Continuing Bonds and Healing Grief

Last week I ventured to Vermont for a quick solo ski trip. It has become a meaningful annual ritual for me to make a run (or two) down Lower World Cup at Okemo, a.k.a. “Dad’s Last Run.”

When my father died on a chairlift from a sudden heart attack in 1994, at the time, I didn’t seek any details. My fiancé had just died from cancer six weeks earlier, and I simply wasn’t in the frame of mind to think of asking for the details.

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Three years ago, 27 years after my father’s death, I suddenly found myself interested in details.

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I reached out to an Okemo Facebook group to see if anybody had information. I stayed up until 3 o’clock in the morning answering private messages from people who were there that fateful day in 1994!

An Okemo local gave me the name of the lift operator who was stationed at unloading – the first person to notice that something was terribly wrong and begin the process of taking care of my father. I’m grateful that I was able to write him a letter, expressing my gratitude, as well as empathy for how difficult that must’ve been for him when he was a young man.

The Ski Patrol Director and other ski patrollers were in this facebook group, and they commented that the entire Okemo community was affected, and the “old timers” still remember. I am grateful for the opportunity to thank them. I was able to thank the lift operator at loading who happily confirmed that my father got some runs in before he passed. She noticed and remembered his smile each time he loaded the chairlift. As I type this, I’m just now realizing that she was the last to see him alive. What a gift to know he was smiling!

A quite unexpected and amazing blessing was that a long-time Okemo local sent me a digital copy of the newspaper article from the Rutland Herald, outlining in detail what happened to my father, including the treasured information of what ski run the ski patrollers took him down, bundled in the sled, after he passed – Lower World Cup. My family has renamed Lower World Cup “Dad’s Last Run.”

Now, I ski this run with purposeful intention. Then I explore the whole mountain and get in as much vertical as I can until my legs turn to mush, just as my dad would do. It’s my way of healing. It follows a theory of coping with loss and healing grief called “continuing bonds.” (Klass, Silverman, and Nickman)

I feel close to my father’s spirit all the time, but especially at Okemo, where he took his last breath.

That November in 1994, we were doing a lot of talking about death to process our grief from my fiancé’s death just six weeks prior. Two weeks before my father died, he told me that when his time came, he wanted to die on a chairlift. That is where my father said he “felt most at peace, closest to God, breathing in the cool mountain air.”

Although way too young, I can think of no greater gift than to leave this earth exactly how you wish. My father was a good man. As good as they come.

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I am incredibly grateful for the people who shared this information with me, helping me process the details, almost three decades later. The mountains have always felt like home to me. It therefore seemed quite fitting that another Okemo local told me that the meaning of the word Okemo is “All come home.” Perfect.

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I’m blessed to be able to visit Okemo and ski this run. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my family. This year after skiing it alone, I posted about it in the same Okemo facebook group that helped me with answers. An Okemo snowcat groomer commented that Lower World Cup is a run that he grooms every day.

He invited me to join him in the snowcat on his morning routine up World Cup to the top of the mountain to watch the sunrise, and then take first tracks down World Cup before the mountain even opens. I am touched beyond belief, and I’ve got goosebumps just thinking about this incredible adventure for my senses, my heart, and my ski legs.