The Weekend of Jim’s Memorial January 10-12, 2003

Part I — THE TRIP THERE

Our friend Jim Gjerde had a catastrophic heart attack on December 11, 2002 in his girlfriend Jan’s bookstore in Mt. Shasta, California. He went into a coma where he remained, treading life for 16 days, until he died on December 27th at 10:08 p.m. Jan called us on Saturday evening, just as our Sabbath was coming to a close.

Neal had known Jim for 25 years. Jim — “Sputnik” or “Sput” to his friends — was what I like to call a sane freak; you must understand that the term “freak” is a compliment when I use it. He was deliciously weird, frighteningly intelligent, and endlessly interesting and interested. As Neal says, he never stopped thinking, he never stopped learning; he never stopped looking around and grinning. A fringe lunatic of the most delightful variety. I loved talking to Jim, and listening to him.

I met him in Berkeley in 1988; he and I were going to meet for the first time and walk to the post office to mail our request for tickets to the Grateful Dead New Year’s show. I was a tucked-and-tailored legal assistant dating his best friend Neal; he was, like Neal, a shaggy, scruffy, Goodwill-attired, sleepy-looking 25-year-old. Here’s the weird thing about our first encounter: We individually mailed off our requests for tickets but I had run mine through the office postal meter and so my request was rejected (“no metered mail!”). Jim’s tickets, however, arrived in timely fashion. Until now, I’ve never told anyone how annoyed I was that I, the responsible one, had failed where Jim-of-the-casual-lifestyle had succeeded.

Throughout the years this is what Jim meant to me: someone who was always there, someone to turn to. Even if we didn’t speak for years, I found comfort in his presence, like the big old quilt you keep on the top shelf in case the weather turns really cold. Had he been my friend exclusively, I probably would have pulled the quilt down far more often no matter what the weather but simply because I liked its smell, and the way it felt when I pulled it about my shoulders.

Jim knew things about me that only Neal knows. For one thing, that I am in fact a fringe lunatic in conservative clothing. (Neal always told me that was good — I could “infiltrate.”) Jim and I had some of our best conversations in 1989, when Neal worked nights at Berkeley Sauna and Jim would visit. He appeared like a hungry cat — seemingly from nowhere; I didn’t know where he lived or what he drove, and I never asked. We would sit on my back doorstep and smoke and talk for hours. I could always be myself with him; he was shock-proof.

Through the years, he was more out of touch than in. He and Neal would go for huge chunks of time without talking or even knowing where the other was, and then there’d be the reconnecting phone call. He was the Best Man at our 1994 Tahoe wedding.

When Neal got cancer last summer, he and Jim reconnected and spoke often. In November, 2002, a month before he died, Jim came to spend the weekend with us.

That was a hard weekend. First of all, it was sprung on me. Guess who’s coming to dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, and lunch? So I was in a bit of a wifely peeve. I was especially peeved to learn that Neal was still going to teach religious school on Sunday, leaving me to entertain Jim for four hours. I was wrong to be annoyed. Our time together was absolutely precious. I’m so grateful for that weekend, and for the half-day I had Jim to myself again. Jim really listened to me. That was one of his gifts — he made a person feel fascinating.

That day he confided somehing which especially lingered on the memory after his death: He told me how frustrated he was that he couldn’t drive and that had to rely on friends for rides. Decades of Type I diabetes had damaged his eyes. After he died, I kept thinking, “You’re mobile now, Jim; you can go wherever you want, my friend. Use those wings!”

So … December 27th comes and goes and Jan organizes a Memorial Service for Jim at the Episcopal Church in Lake Shasta on Saturday, January 11th.

Neal and I left Sonoma Friday afternoon, January 10th. It was gray, dark, and raining. And in our souls as well. Neal had been in a place of deep, agonized mourning steadily since Jim’s heart attack. I had felt stabs of pain and had had bouts of sadness and crying, but had been going about my life without obsessing too much on Jim’s death.

The trip up felt like a scene from a movie. The Winters Cutoff over to Interstate 5 is a blank landscape, dotted only with cows and dilapidated buildings which all seem to have arrived there by accident and without purpose or people to tend them. I popped in Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” tape (“shine on, you crazy diamond!”) and we spoke little.

At Dunnigan we swung onto Highway 5; the sky grew darker and the rain heavier. I had only ever traveled up Highway 5 for vacation purposes — mainly to go to Mt. Lassen with my family. Highway 5 and all its long-beloved town names — Dunnigan, Williams, Willows, Richfield, Corning — had up until now only brought me memories of driving through them long before the Interstate was built…days of feet-out-the-window sunshine and the smell of alfalfa and my mom pointing out the different crops and telling us “It’s going to be hot going up through the Valley today.”

This trip, however, was anything but a vacation. The rain pounded and the big-rigs firehosed water onto every passing car and the state-sponsored Rest Areas looked as dreary as vacant drive-in movie parking lots. We switched tapes and motored up Highway 5 to Led Zeppelin (“Stairway to Heaven”), more Pink Floyd (“Dark Side of the Moon”) and Alan Parsons Project (“freedom, freedom, take the world away….). I kept noticing things along the freeway I’d never noticed before: “casual” housing of dilapidated trailers, and ramshackle, tumbledown homesteads, surrounded by dead and dying autos, their parts strewn about as if by the very wind that buffeted us mile by mile.

We stopped at a Taco Bell in one of the now-hostile-feeling towns and I gagged down half of some sort of wickedly bad taco “salad.” Neal had more luck with burritos. Heading north again, I stumbled upon an awesome college-sounding radio station, playing 12-string guitar/poetry/folk music which seemed to be a good chaser to Pink Floyd. One song merged commercial-free into the next as liquidly as the raindrops on our windshield and the station became the soundtrack to most of our south-of-Redding I-5 trip. At one point, the rain grew leadenly heavy and the sky turned pewter and we looked ahead and everything north hung black and forboding like the edge of Mordor itself. It was still early afternoon and felt like dusk.

When we finally reached Redding, my gaze turned to the right. Somewhere out there was Mercy Medical Center, where Jim had gone to die. I felt a clutching sickness tear at the inside of my throat, and suddenly I was wailing/keeling/crying. I called out Jim’s name, I told him I missed him, I think I may have cursed God a time or two; I can’t exactly recall. I went on like that for about an hour, or until we got to Dunsmuir, at about the same time the last song on our home-made tape was playing: Elton John’s “Funeral For a Friend.”

I hadn’t known that I held that much Jim-pain/Jim-love inside me. All around me there were majestic trees and the moss-green mini-sea that is Lake Shasta and patches of snow liquid-papered onto the foothills of the Siskiyous, and I could see the beauty in which Jim had lived and through which a screaming ambulance had borne him into the lowlands of Redding, and it just all hurt too much to bear. I regained some sort of composure as night began to fall and we made the last leg of the trip from Dunsmuir into the City of Mount Shasta, second exit, to the Best Western Treehouse Inn, $85 a night and a free breakfast.

Part II — MEMORIAL AND REUNION

Room 106. We unpacked. I turned on the Zenith because that’s what you do: other towns might have better TV. However, I discovered that television offerings have become America’s electronic malls — identical from town-to-town. Paul and Jamie Buchman romped around the screen in our wood-paneled motel room as comfortably as they had in our dingy-walled apartment in Sonoma. It was 5:15. I had given Jan our ETA; she called and we tried to set up a dinner but she, understandably, had much to do before tomorrow’s Memorial service. We made plans to meet at 8:30 the following morning for breakfast. Neal and I had never met this woman, the love of Jim’s life.

I wasn’t yet hungry so Neal and I lit the Sabbath candles and read for an hour or so, then went down to the hotel’s dining room/restaurant. As we ate, Neal looked up and said, “It’s Alana!” His old-friend-from-high-school-turned-our-friend with whom we are in frequent contact, had shown up for Jim’s funeral. She and Jim had once been roommates. I ran across the room and hugged her desperately.

Dinner turned into a pre-memorial for Sputnik, as we three shared stories. Neal and Alana had more to tell, of course, about the wild old days and their collective misspent but properly lived youth. After dinner, Neal and Alana went to the hot tub together while I latched on to film critic Anthony Lane’s new book. The phone rang — Jim’s old friends Linda and Randy from Humboldt County were also staying at the Treehouse, in Room 227. I had met them once, at a wild party in Rio Dell back in 1988. Neal knew them well. When he got back to the room we crashed Room 227 and exchanged reunion hugs. They had with them their teenaged son Cory, and their affectionate shepherd/pit bull/greyhound mix named Maya. We finally left them to their bedtime sometime after 11 p.m.

Our bed was comfortable but sleep was elusive and we awakened to the 6 o’clock alarm in mutual states of fatigue and dread. Today was the day. My head throbbed from the Redding-to-Dunsmuir tear-letting; I pressed ice-cold washcloths to my swollen eyes. As we headed to the lobby to meet Jan, I had a sense of what she would look like. I knew that Sput would not have chosen a round woman, and I was right: Jan is petite. Five foot and a smidge, perhaps. She is beautiful. Long, thick, shiny straight golden-brown hair; gray eyes shining with wisdom. And then she spoke and there was that voice that been so generous over the phone with us in the weeks since Jim’s heart attack — the deep, sweet, husky, soothing voice of Jan. Only now she was saying, “It’s nice to finally meet you!” Gracious, ever gracious.

We began breakfast, and Alana joined us, and once again there was a pre-memorial for Jim — two more hours of shared anecdotes, “how-did-you-meets” and remembrances. Jan excused herself at nearly 11, and the rest of us went to our rooms to get ready.

The Memorial was at 1 p.m. at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Mt. Shasta. Jim had, within the previous 5 years, returned to his more Catholic/Christian roots (similarly to how Neal had returned to his Jewish roots), after years of exploring alternative religious practices. He was very fond of Vicar Julie of St. Barnabas, and we had heard him talk about her frequently during his November stay. As she began the service, Neal and I both understood why Jim was so drawn to Julie. She was warm and real.

Once Jim decided to recommit himself to Christianity, he did it right. That is to say, he was a purist. No halfway, this-and-that, part-New-Age crap for him. He wanted the real thing. And this service was traditional. The priests were in white Lenten robes; there was chanting; there were bells and incense (or “smells and bells,” as Jim called it). But Jim also felt free to have a voice in his religious experience. Shortly after taking the podium and introducing herself, Julie pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“Right after I became the vicar of St. Barnabas, I received this five-page letter from Jim.” Laughter filled the room; his friends knew what was coming. “In which he set down all the ways in which he thought services at St. Barnabas could be improved.” Hilarity, from the crowd. Good ol’ Jim. Julie gave us the very precious gift of reading to us from parts of Jim’s letter and in doing so brought him into the room with us in quite a different form than the white-cloth covered ashes of Jim sitting on the altar area.

The formal parts of the service were difficult. I couldn’t participate in the Jesus parts, of which there were many. I found myself desperately searching for spiritual purchase.

Neal had been asked by Jan to deliver a eulogy, and he gave a kick-ass speech that Jim would have loved. Then another man spoke. Then Jan. As I told her later, she rocked. How that woman stood up there and said the things she did, how she read that unbearably beautiful and painful W.H. Auden poem, how she did all that without crumpling in a heap of sorrow, I will never know. All I can think of is that in her religious tradition, there is a deep belief that Jim is in the place in which he was meant to be, walking with Jesus, in a happy afterlife somewhere beyond time, place, and pain. As is said in the Jewish religious tradition, Ken yehi ratzon — “May it be so.”

And then it was over. A procession out to the reception hall, and there we were in an overly-flourescented, hot room, seeking out all the different people from all the different communities into which Sput had woven himself. “I knew him from Diablo Valley College days.” “I knew him from the Mugwort parties in San Francisco.” “I knew him from when he lived in Oakland.” “Tower Records.” “The Self-Realization Fellowship in Richmond.” And then there were his parents, who had apparently reconciled themselves to Jim’s early death from the day he’d first been diagnosed with Type I (formerly “juvenile”) diabetes. And his astonishingly beautiful red-haired sister Ann, who lost her husband three years ago and who told me, “You learn that the grief process never goes away; it never stops.”

It was like a wedding, but so not. I kept catching myself wishing, in some ridiculous childish fashion, that Neal and I were up here for Jim and Jan’s wedding in this very church, and I kept catching myself slipping into that alternative “what-if” scenario, like some kind of fantasy addict. This was no wedding. Yes, a church, a priest, a beautiful woman to love the man, a reception, a hall, the smell of coffee, a book to sign, flowers and an organ. But no wedding.

And then the reception was over. People drove back — to Portland, to Dunsmuir, to Alameda, to the airport, to San Francisco, to Vallejo. Neal and I stayed another night. There was some talk of another party taking place in Mt. Shasta — some of the Humboldt County community wanted to keep the hour going without the presence of Episcopalian adults and with something a little more relaxing than coffee — but Neal and I went back to the hotel room to have some quiet time and havdallah together.

When Sput had visited us in November, we did the havdallah ritual as we do every Saturday night. It is the brief ceremony which separates the Sabbath from the rest of the week — sacred time from ordinary time. There is a candle, a box of sweet-spelling spices, and a glass of wine. Blessings are chanted to a hauntingly beautiful melody. During havdallah at our home in November, I glanced over at Sput on the couch and saw him with his head back, listening to us, a blissful smile on his face. He loved it. Since his heart attack in December, I haven’t been able to chant the blessings without choking back tears of Sput-sorrow.

And of course this night, the night of his Memorial Service was no different and quite a bit harder. The chant is in four verses, and as I finished the first my voice broke, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to get through it. But then I thought of Jan on the podium that afternoon, reading love poems to her beloved whose ashes were in a box about four feet to her left. And resolve washed over me and I toughened up and I by God got through it to the end.

Havdallah is, in part, about the pain of separation. I had never really felt a sadness at the end of the Sabbath, as the observant are “supposed” to feel. As Neal feels. I told Neal, “It’s funny that, because of Sputnik, I can now feel that pain. I guess Jim gave me the gift of understanding the wrench of separation. Who said lessons or learning have to be ones we necessarily want in our lives.

We’re home now. It’s Sunday night. There’s a wake in San Francisco, and Neal will be driving over for it. I never before thought about the meaning of the word “wake” until we were in Mt. Shasta. I was reading Lane’s review of “Star Trek: First Contact,” in which he quotes a line about a temporal wake. I started thinking of the wake of a boat, and that a funeral wake must mean just that: that which trails behind after a person’s life, and death.

Jim has left a deep and wide wake. And just as I did back in my water-skiing days, I want to ride the rough part, the part that makes you jump and jolt and makes every sense alert and alive to the any-second possibility of diving head first into icy waters. That’s the way Jim lived, and he would expect no less of his friends.

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James Leroy Gjerde
January 24, 1962 to December 27, 2002