Kristine Carlson - Heartbroken Open: A Memoir Through Loss to Self-Discovery

DECEMBER 30, 2005, ONE YEAR BEFORE MY HUSBAND DIED

The day was blustery and held the promise of a turbulent storm. I tossed and turned during the night as the rain pelted the windows. Our oak trees, over a hundred years old, protested and crackled as they stretched to the ground like yogis into downward dog. I snuggled into Richard and said aloud, Hon, this cant be good.

These kinds of storms wreak havoc on California clay. The sandy soil dries up in drought every year, and if not for the sprinklers, the land would be destined for desert. The hillsides are thirsty and saturate quickly for lack of drainage. As the underground springs rise to the surface, they carve and fill every crevice, making a new path for movement and flooding.

I had never heard water roar off the house like this before. As the storm raged and the wind howled and dawn approached, I remarked, laughed even, about how lucky we were to live on top of the hill (no flooding for us) . Of course, now I know that each home has a way of teaching you more about real estate through experience. And, if you live in a place long enough, youll know all its inner workings because youve had to either fix it, or completely rebuild it, piece by piece. Little did I know that our beautiful Craftsman-style house, our home for only two years, was about to give us an education in hillside drainage.

All the water from our home, we would discover, was dispelled at the top instead of being taken to the bottom of the slope as specified by its building engineer. As a result, we would learn the hard way that even expensive homes follow their own law, and that there are no safeguards from natural disaster.

The storm ceased for a brief reprieve. We decided to grab some Starbucks and check on our horses, stabled about a mile away. Descending the hill, we saw tree branches and limbs scattered like skeleton bones across the community. As we rounded the bend en route to the bottom, nothing looked right. We stopped short. The road had disappeared under several feet of heavy brown mud. I looked to my right. A craggy hole was all that remained of where the earth had let go of at least fifty yards and slid itself into a mound on the construction of a new home some twenty feet on the other side.

Suddenly it registered. Oh, God. Its a mudslide! Oh, Gooooooood! Its our mudslide, I moaned. Then suddenly, alert to that reality, we simultaneously panic-whispered, Shit! At 7:00 A.M ., on the cusp of New Years Eve, the only road to our gated community was impassable. As we opened our car doors and stepped out to assess the damage, I saw fierceness in my husbands gaze, a determination in the furl of his brow, as he started to calculate the task in front of him.

We backed our SUV up to the house. As he retrieved the shovel from our garage I begged him not to remove the dirt by himself. Richard, your back wont take this. I even resorted to anger.

Richard suffered chronic back pain due to the excessive effort he had spent in his youth achieving a 135-mile-per-hour serve and with it, a top national tennis ranking during college. But now something had shifted; and for the past two years, he endured lower lumbar agony while resisting pain medication and attempting to live life normally. I had to do all that I could to stand in the way of Richard further disabling himself.

At times the spasms were so bad, he would just lie in bed on his side with a pillow between his legs, breathing, gazing blankly, yet peacefully. I once asked him what it felt like and he said: If your fingers were stuck in a doorjamb and the door was closed and you had an elephant standing on the small of your back, on a scale of one-to-ten it would be ten plus; thats what it feels like. He suffered this way, nerve on nerve, sometimes for days. There were many times he was bent at a 45-degree angle when he got out of the car to run a simple errand. There were days I could barely recognize the erect stature of the 6-foot-3-inch man I married.

We sought medical opinions, but surgeons were reluctant to commit to the complex series of disk replacements we felt would give him his best chance because they were even more uncertain that surgery would help. Surgery could even cripple him. So he tried every alternative: physical therapy, acupuncture, biofeedback, vitamins, swimming, you name it, he tried it. But Richard was characteristically graceful in how he managed his pain. He rarely complained, and only when asked would he admit to his discomfort.

Much of our pastime as a couple was spent running, often training for marathons. He used to say life wouldnt be the same if he couldnt exercise. Even when he reached that pointwhere he couldnt exercise by pushing the outer limits of physical endurancehe remained present and even peaceful. His spine was literally disintegrating. He suffered greatly, and my personal pain was the impotence I felt watching him.

But at this moment, there was no stopping him. He spoke with dead calm: The road is closed and there are neighbors who are elderly. Someone might have a heart attack. It has to be done. I need to clear this road immediately.

As reports on the radio indicated, this was one of the worst Bay Area storms in years, and there were mudslides everywhere. There was little promise of getting a tractor to our house anytime soon. After shoveling for four hours unwaveringly, Richard collapsed, and so did his spine.

Crisis hits and you respond. All the while you think you are making levelheaded decisions and creating a plan. All the while you are responding to something bigger than you even know.

The only neighbors who could have helped us were tending to their own mudslide. By this time the following year, they would be in full divorce proceedings and Richard would be gone.

Richard rested and I drove to the nearest hardware store, where I was directed to a mound of sand as well as bags, ties, and shovels. I joined the other men and their silence at the mound. I felt strange, like I was in a dream. I had never filled a sandbag in my princess life (though I had mucked many stalls). I mimicked the men until methodically, and rhythmically, I had filled and loaded fifty 35-pound bags in the back of my SUV. Unaccustomed to manual labor, my arms already felt like rubber bands.

I was oddly fascinated by the momentexhilarated to be the only woman there. I am strong for my size, as athletic fitness has always been a priority. We were an odd-looking bunch. All of us appeared as though we had just rolled out of bed, our movements synchronized by a community in crisis. I offered the only comment any one of us made, Well, this is a hell of a way to start the New Year! No one laughed. Looking back, I think that was out of a simple need to conserve energy, an indication that this was just the beginning of a very long day.

I brought the sandbags home, and bless Richards heart, he dragged his aching back up and down that hill for a few more hours. We sandbagged and blue-tarped the lower part of the hill, a crater swollen to a size of 14 by 12 feet, working our way up the hole, side by side. With the mud clumping to the bottom of our shoes, it was like wearing leg weights while climbing a soft sand hill carrying 35 pounds up the equivalent of steep stairs. It was the kind of climb that could leave your legs tired after the first try. We did this fifty times.