar. You couldn't take anything with you. You had to go alone. All fears were a process of letting go, I realized, and death was the ultimate release. You accepted that the world would go on without you.

T
he next day I rode with Terry in the hearse to deliver Abe Lincoln's ashes to his family and the Mennonite woman's body to her funeral service at the cemetery, my last jobs before heading home. At stoplights the cars next to us hung back, curious drivers angling for a glimpse of the coffin through our curtained windows in the backseat. I tried to imagine what Franklin's cross-country funeral procession must've been like for Eleanor, having to grapple with so much at once—her husband's death and infidelity, her daughter's betrayal, staying strong for the public. She'd stayed the night in Warm Springs and the next morning boarded a train that carried Franklin's body back to Washington, D.C. She kept the window shade up the whole way and looked out at the thousands of weeping Americans who gathered along the route in tribute. She wore one piece of jewelry at the White House funeral service, a gold fleur-de-lis pin that had been a wedding present from Franklin. When she returned to her apartment in New York, a clump of reporters was stationed on her doorstep. “The story is over,” she told them.

We pulled into the Mennonite cemetery and drove the hearse toward a group of men in straw hats and women in bonnets and navy prairie dresses. Like the Amish, they wanted to run the funeral themselves, so Terry and I stayed back at the hearse while they performed the service. When the service was over, they headed to the woman's house, where the entire community would gather for lunch.

Next we delivered Abe Lincoln's ashes to his family. When I handed the urn off to Abe's son, he revealed that after yesterday's service, they celebrated by playing the video game Rock Band for six hours with each family member playing a different musical instrument. Now they were strategizing about how to carry out Abe's final wish to have his ashes buried in Cleveland Browns stadium, which was illegal. So far the plan was to walk to the front row during a game with the ashes disguised in a coffee cup, pour the cremains over the side, and hope they were faster than the security guards.

T
hat night, as the train pulled me back to New York, I stared out at the trees flashing by. When I thought about the people I'd seen crying at the funerals that day, I knew Sean was right—this was a fear you couldn't practice for. No matter how many loved ones you'd already lost, it would always be devastating. We're human beings. Even more powerful than our instinct to stay alive is our instinct to love. It's why people run back into a burning house to rescue their family members. It's why mothers throw themselves in front of their children in the face of danger.

I wouldn't say I no longer had a fear of death, but I'd made peace with it. Death had been demystified for me. I wasn't sure I'd want to be completely rid of that fear. Fear of death could go one of two ways: it could force you to live in the present, where you had a greater appreciation for the people and things around you, aware of the fragility of life; or it could force you to live in the future, always worrying about when death was coming, but then you weren't really living.

In the last week I'd met the most interesting people of my life, not all of them alive. Some of us spent our lives working in the fields and had quiet deaths. Others went out with style, wearing our favorite outfit even when it was too small for us. We were all so different. Death was the one thing we had in common. There was something incredibly lovely about that.

Chapter Fifteen

We are constantly advancing, like explorers,
into the unknown, which makes life an adventure all the way. How interminable
and dull that journey would be if it were on a straight road over a flat plain,
if we could see ahead the whole distance, without surprises, without the salt of
the unexpected, without challenge.

—ELEANOR
ROOSEVELT

T
he truth
was that I wasn't ready to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I knew Dr. Bob would say,
“You can't wait until you feel ‘ready' to take a risk. You'll never feel truly
prepared,” but I truly was not prepared. As in, I didn't have any clothing or
gear yet. Mentally and emotionally, I didn't know what to expect. I was
physically ready, at least. For the last two months I'd hit the gym three days a
week, climbing the Stairmaster and squatting into unbecoming positions with a
weighted barbell balanced on my shoulders. But that was about all I had going
for me.

In my defense, Kilimanjaro was a hard mountain to
prepare for. It was a mountain of extremes comprising five distinct climate
zones: rain forest, heather, moorlands, alpine desert, and ice cap. Temperatures
ranged from the eighties in the rain forest to negative fifteen degrees at the
summit. A typical hike took four and a half days to reach the summit, and only a
day and a half to descend. Kilimanjaro inspired extreme behavior in others. In
2001, an Italian man named Bruno Brunod (seriously) ran to the top in a record
five hours and thirty-eight minutes. Wim “Iceman” Hof did it in two days, bare
chested, wearing only shorts. Douglas Adams, author of
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
climbed to the summit wearing an
eight-foot rubber rhinoceros costume. I'd stick to hiking gear, thanks. Though,
frankly, you'd have had a better chance of finding a rhinoceros costume in my
closet.

Thank God for Becca, who came to my rescue on the
clothing front. While mixing milkshakes one day, I told her I wouldn't be able
to volunteer at the hospital for the next two weeks because I was climbing
Kilimanjaro. “No way!” she squealed over the blender. “I climbed Kilimanjaro
three years ago!”

“Really?” Becca was so girlish that I would have
never thought to ask if she was a mountain climber.

She stopped the blender and poured the milkshake
into a cup. “Yes, I wanted to see the glaciers before they disappear.”

As we rolled our cart of milkshakes down the hall
for delivery, she said quietly but firmly, “You
will
get diarrhea, by the way. It's just a question of when.”

Most of her hiking stuff was at her parents' house
in Maryland, she said, “but I can bring what I have to your apartment a few days
before you leave. And if you want, I can look over your clothes and equipment to
see if there's anything else I think you might need.”

“Like someone to carry me up the mountain?”

“Oh please, you'll be fine!” she said
cheerfully.

The tour company I'd signed up with had a checklist
on its website detailing what I'd need for the hike. I printed it out and
crossed off the items I'd be borrowing from Becca. The rest I'd have to buy. I
took my list to REI sporting and camping goods store, where there was nothing
sporting or good about the merchandise total. It had to be split up on four
different credit cards. The hiking boots alone were the ugliest $200 I'd ever
spent. Standing there in front of the cash register, it hit home that I'd
officially bankrupted myself with this project. I had a moment of reckoning with
my bank account. (
“Oh my God, you're EMPTY? HOW COULD
YOU?”
)

A few days before I left, Becca brought over her
gear. It was a thirty-minute subway ride and ten-minute walk to my apartment
from hers, but when I'd offered to pick it up she'd waved me off, saying, “I
need to check out what you've bought and make sure you haven't forgotten
anything.” Looking at the heap of stuff she'd toted, my heart swelled a bit, the
way it does when someone you don't know very well makes a gesture of generosity
that exceeds the nature of your relationship. In that instant I felt us shift
from acquaintances to friends.

“Thank you so much for doing this,” I said. “I
really appreciate it.”

She examined the clothing and hiking equipment laid
out on my bed. “The only time it'll be warm enough to wear shorts is at the very
beginning and end of the hike,” she said, tossing all but one pair into the
Don't Need pile. She suggested bringing extra batteries. Cold weather drained
them quickly, which could result in a particularly disappointing moment at the
summit when one realized his or her camera was dead and the nearest convenience
store was twenty thousand feet down.

“When you get to the colder temperatures, keep the
batteries as close to your body as you can, even when you're asleep. Your
electronics, too. Before going to sleep, stuff them in the bottom of your
sleeping bag where it's warmest.”

A half hour later I walked her to my door where we
hugged good-bye. “Remember,” she said, “the only thing that gets you up that
mountain is sheer iron will. On the last part of the summit climb you're
actually on all fours crawling to the top—partially because of the steep angle
but also because you're so exhausted.”

Noting my worried expression, she added: “Just
remember, you can always take another step.”

The night before I left, I stopped by Jessica's
apartment to drop off my keys so she could feed my parakeets while I was
away.

“So how are you feeling about it?” she asked.

“I've never traveled so far from home before,” I
said nervously. “Especially not alone and to a third world country.”

She pulled me into a hug. “Listen, I love you.
You're about to go on an incredible journey. You'll learn something on this trip
that you can only learn by confronting this mountain and what it represents.”
Jessica had become gentler in the past few months. Surprising us all, she'd
gotten heavily into yoga and was even considering signing up for a spiritual
retreat in the Berkshire Mountains. She pulled back and held me at arm's length.
“Namaste, bitch,” she said. “Oh, and bring me back an orphan baby.
Obviously.”

T
he
first day we'd hike through rain forest to 9,000 feet, where we'd spend the
night in the Mandara Huts. The second day we'd cross the heather and open
moorlands to the Horombo Huts at 12,000 feet. The third day, our acclimation
day, we'd be hanging out at 12,000 feet, giving our bodies time to adjust to the
thinning oxygen. The fourth day we'd climb over alpine desert to Kibo Hut,
which, at 15,000 feet, was the last campground before the summit. That night
we'd go to bed early, awaken at midnight, and hike six hours to the ice cap
summit at 19,340 feet. Then we would turn around and hike back down to the
Horombo Huts, spend the night at 12,000 feet, and hike the rest of the way down
the next day. Altogether we'd walk over fifty miles.

But first I had to get through customs. As I stood
in line with the other grungy hikers, my backpack felt aggressively oversized,
my gear too new. I scanned the airport crowd until my gaze settled on a portly
African man holding up a sign with my name on it. He'd be driving me to the city
of Arusha, where I'd stay in a hotel tonight and tomorrow recovering from jet
lag before hitting the mountain. When I said that I'd be staying in a hotel, I
meant that I'd be
staying
in a hotel. “Sightseeing
in Arusha is discouraged” was a common refrain on Kilimanjaro websites. On the
city's Wikipedia page, this line stood out:
Increasingly,
tourists are being held up at machete point, even during the day.
(“Ohmigod, that's so authentic!” Jessica had said.)

It was only 7:30
P.M.
but felt much later because there were no streetlights. There
were other people on my shuttle staying in Arusha, most of them bound for
safaris. The scene was the same at every hotel. Each had a gate out front
guarded by a formidable canine that greeted us by straining at the leash, rising
on its hind legs, snarling. Holding the leash was a young man in a camouflage
uniform. Another camo-garbed attendant with a long-barrel gun slung over his
shoulder stepped forward to check the driver's affiliation, opened the gate,
immediately closing it behind us. The presence of the guards was both comforting
and alarming. I felt safer knowing they were out there, but why were they
necessary? My hotel had an open-air lobby with a dingy tile floor. It was
completely empty except for the receptionist, who was trying to program the
Stevie Wonder song “I Just Called to Say I Love You” as her cell-phone ringtone.
She paused long enough to hand me a cartoonishly big hotel key. The bellhop was
a teenage boy swathed in a plaid blanketlike garment that extended over his
head. In place of shoes, he wore pieces of rubber car tires on his feet. He led
me down a winding concrete path lined with tall plants to a room on the first
floor. The room was bare bones with the same tile floor as the lobby and stone
walls. Because I hailed from a first world country, the mosquito net over the
bed seemed romantic, instead of reminding me of malaria. But the single
lightbulb hanging by a cable from a hole in the ceiling had a nooselike quality
that had me swallowing nervously.

I'd been awake for thirty-two hours. In that amount
of time, I'd packed, traveled from New York to New Jersey to Amsterdam to
Tanzania. I'd flown seventeen hours, watched eight movies, and endured a
five-hour layover. Still, I wasn't tired. So I opened my hiking backpack and
pulled out two rectangles of white poster board I'd brought from New York. Becca
had given me the idea. “You should make signs that you can hold up in the
pictures you take at the summit,” she'd told me the last time I'd seen her at
the hospital. “They make great Christmas presents.” I'd meant to make them
before I'd left New York but packing had taken longer than I'd expected, so in
the end I'd just thrown the poster board and two black markers into my backpack.
Now I was grateful to have something to do here in this room with no telephone
or television or even electrical outlets. Under the harsh light of the naked
bulb, I spent an hour making block letters and coloring them in with black
marker. On each side I wrote a different message:

HI MOM!

I
♥
DAD

I
♥
MATT

(and just for fun)
I'M
HIGH

The ink dried up toward the end and I hoped my dad
wouldn't notice that the letters on his sign grew progressively lighter from
left to right. At 11:30
P.M.
I opened my
sleeping pill bottle for the last time this week. Over the past five months I'd
gradually stepped down to a half pill only to fall off the wagon. After a recent
rash of restless nights, I was back up to three pills. As I popped them into my
mouth, I felt both guilty that I was still taking them and terrified that I was
about to give them up. Tomorrow would be the first time in ten years that I'd
gone to bed without some form of sleep aid. When the familiar soupy feeling took
over, I climbed onto the mattress and arranged the net around me, making sure
there were no unauthorized openings. Somewhere around five in the morning I woke
to the beautiful soulful drone of the Muslim call to prayer being broadcast over
a loudspeaker somewhere nearby.

M
y
head guide, the man who would be leading me up the mountain, was named Dismas. A
thirty-six-year-old native Tanzanian, he had been to the top more than three
hundred times.

“Miss Noelley, your name like Christmas. Mine too!”
He grinned as I climbed into the van that would ferry us to the base of the
mountain. Everything he said sounded exotic because of his lilting Swahili
accent, even when he opened up the conversation by saying, “Deed you know dat
dee King of Pop has passed on? I see on CNN thees morning.”

I'd be hiking and bunking with an older
French-Canadian couple, Marie and Henri. The first thing I noticed about them
was that they had nearly identical bodies, five feet seven, sturdy but trim.
They were outfitted in T-shirts and hiking pants made of synthetic,
sweat-wicking textiles. Henri's head could have been lifted off the neck of
actor David Strathairn. Marie had the clean blank face of a woman who rarely
wore makeup. Her thick brown hair was cut bluntly above her shoulders and jutted
out several inches from her head. They'd returned yesterday from nearby Mount
Meru, a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain they'd hiked to practice for
Kilimanjaro.

“To better acclimate ourselves to the altitude,”
Marie said brightly.

Marie was a nurse who used to work in an oncology
ward. She and I talked about her job and my volunteer work as we drove, cars
ffffttttt
ing by dangerously close on the two-way
street. Henri stared out the window quietly. It was a blur of trees, hills, and
the occasional stream, interrupted by boxy one-story buildings and concrete
general stores with soft drink and beer logos painted on the sides. We passed a
leafy coffee plantation where women stood barefoot in the plants rummaging for
beans. I marveled at the women walking alongside the road with baskets balanced
on their heads but was completely charmed by the little girls trailing after
them who also had baskets on their heads; being less steady than their mothers,
they kept one hand on the top at all times. Though it was in the eighties, most
of the men milling about wore button-downs and jeans or khaki pants. The rest
were in native dress, their bodies swaddled from head to toe in brightly colored
material, with matching head scarves. Some of them carried walking sticks, which
they used to prod herds of goats and cows. There were a number of stray dogs and
cats lurking around. Whenever I traveled I found the sight of animals strangely
comforting. No matter where you went, they were the only things that looked
exactly the same as back home. When our van pulled over, I stuck my head out the
window. A uniformed officer at a makeshift roadside guard post was gesturing for
us to stop. Our eyes met and he hesitated. Then he changed his mind, silently
dismissing us with a wave.