Eternal Journey (2 page)

Some find the antiquated building that serves as the terminal for the Martha’s Vineyard Airport charming. It was so ramshackle,
with a baggage “system” so simple, that Anna usually found herself chuckling as she collected her bags. No laughter today,
however. Anna scanned the parking lot filled with vans and Jeeps, anxiously looking for a familiar face. She felt another
tap on her shoulder, and turned as the man from the plane asked her if she needed help with her bag. Just before answering,
she spotted the silver-blue four-wheel-drive with Patrick’s friendly face grinning out at her. Anna managed a weak smile for
the stranger, shook her head, and slowly walked toward the Explorer. Patrick, the caretaker for the house where she’d be staying,
helped her stow her bags. Few words beyond the perfunctory greeting were exchanged between them as they headed west for the
short drive to Tisbury.

Martha’s Vineyard bustled with tons of vacationers each summer, but, in the off-season, the island was a beautiful, quiet
haven for those looking to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Anna couldn’t think of a better place to be at this
moment in her life. She had fallen in love with the island the first time the ferry had dropped Beth and her in the little
town of Vineyard Haven the June after they had graduated from college. That was the first time this duo from the tidewaters
of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay had visited the rocky shores of Cape Cod. The idea had been proposed by Rebecca, Becky as nearly
everyone called her, a good friend from college. She had met them at the bottom of Water Street with Michael, her boyfriend
turned fiancé, by her side. They had a great time, that week back in 1970. Somehow, during those seven days, they remembered
only the good things that happened during their four turbulent years at the University of Maryland. For that one week, no
one talked about the war in Vietnam, its stupidity or horror. No one brought up the recent political skirmish, turned tragedy,
at Kent State, which had cast a pall over the already shaky graduation ceremony at their school, and across the nation.

They had stayed in a rooming house, later to become a bed-and-breakfast, sharing a bathroom and shower down a long and crooked
hall. They’d bicycled all over the island, discovering its nooks and hideaways, delighting in the natural charm. Anna in particular
relished the daily routine of eating breakfast in the quaint whaling village, spending all morning on the beach, then cycling
along the many remote country roads in the afternoon.

Years later, after everyone in their college crowd had established good careers, they could afford annual reunions on the
island each June. Becky and Michael had built a summer home there in Tisbury, near Lake Tashmoo, in 1991. The get-togethers
had lasted only three summers, however, before they were permanently interrupted by the cancers that began to take friends
one by one.

As she sat quietly in the Explorer, Anna stared at the starkness of the terrain. She remembered that wonderful week from so
long ago, a week that marked a major transition in all of their lives. Anna fidgeted with her gloves as her mind tried desperately
to grasp all that had changed since then. The war and Kent State were now history. Cancer, not guns, was now slaying her generation.

Anna hadn’t been to the island since she and Beth had impulsively hopped the ferry one October morning a year ago, and ended
up staying a week. When Beth’s cancer had returned she’d reluctantly agreed to put herself through another six weeks of chemo.
Once her treatment was completed, Beth felt like getting away, so she and Anna had headed to the island and settled in at
Becky’s house for what turned out to be Beth’s last stay on the Vineyard.

Lost in thought, Anna was now oblivious to the barren late autumn landscape as Patrick navigated west on the road to Tisbury.
Before she knew it, they were turning onto Lambert’s Cove Road, and it seemed as if the tall trees were closing in on her.
It was midafternoon, only a hint of sunlight was left, and the woods were eerily quiet. Their tires crunched somewhat forebodingly
on the hardened dirt road, alerting Anna that they had reached the house. Patrick opened the kitchen door, politely asked
her if she needed anything else, and then quietly departed.

The house looked and smelled as it had a year ago. Anna felt as if she had never left; she almost expected Beth to come bounding
through the kitchen to greet her, but there was only silence. Anna sighed deeply, ambling over to the counter to smell the
fresh flowers and read the accompanying note from Becky:

Hope the weekend alone is really what you need. Patrick has taken care of everything, including stocking the fridge. We’re
only a phone call away. We love you!

Becky & Michael.

God, I hate that
we
stuff, Anna mumbled aloud. Michael can barely stand to be in the same room with me, let alone
love
me.

Becky and Michael had been part of the crowd forever. A couple since their early college years, they had married the September
after graduation. Anna found Michael to be both superficial and pretentious, yet his boring consistency and cluelessness about
anything real kept her intrigued.

Following his medical training, Michael had established a very successful practice as a cardio-thoracic surgeon in Fairfield
County, Connecticut. The practice, like its location, was among the most affluent in the nation. When their group got together,
Michael never let an opportunity go by without making some deprecating comment about psychologists for Anna’s benefit. Little
did he know that his arrogance and insecurity were the catalyst for her first book,
You Are Your Own Worst Enemy.

Like her husband, Becky was very bright and quite business savvy, but she also possessed an innate sensitivity that served
to temper Michael’s brashness and worked to sustain these relationships of so many years. Anna was continually amazed at how Becky managed to juggle the elements of her life. Between handling a man as high maintenance as Michael and the social demands
he placed upon her, she had developed a very successful interior design company in the twenty years since graduate school.

Although they lived totally different lifestyles and had grown somewhat apart over the years, Anna and Becky had remained
friends. Anna had long ago given up trying to understand the relationship. She did know that she truly cared about Becky even
though she found Michael irritating and almost amusingly obnoxious.

Anna opened the refrigerator and smiled faintly. Becky was right. Everything she could possibly want or need for two days
was there, even capers—a new, unopened bottle of capers! These brought back a rush of more memories; tears welled again in
Anna’s eyes.

“Chris, I think I’m falling apart,” Anna confided to Christopher Hayden, her closest colleague and good friend, the Wednesday
before she left for the Vineyard.

“Anna, you are not falling apart, you
have
fallen,” replied Chris. “I’ll be down in twenty minutes, as soon as I get through this pile on my desk.”

Normally she would have ripped into him for such a remark, but not today, not this time. He was right, and she knew it. Wonderful,
exasperating, and competent Chris, her friend for more than twenty years, was a management consultant and confidant to more
than a few CEOs.

Anna and Chris had grown up together professionally, yet their connection went much deeper. She was the one who had encouraged,
if not shamed, him first into leaving his coaching job at the local high school, and later into breaking away from his comfy
executive VP spot at AT&T, to launch his now successful consulting firm. Chris was known nationally in corporate circles as
“the Coach.” He was the one who had harassed her into writing her first book and had prodded her to do the second,
Get a Grip! Quit Whining, and Take Charge of Your Life.
They had offices in the same building overlooking Flagler Drive, next door to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach.
The view from their windows was spectacular. The sparkling waters of the Intracoastal divided two worlds; those who worked
for a living on the mainland looking over at those who lunched in Palm Beach. Yachts, sailboats, pelicans, and seagulls separated
the strivers of the city from the rich in their mansions. Just up the street from their offices was the radio station where
Anna broadcast her live show,
Get a Grip!
She had now hosted the popular call-in program for three years. It had been developed at Chris’s urging, following the success
of that second book.

Anna and Chris met regularly to hash out both business and personal problems. They would discuss each other’s work over lunch
or dinner, each benefiting from the other’s complementary perspective. She was the clinician, and he was the jock who could
translate her insights into a concise message that resonated with some of the most powerful players in corporate America.
Their business understanding was based completely on trust. Not a penny ever exchanged hands. Their first venture at visible
collaboration was the book they apprehensively had agreed to write the week before Beth died.

“This has best-seller written all over it,” Anna’s agent had exclaimed. “You’ve got a following that spans age and gender
lines. And Chris is respected, if not revered, by the ‘suits.’ Together the two of you should pack quite a punch!”

Chris had been the reluctant one. “This could do it, Anna—we’ve never really had a disagreement worth talking about in all
these years.”

“So what if we do lock horns, Chris?” Anna had replied. “We can weather it. Besides, I already know what an insufferable pain
in the butt you can be!”

And so had been born the idea for Anna’s third book and Chris’s first,
Strategies for Success from the Coach & the Counselor.
And then Beth had died.

As she gazed at the tourists strolling along Flagler, Anna marveled that she had stayed this long in South Florida. Had it
really been twenty years since she’d moved here for a temporary fling? Now, to her chagrin, here she remained with not one,
but two, properties, one in West Palm and a second up the coast in Vero Beach. Anna both loved and hated living in this tropical
concoction of diverging cultures and values. She had taken a lot of grief for buying and remodeling that second property until
her friends saw the little house hidden from the road, sitting right along the Indian River. If the winding pathway lush with
tropical foliage didn’t create a spell, once inside the light and airy house visitors were greeted with an expansive view
of the water and its many inhabitants. This house became Anna’s refuge, her sanctuary away from the world.

Anna’s life was packed full; it was much more hectic and demanding than she cared to admit. She considered her time and space
in the “river house,” as it came to be called, almost sacred. Anna used time alone to recharge and recenter. She would meditate
by the river, walk by the sea, talk aloud to the herons and sandpipers, and wave to the occasional dolphin or manatee that
would cavort near her dock.

Beth, in particular, had loved the house and had joined Anna there at least one weekend a year. It became a ritual after a
while, one they both treasured. They spent time talking and laughing, problem-solving and reminiscing. They shared the most
intimate secrets about the joy and pain in their lives. They had political discussions as well as philosophical and metaphysical
ones. There was nothing they couldn’t and didn’t discuss. One Sunday morning, Beth dragged Anna from her room to watch the
space shuttle
Endeavor
take off. The two of them stood on the dock in the darkness of the early dawn, looking toward the skies. As the fiery ball
of light soared toward the heavens, Beth and Anna turned their faces upward and together wished on this flying star. It was
shortly after that visit that Beth was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Beth’s last refuge was Anna’s river house. She had wanted to die in an environment free of white uniforms and sterile rooms.
Anna, of course, would have done anything to grant Beth’s wishes and ease her suffering those last weeks. In a way, this was
Anna’s final gift to her dear friend. Tom and Beth’s daughters managed to work around the space limitations. So Beth was able
to live out those final days relatively pain-free, surrounded by the people who meant the most to her.

Beth had died just as the sun rose on a beautiful South Florida morning that was filled with sunshine and tropical breezes.
Her last hour was heralded by the sounds of birds chirping and the rippling waves of the river. It was as if all of nature
acknowledged how special this woman was by coming together in a brilliant display of color and light to mark her passing.

As Anna waited for Chris that Wednesday before she left work, she wrote a large check to the hospice and enclosed it in her
letter thanking the wonderful nurses who had taken such loving care of her friend. Chris walked into her inner office as she
was sealing the envelope, sat down in one of the Windsor chairs, and favored her with his most penetrating gaze.