WASHERS

Yesterday morning on the Rob Ryan show, they were talking about the game of washers. Rob Ryan was saying he thinks that game was invented in Texas, and there is some kind of washer tournament coming up that he was trying to put together a team for.

I've never played washers, but I know what he is talking about. My memory took me back along the path of association to the dusty little town of Alpine, Texas, where pronghorn antelope graze on the hills surrounding the campus of Sul Ross State University, where my boyfriend of years ago was a student. It was evening, almost twilight, and we were standing on a hill in this backyard of a friend of his. My boyfriend was slowly and carefully tossing the little silver washers, about the size of a quarter, at a target at the other end of the yard. He was explaining to me how the game worked, and how he and his friends would come out here and play, and then I saw it, the dark cloud that passed over his face as he struggled to get a grip on his emotions.

This thing has happened and it cannot be undone.

The day before this, I had come home from college to spend my birthday weekend with my mom. She and I had gone out for barbeque, and we were just laying out the fixings for sandwiches when the phone rang. It was my boyfriend's father, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that something was wrong.

"There's been an accident," he said. My heart lept into my throat. "Noah's okay, but he's in the hospital." Then there was a pause. And? But? What? Then I thought of the giddy phone conversation the night before, how one of our high school friends had come to Alpine to visit Noah, how they were so excited about their plans to drive to Mexico the next day, this day...

"How's Brandon?" I asked.

"Brandon died."

I dropped the phone and walked off a few steps, hand over my mouth. My mother, hearing the clickety clack of the reciever on the ground, looked up. "What's going on?", she asked, as she came over to me. I couldn't talk, though, and just gestured to the phone. She got on the phone and there was a lot of "yes, yes, of course", and then she tells me to grab my things, that Noah's parents are coming to get me and we are driving to Alpine now.

We drove all night, the four of us packed in that little car under the stars. His mom and brother slept in the backseat while his dad and I tried to stay awake. I am sure I was driving them crazy singing along to the Indigo Girls, and finally when I hit a skunk in the wee hours of the morning and not only stunk up the car but got guts on the tires, they had it with me driving. We ran low on gas as the sun was coming up and waited in Fort Stockton at the only gas station along the highway for two hours before the man came to open the place. He wasn't surprised to see us at all, so I am sure he was used to customers doing that same thing (it is a desolate piece of highway).

We got to the hospital in Alpine mid-morning. As we walked in, I knew, I could tell, this experience changed him forever. His journal lay on a table in the hallway when we first walked in, and I flipped through the last few pages, and what he wrote in there brought agony to my heart. He was in the bed, bare-chested, but still wearing the torn and bloody jeans from the wreckage. I wasn't sure what to say to him, so I just curled up on the bed next to him, laying my ear in the hollow of his chest where it had always fit so perfectly. We used to lie in each other's arms like that all the time, and I would listen to his heart beat inside his chest and it felt like an extension of my self. This time, I was expecting it to sound different somehow, like the change he had gone through in his soul would be evident in his body. It sounded like the same old heart, and somehow that comforted me, made me think he was still there.

That day, he kept trying to bring the framework of his former life over his life now. He showed me his dorm room. This was only one month into our freshman year and we had been burning up the phone lines staying in touch, but we hadn't really gotten to show each other our new lives. He introduced me to his friends. We ate lunch in the campus cafeteria.

On the way out of the cafeteria, we ran into a woman who had been the first one on the scene of the accident. She happened to be an EMT as well, so that was helpful, only there was nothing she could do. While Noah turned away to talk to someone, she asked me how he was doing. She told me about driving up to the wreck, of seeing Noah running into the road in those same torn and bloody jeans to flag her down. He was asking her with desperation in his voice to please come help his friend. She had gone over to Brandon, but knew immediately it was too late. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury and had died on impact. The others who had been in the car with them had all suffered catastrophic injuries as well, and were life-flighted to the nearest major hospital. The details she gave are seared into my memory and created a visual picture for me of those desperate moments.

Later that afternoon, we are driving to his friend's house whose backyard we were playing washers in. We were still trying not to talk about it, try not to dwell on this recent tragedy, and we were singing along with the radio when "Spirit in the Sky" came on. I still can't really listen to that song without that connection, and tears welling up in my eyes.

So we are out there in the yard, and Noah is throwing the washers, and stops, realizing that this life he is showing me is now a past. There is now Before the Accident and After the Accident, and this moment is somewhere in between, the transition. I see the anguish in his face and it kills me inside.

"What can I do for you?" I ask him. "How can I help you?"

At first he gives me a one word answer, and it doesn't make sense.

"Time" he says.

"You just have to give me some time to get over this."

Of course. We were young and time went on forever. I could give him that. During the darker moments, later on, when he was self-medicating and pushing me away, I wondered. How much time is enough? I really wanted to know. I wanted someone to tell me. How much is enough? He went to counseling, took medications, but still he struggled, and we struggled. He was like Humpty Dumpty, and I was not all the Kings horses and all the Kings men. I was just a girl.

I was just a girl who was going to school many many miles away from him, and who was meeting new people and experiencing new things. I was a girl in a new life that became my life that he had little part in. Four years went by while we saw each other less and less, while the phone calls petered off, while we grew apart in our seperate cities with our seperate friends. No matter how much I had loved him, it was not enough to conquer time, time spent apart, time spent healing. Time was not on our side.

A few years ago, Noah and I were talking about that time, and he answered the question that no one knew the answer to until after it was over - how much was enough time? Turns out it was about eight years, he said. That's how much time he felt it took before he started putting his life back together again and moving forward.

Now it's been almost fourteen years since The Accident, and Noah is back in Alpine. I hope he is throwing his washers now and not trying not to think about it. I am sure he has other things to think about now. But I think about it, I think about us, and how we were like one of those perfect throws that falls in the dust just short of the target, and everyone says "ooo, that was so close." And we were. Before that time. A part of me will always love him, and he will always be dear in my heart, and my memories of him make me smile, like the song we once said was ours.

Think of me, think of me fondly

When we've said goodbye

Imagine me, once in a while

Please promise that you'll try