Dear Charlotte ~

I carried you up Tomé Hill Sunday afternoon. Funny how, after all these eight years, and all the many times we teased each other about climbing the hill together and having your bad knees lock up, requiring a helicopter ambulance-lift to get you down, after all these years, you finally made it to the top with me to sit in solitude at the summit at the foot of the crosses.

A cold, gray February day blasted us as we left the house and headed up the road to the Hill, you, tucked warmly under my arm at my side, out of the rain and wind, I, crouching into the wind as I walked, sheltering you from the cold. Nine cranes raised their heads in silent vigil in our pea patch to watch me tuck your box of ashes under my arm, close to my heart, and march off up the road talking softly to you about your first Tomé Hill ascent.

Your arthritic knees never allowed you to share the Hill with me. So for eight years my hilltop reveries became one of the few things we didn’t do together. But you were always up there with me, as you were a larger-than-life part of everything else I did. Even when I fled to the hill to escape who’s-driving-the-bus? spats between us over business matters, you were there because you were my very life and soul. Truth is, I didn’t go to the Hill to escape. I went up the Hill after an argument in order to come down again to your warmth and smile. The exposed beam in our kitchen is carved in Spanish, “Heart of the hearth,” and so the kitchen is the center. And you were always the warmest part of our cozy kitchen!

A woman riding a horse and leading another one rode by in front of us as we neared the Hill. I carried you up the long path through the Alvarez monument and paused beneath the steel arches, surrounded by the silhouette symbols of the three cultures blended to make New Mexico, to hold you aloft under the arches facing the Hill to proclaim your nativity, too, a third generation native daughter of New Mexico.

It began to rain on us as I struck the trail at the bottom of the Hill. We walked slowly, picking our way up the steep slope, negotiating loose stones and rough terrain. I slipped twice, fell on my butt once, and so we sat in the middle of the trail halfway up, looking back over the Rio Abajo, at the farms below and at Las Golondrinas in the distance, talking about everything and nothing, until a young couple on their way up surprised us. They looked embarrassed to see a man talking and crying to a box in the middle of the trail. I so badly wanted to scream to them: “Wake Up! Hug each other and each new day! Don’t hurry your lives … Slow down! Love and live!” I wanted to tell them truth only personal pain reveals.

We climbed, as I always climb Tomé Hill, slowly with frequent stops and meditations. The young couple disappeared, so we had the trail and the Hill to ourselves. At the summit, among the three crosses, we found the solitude that feeds my soul and despite the drizzle and cold North wind I was warm sheltering your box under my arm at my side. That’s exactly where you’d have been on such a raw February afternoon atop Tomé Hill: sheltered for warmth under my arm, cuddled close against me. We found sacred shelter in each other’s arms these 26 years, shelter rare and privileged among lonely harbors and ravaged shores.

I cried for the grace of my privilege … and for its end. I cried because it was your first time up the Hill. I cried and laughed at the same time when my runny nose needed blowing and I realized you were the one who always thought ahead to bring kleenex for noses … and YOU had none this time, either!

After that a peace settled over us at the summit and the rain stopped. We stayed awhile, enjoying the 360 degree view and then headed back down the trail.

Your old knees didn’t bother you one bit going down. You snuggled into my side, protected and safe, as I carried you down the slope and back home. I cried carrying you down the Hill, grieving because try as I did I could not protect you or shelter you from the cancer that taught hard truth about the fragility of goodness and harder truth about limits.

Albie and Burnsie were waiting at the kitchen door with eager welcome when we got home. We all miss you in ways we can’t even say. We’re each discovering too late that the old days of crappy knees we once complained about, were our good old days we’d give anything to have again!

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine

Dear Charlotte ~

It’s Saturday late afternoon and Nathan and I just finished unloading and stacking oat hay bales in the hay shed. I found a new resource for oat hay our animals like, right on HWY 47 on the way to Los Lunas.

We got the threshold and edge-trim pieces hammered down on the new pine floor in the apartment. I got the shaper machine set up in the woodshop to roundover the rest of the baseboards tomorrow and that will complete the floor upstairs. I know you’re loving the soft sheen finish Nate produced on that floor–it’s perfect!

I spent Friday afternoon at Sandia Pet Products in Albuquerque getting hugs from Sandra and Sonya and the dog collar stitchers. I didn’t really feel like it, but I needed to show my face; everyone we work with in our businesses is worrying about me, wondering how I’m coping. Sat and talked quietly with Sandra for a couple of hours. You were especially close to our collar makers so they miss you almost as much as I do. We talked about how much more than ‘customers’ we are to them; you were more even than a friend to those women … more like a close sister. They tear-up in mid-sentence like I do when speaking of you, of your kindness, and the unselfconscious joy of your presence. All the while I talked with Sandra and the others I kept seeing your ashes box that arrived at Las Golondrinas earlier that day and I had double difficulty not drowning in tears.

What kept me afloat was thinking about the spontaneous ‘Charlotte-Deed’ I did in your name on my way to Albuquerque. You probably don’t know how helpful the ladies at our bank were to me when we were in Mexico, when we left in such a wild rush I didn’t bring the checkbook, when my cell phone wouldn’t work down there, and we found out the clinic didn’t take credit cards. You don’t know because I didn’t tell you. Nathan mailed the checkbook to me and I borrowed a Clinic cell phone to call our bank in Los Lunas. Normally, bank protocol calls for signatures and blood samples and rights to one’s first born to transfer large funds from savings to checking accounts, and for starters you have to know the exact account numbers. I got on the phone to our bank ladies and told them we were in trouble in Mexico and needed their help. I didn’t have the account numbers with me and, of course, could not personally sign for the transactions. They handled everything seamlessly for us, over the phone, and even managed tearful encouragement at the end of my call. I ordered a Dion’s Pizza party for the whole bank staff the first friday I got back home. So, I’ve come to see our bank people as a great deal more than officious tellers; they were helpers to us when I was in panic mode in Mexico watching you die and they continue to be compassionate helpers now every time I see them.

I stopped at our bank on my way out of town Friday on my way to see the Sandia Pet Products folks and learned indirectly that the bank person who more than any other has humanized for me the coldest of all transactions–money–is undergoing her own life crisis. I thought of you and the countless quiet ways you found to do little things to brighten people’s lives around you, a note, a small gift, a kind word. You did more ‘angel’ deeds than I knew about, as I’m finding out now from vendors’ stories we’ve worked with over the past 14 years. Anyway, as I drove to Albuquerque after learning of the bank friend’s grief I passed Isletta Pueblo’s Casino Resort and thought of their spa and the massage gift certificate I gave you on your final birthday, November 2, 2009, which you raved about.

Long story short, I stopped and got another spa gift certificate and drove back and had someone else give it anonymously to our grieving bank friend as “a bit of sunshine in a dark time, from a very special woman.”

Remembering that small kindness done spontaneously in your memory kept me afloat while talking to tearful friends at Sandia Pet. It was a ‘Charlotte-Deed’ through and through.

I’m the first to say that’s small compensation for your absence … but to this walking-wounded even a bitter-sweet visitation is welcome.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine