WAITING FOR THE CREEPER: Part One
If You Are Waiting To Die, How Long Do You Wait?
WAITING FOR THE CREEPER: PART ONE
Anguish is a bitch. Gareth was praying. You know, the kind of prayers that are essentially bargaining. If you give my wife back, I will never miss a Sunday at church again. Those kinds of prayers. He had been manically pacing in the dark all night long. His hands clenched into fists. He had no fingernails, just bleeding stumps at the end of his fingers. He was visibly sweating and could not stay still. He knew he was depressed; he had long experience suffering from depression throughout his life. However, this morning was uneasy. Throughout the night, he had experienced suicidal thoughts frequently. Gareth had tried all night to suppress the toxic thoughts. He experienced uncontrollable shivering and hand tremors; stopping those kinds of feelings was agony. He was sick. Vomiting and dry heaving were never-ending. He hated being sick. Anguish is undeniably a bitch.
Driving through Provo Canyon from Orem to Heber is beautiful no matter what time of year. Dangerous for sure during the Wintertime due to heavy snow and avalanches. Then there is Fall; the colors are distinctive and ever-changing — a beautiful time for photography. Spring’s rebirth brings thoughts of fishing, kayaking, tubing, and maybe even mountain biking for the brave. But it is Summer; oh yes, Summer, the time of fresher temperatures in the canyon. What a gift when over a hundred degrees down in the valley. The weekends bring many boats, small and large, fast and slow, fishing, and even water skiing. Locals and tourists drive up and down the steep-walled canyon road that follows the Provo River to the dam. The dam with the colossal wall. The barrier that created the Deer Creek reservoir was built in 1938 and completed in 1941. It stretches a quarter of a mile across the canyon and is towered over by the majestic Mount Timpanogas. The snowy skyline is the backdrop for colorful hot air balloons and wicker baskets. Dozens of paragliders rise and fall across the reservoir over the paddle boarders below. Plenty of movement. Plenty of energy. Plenty of life. For Gareth, however, it was the loneliest place to be. For Gareth, the almost three thousand acres of deep water will soon be his bottomless grave. As someone who cannot swim and is terrified of water, this grave offers no return; after all, its maximum depth is one hundred and thirty-seven feet deep.
The road through the canyon was quiet that day. A few cars and a few semis drove the stipulated fifty miles-per-hour speed limit. It seemed he slowed the traffic down. Maybe that was because he was not concentrating, and his speed drifted up and down as he drove his soccer mom’s white van. It was a warm but breezy morning, almost humid. He was going to Midway, Utah, to visit his eldest daughter. Midway is known as a “Swiss” town. Full of ornately decorated lodges and large cabin homes. One could almost forget you were in Utah. The homes suggested you were in Chamonix, at the base of the Mont Blanc, the junction of France, Switzerland, and Italy. It was a beautiful fairy tale village, to be sure. Gareth had spent time in Chamonix as a young boy. He loved Chamonix. Midway not so much.
His daughter did not know he was coming. I hope she is home, he thought. She was his Mont Blanc, his Mount Timpanogas, his rock. She was a wife and a young mother of a beautiful newborn baby girl — his first grandchild. But, truthfully, the last thing his daughter needed this summer was to spend never-ending hours listening to Gareth crying and hoping for a miracle. He had survived until now primarily because of her capacity to hate the sin but love the sinner.
Pulling into the dirt driveway, he instantly saw the family car was gone. An immediate sense of dread and hopelessness blanketed him. He grabbed the mobile phone as soon as he stopped. There was a dim hope that this new growing family had driven to the store a few miles away to buy baby items, and they would be back within minutes. Instead, she answered immediately and, with grave concern, asked if he was okay. Faking how he felt at that time in his life was almost impossible for Gareth. But he tried. “How are you all doing?” he asked. “We are driving to Hogle zoo in Salt Lake [City],” she replied. “But we will be back later.” Sobbing and attempting to hold back his tears, he told her he loved her dearly. The phone went silent. For a short moment, he wept and asked himself why she would not be at home when he needed her. He immediately knew that was the grief talking. He loved her with all his heart. He had cared for her as a child back in England, but now the roles were reversed.
Gareth was floating between madness and self-hatred. It was a state he had been in since his wife had left him. Starting to unravel yet again was a terrible experience, and this time he was alone. He could not drive back to Provo. He did not want to go back to Provo. Provo was full of people he could not face at all. Provo was the most self-righteous place on the planet. He despised it. It was his hell on earth — his cage — a cage without a key. The truth was his wife had left for good reasons, the foremost being her safety. Gareth had finally recognized his cruelty and did not hide it from anyone anymore.
Anyone that would listen would be in his Catholic confessional booth. As much as he continually vomited words of apologies for his actions, it did not change how he felt. Continuously running through his mind, a slide show reminded him of why his wife had gone every second of every day, twenty-four hours a day. What had he done? Really? You don’t know what you’ve done? You piece of crap, you know what you did. I promise you will never forget it, said a voice inside his head. Oh yes, he knows what he has done for sure. He wished he could change it. However, it was not something anyone could change. It was not a small dink in the passenger door; it was the destruction seen at the worst highway wrecks — no survivors except those drastically maimed for life.
Now months later, his two young baby girls were also gone. They were his only link to the woman he loved so much. But that cannot be true, right? How could he love someone and hurt them so badly? Naïve, he knows, but it had never crossed his mind until his wife pointed out that those beliefs were incompatible. Educated and known to be wise, he would have known, right? However, he had always blamed her. In his disturbed mind, she should be with him and want to be with him every minute of the day. Why is she not talking? If you love someone, should they not be talking to you continually? Why did she hate him so much? It had been this way for a long, long time. It almost seemed routine. But once the light came on, he saw everything the way it was: no Love Story but Nightmare on Elm Street.
The girls had seemed a good idea to be with their mother. Girls need their mothers, he decided. However, that thought soon changed as the opportunities to see them slowly diminished to a point where Gareth was just another of the divorced dads at McDonald’s on a Saturday morning allowed to be with their children for two or three hours. The girls ate chicken nuggets and played on the slides. All the dads looked depressed, and the air felt depressed. The yellow and red all around did not seem happy at all. It was freakin’ miserable. The hours always seemed like minutes, and then the time was gone. He was not a dad anymore; he was a part-time babysitter. He had started to lose all hope. Anxiety had turned into depression, and depression had turned into hopelessness on a grand scale. First, it appeared as flutter and floating sensation in his belly. Then sudden darkness.
Eventually, the precipice drew ever closer. By now, Gareth did not care anymore. He was nothing without his wife of twenty-seven years and his two babies. What was the point? It should have been apparent from the beginning, but he always hoped they could reconstruct the burnt-out wreck he had called marriage. Even so, it was evident to all, except Gareth, that he lived in the salvage yards. No rebuilding here, only scraps. Yes, unwanted, severely damaged junk. So damaged it was unrecognizable.
PART TWO of this story will be published at the weekend. Follow me on Medium email, and you will receive notice of when you can read the dramatic part of this true story! Thanks
© Stephen G. Arrowsmith 2022
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