Motorcycle Riding Through Grief and Separation

I load up my motorcycle on a foggy morning and wind my way through the Sierras and out of California. I cut across Nevada then ride along the Arizona-Utah border. After days passing through sage bush valleys, sandy deserts, and arid foothills, I rode over the Continental Divide this morning, my fifth day on the road. I arrive at a diner in Saguache, Colorado, a small historic mining town in the San Luis Valley. The sky is cloudless, and the noontime summer sun warms the air, but because of the elevation—7,707-feet above sea level—light breezes feel fresh and crisp. Motorcyclists crave days like this—sunny, warm, light traffic. 

Oivind, my husband, flew into Denver and rented a motorcycle a few days ago. Only a few cars line the street and the sidewalk stands empty, so I can tell he hasn’t arrived for lunch yet. I push the diner’s door open and a bell jingles to announce my entrance. Except for a woman at the counter, the restaurant is also empty. I choose a table in the middle of the room, not wanting to sit near the front window where I’d be tempted to stare at the road anticipating his arrival. I order an iced tea and settle into wait for a man I haven’t seen since I left our home in Massachusetts sixty-seven days ago. I didn’t know if I would go back when I boarded the plane for California that day. I didn’t know if we’d see each other again. I just knew I needed to leave, disappear. 

Oivind and I had plucked a couple's therapist phone number from a website a few months before I left. It was a last-ditch effort to save our marriage. Our therapist did not offer insights about marital happiness. Instead, after I stormed out of the office, he told Oivind that he believed our marriage had a 99.9% chance of failure. My life no longer felt worth living, so I couldn’t disagree with him. I was desperate to escape, so when friends offered me a temporary refuge—the spare room in their California mountain home—I said yes.

The idea to buy a motorcycle in California took hold of me as I prepared to leave Massachusetts. I convinced myself it was a sensible thing to do because buying a bike cost less than buying or renting a car. I shrugged when people asked if I was coming back, but when they wanted to know how I’d get the motorcycle back, I said:“I will ride it.” I didn’t have a motorcycle license. I didn’t know how to ride. I didn’t know how to fix my life. But riding alone for five thousand miles across the country on two wheels felt possible. 

I took a beginner motorcycle class then flew to California and bought a brand-new Honda Rebel 500. Although the bike looked tough with its fat tires and blackout styling, it was a lightweight motorcycle with a small engine designed for a new rider. I wobbled into traffic as I left the dealer, stalled the engine at a few intersections and a stent on the highway freaked me out, but I buzzed with exhilaration when I arrived at my friend’s house. I knew riding across the country was possible.

The urge to leave my life first surfaced long before I stormed out of a therapist’s office. It was the dayI sat on a bench at the end of a dim hallway, my phone pressed to my ear. Double door windows cast a rectangular patch of light across my black rubber clogs. A culinary lesson was underway on the other side of the doors, and I strained to hear the call over the sounds of students chattering, stainless steel bowls clanging, and pots hitting stovetops. My brother in California had added my sister in North Carolina and me in Massachusetts to a conference call with our mother in Kansas. She sat across from her doctor with a speakerphone between them. 

"While I was doing the surgery, I biopsied suspicious growths on your mom's liver and stomach lining," the doctor explained. "I was unable to reach the pancreas, but we did additional tests." 

Thoughts about cooking faded at the word"pancreas." My brother interrupted with a litany of medical terms andI squelched the urge to tell him this was not the time to show off his mastery of the physician's handbook.

"So, I am in the middle of class right now. I need to get back," I interrupted.

After the call ended, my face felt numb, and my ears pulsed, ringing. I gazed at the far end of the hallway wanting to slip through the exit and vanish. I sat listening to myself breathe then rose, straightened my chef’s coat, stored my phone, and pulled open the doors. I closed my eyes to the fluorescent light as the instructor and my classmates paused to hear the news. The prognosis was stage four pancreatic cancer. My face burned under their sympathetic eyes and I longed to melt into the floor tiles. 

Months before, fed up with the frustration of mid-level corporate technology management, I ended my twelve year career. I enrolled in a graduate food studies program, but I struggled with the transition. I no longer had a fancy job title. I no longer worked for a prestigious company. I no longer led projects. I no longer earned paychecks higher than Oivind’s. I no longer knew what to say when people asked, “What do you do for a living?” 

Oivind had left his position with a design firm to work as an independent consultant around the same time. He found himself either overwhelmed with too many projects or feeling anxious during dry spells. Regardless, he spent hours alone in the home office. When we were together, he would use me as a sounding board. Although he earned more than what we used to make combined, the irregular cash flow brought frustration and financial fears.

I finished culinary school weeks after my mother’s diagnosis and enrolled in evening classes for the next semester. I had plenty of time between classes and periodic freelance work. I figured I could split time between class work and caring for my mom, so we had her transfer her treatment to a nearby hospital, and she moved in with us. Oivind and I talked about her move. We expected her care to take time, resources, and dedication. We knew it was tricky, but friends and family thought we underestimated what it took to care for a terminally ill person. By the time she moved in, she had regained strength and self-sufficiency. So, more than a caregiver, my mother needed companionship and community, which made her the third wheel in our household. 

Oivind and I used to end our days sitting across the dining room table, unwinding and chatting. We spent lazy Sunday mornings reading the newspaper and sipping coffee in bed. We’d head out on a whim and talk over beers bellied up to a bar. My mother quietly inserted herself into these routines. After class, she’d meet me at the door ready to recap her day. When she heard someone make coffee and retrieve the paper on weekends, she appeared, primed to talk. We rarely went out to dinner alone or stayed for post-dinner drinks anymore. 

I had little awareness of these rituals, but when they disappeared, invisible cracks formed in our marriage. We started having loud, toxic fights about petty things and we often slept in different rooms. All the while, my mother was stranded in the middle of our unhappiness. I couldn’t give her a healing and supportive place to live, so, I asked her to move in with my sister in North Carolina. Her absence left an emptiness in my heart that I filled with shame. A voice in my head scolded me: “Quitting your job was stupid. Going back to school was stupid. You’re too stupid to even help your dying mother. You ruined your life; you are stupid. You should disappear.” 

When my mother died two years later, I morbidly expected my self-hatred to die with her, and my marriage to rebound. Instead,I was overcome by grief and depression. I enrolled in an intensive therapy program. I ate antidepressants and sat through therapy sessions. I said clichéd things to demonstrate my mental wellbeing and I when I completed the program, I proclaimed myself all better. 

The grief returned. It came as anger, volatility, meanness.

I accused Oivind of hating my mother and undermining my new career. He diagnosed me with mental illnesses from the internet. We retreated to separate rooms in our house and maintained peace with avoidance. When that didn’t work, shouted at each other. I saw only one way to shed my rage and depression: run away. 

The waitress interrupts my thoughts as she sets a glass of iced tea in front of me. “Do you want to order or wait for the other person?” she asks. 

“I’ll wait,” I respond. I offer a smile then it dawns on me that the person I ran away from sixty seven days ago is the only one who knows where I am. The thought makes me laugh to myself as I take a sip of tea and wonder how long I should sit here alone, waiting.

After I arrived in California, I began to detach myself from anger, sadness, and shame. I spent hours alone; reading, wandering in the woods, and meditating, but every day, I also rode my motorcycle. Highways became less scary, stalled engines infrequent and wobbles less common. I felt my confidence grow as I zoomed around tree-lined and twisted mountain roads. Each day, I ventured farther into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, expanding my territory to Lake Tahoe, Nevada, andSacramento. Alone in my helmet, it was quiet, and I rode with my sadness. I cruised through my psyche while I practiced cutting around curves and floating over mountains. The grief didn’t go away; it changed. As I rediscovered my self-confidence, the depression quieted and calmed.

I sprawled a map of the United States onto the floor of my room and took in the size of the country. The ride back to Massachusetts was vast relative to the small corner of the Sierras I was exploring. I used markers to trace a route between the coasts. I read online posts about long distance motorcycling, and acquired equipment they said I needed—tire inflator, tool kit, rain suit, GPS tracker, emergency contact tags, waterproof bags, first aid kit, flashlight, gas can, food and a can of mace. I added a laptop, eBook, toiletries, and a few pieces of clothing to the list. 

To prepare myself for the journey ahead, I needed a longer distance test ride. So, I booked a motorcycle training course two hundred fifty miles away and packed the new gear onto my motorcycle. I rode away from the Sierras and the farther I traveled, the more alone and anonymous I felt. Oncoming semi-trucks buffeted me with wind as they passed. I was dwarfed and almost invisible when I found myself behind them. Rolling through cities with nothing but a helmet and motorcycle jacket between me and the world, I felt exposed, and when barred windows were abundant, I prickled with vulnerability. All my senses sharpened as I learned what is it like to dissolve into a crowded ten lane highway. These things tested my mettle to face scary moments on the road, and when I returned to the Sierras, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time—resilience.

Oivind called me days before I set out across the country and asked, "When are you coming back? You were only supposed to be gone fora few weeks." I knew when I would reach Massachusetts, but my future beyond five thousand miles of the open road didn’t exist. Ambiguity crackled in the static. I don’t remember what we said to each other, but somehow, we stay on the line through an avalanche of emotion until we started listening to each other. We arranged a trial reunion in Colorado, then decided to do something that our couple's therapist had not suggested—remember what we loved about our relationship. We committed to texting something we missed about it every day.  

The next morning I sent,"I miss sitting across from you in the morning sipping coffee." 

 "I miss making you breakfast," he replied.

Each new note erased a bit of the distance between us. 

Now, I sit in an empty diner sipping iced tea, picking at my fingernails and pretending to read the menu. The bell over the door jingles and I take a deep breath as Oivind steps through the door. I look up at him and let out a silent sigh. He is wearing head to toe black motorcycle gear. His blond hair is wonky from the helmet, and he is blinking the sunlight from his blue eyes. I stand to greet him; he takes a few steps toward me. I wavered between hugging him and shaking his hand. I close my eyes, steady my thoughts and reach my arms around his neck. The embrace is a little awkward, but welcoming, familiar. At first, we chat hesitantly sitting across from each other, but we soon ease into casual conversation.  

We emerge from the diner, squint into the sunshine and mount our motorcycles. The two-lane highway out of Saguache disappears into the San Luis Valley and we ride together toward the horizon. For two days, we ride side-by-side through the Colorado Rockies. As we wind our way up, over and through the mountains, I wonder what our marriage’s chances of success are now.

-Kimi Ceridon

This essay was previously published in Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Issue 5.3, Fall 2019

Kimi a freelance writer based in Medford, MA whose work is featured in The MOON magazine, Backroads, Culture, and Homestead[dot]org. Follow her at NoReturnTicket.KCeridon.com.