The Grieving Coyote Countdown

I listened to a coyote die Friday night; the first and I hope last time I ever experience this sadness.  So unusual.  But then, my life is nothing but unusual lately.  I move robotic-like, exhaustively sorting through possessions, crossing one thing at a time off the thousand-item to-do list, deciding what stays and goes in our move to Hawaii.  

No roll of packing tape in this world can be as demonic as the one that twisted, stuck, rolled too much, submitted too little, and scraped my left thumb repeatedly this past week.  No demonic roll of tape has heard as many foul words as mine lately.  But it is okay. If someone hears any one of my creatively conjoined strings of profane nouns and verbs, so be it.  I can only look up, stare, then go back to work.  I am so tired I cannot even react to myself.

Earlier Friday, we packed our bed first in the shipment container heading to Maui. The moment was so definitive, so final; and me, so desperate to load possessions most needed and cherished into one 20-foot vessel. We loaded around Tom’s motorcycle centerpiece, which could be another blog post.  

It’s hard to sort and shrink my material life, and yet I think we all should do this more often.  How many moments have I opened boxes to read my mother’s poems?  How many pictures had I forgotten about until now? How many times have I unlatched my childhood jewelry box to find my watch, leather hair band, and handwritten letters from friends I now only communicate with on Facebook? 

“I should document this stuff, detail it, digitize it, give it dates and names,” I say to myself as I put photos in the “to-go-with-us” box, saving my grandiose archiving idea for yet a later date.

So Friday night, as I tried to sleep in the alternate basement bedroom for the first time in seven years, the coyote howled and grieved outside… somewhere close.  He seemed caught in a trap, as near as I could tell set by the water management district, past the creek bed and over the barbed wire fence behind our home. 

The canine wailed for two hours.  His calls were unique, bellowing louder and deeper from the gut of wild.  At first, neighborhood dogs chimed in, instinctually reacting, knowing a fellow needs a response, telling their comrade they desire him to be okay. Then they gave up.  I wondered: is this coyote traveling in a pack? Could they even help?  Or is he a loner finally reaching out to anything, anyone in his desperation?  

Two hours, 120 minutes, 7,200 seconds of thinking about his containment and he became quiet.

My time as a Utah resident is now measured.  I countdown in minutes the number of boxes placed in our shipping container.  I countdown in seconds my sweeps of the storage room floor, which had previously stockpiled dusty memorabilia.  I will never sweep this floor again.  I think about so many people who moved in this Great Recession against their will.  They probably did not sweep.

Four months, 122 days, 2,928 hours since we had set our countdown.  In this time, we cleaned and staged our Utah home to sell. We sold it.  We traveled to a memorial in Michigan, to San Diego too. I moved my son Daniel to Vancouver, Canada; dropped him off at college, as I had to say goodbye.  Tom renovated a rental home in Salt Lake to sell.  We spent two two-week periods on Maui during our countdown to start renovating our eventual home.  We still have much to finish. 

Our countdown in Utah approaches its quiet in three days. We say goodbye to friends and family.  I cannot cry anymore… I am now that robot.

I know this is our grand adventure.  This time, it’s a one-way ticket over the Pacific.  When I set foot on Maui and drive across the sugarcane fields swaying with the wind, it will be good.  I will be ready to live there.  The time before is just, simply, hard.

I must have watched the Hawaiian movie “The Descendants” ten times this summer.  I needed to.  I did not watch it for the plot.  I watched it for validation.  I watched George Clooney stop in his urgency to remove or slip on shoes while going in or out of hales (homes).  I watched their canoe floating in familiar aqua water as the family spread the mother’s ashes.  I listened to the music of John Cruz and other Hawaiian artists.  I heard the gecko call in the background during two scene shots.  This is the Hawaii I said I wanted to experience.  So I watch the movie repeatedly to remind myself of why.  I cannot discount the wonder and beauty of Utah.  Maybe the beehive state offers a little more wonder than beauty, but one place cannot replace the other.

The coyote I so wanted to help went quiet Friday night.  Those who know me, know, whether here or there, Utah or Hawaii or Katmandu, I will never be quiet.  I could just use some temporary peace about now.