Chapter Thirteen

The Boardwalk

Urban Dictionary – Boardwalk: 1. As in Monopoly, something or someone that is seemly unattainable but yet very desirable. Alternate definition – about to die, literally “next to go.”

Hope and I grew up a few miles from the ocean and the Long Beach Boardwalk. As our lives evolved, we would often scoot to the boardwalk to exercise, enjoy the night air, and ponder our future. The Long Beach Boardwalk was the classic-style boardwalk, and ran a straight two and half miles from end to end. The boards were worn and very splintery. Only the toughest, most foolhardy or veteran feet would navigate it without shoes, sneakers, or sandals. You could tell who were the venerable regulars, for they wore no footwear. During the summers, the boardwalk was our escape from the landlocked interior estuary, leaving behind mosquitoes, green flies, and heat for the cooling ocean breeze sweeping the esplanade. We all loved our boardwalk. It was our rite of passage too. We would begin to walk it with our families when we were young, graduating to riding our bicycles as elementary school kids, to eventually holding our sweethearts hand in high school. The full American life circle was achieved when, later in life, we held our own children’s hands. In those days the boardwalk featured an old-fashioned amusement park; the bomb ride was its main attraction. Only the bravest went on the bomb, and I never had the courage to try it. The bomb was two flimsy sheet metal capsules separated by a steel shaft about thirty feet long. The configuration was suspended at the midpoint, and the two capsules twirled vertically around the central axis. Basically it was an astronaut-training device at an amusement park but vertical instead of horizontal. Flanking the amusement park were Skee Ball and other carny-type games, which ate many dimes, graduating to quarters as our money and I matured.

Long Beach held an annual fireworks spectacular. It was an annual treat to view the fireworks from the boardwalk as you cuddled your lover or, as a young one, held your parents’ hands. Recalling those early days, the only fireworks display I remember, other than the amateur family street illuminations, was at the Magic Kingdom. Back in the early ’80s, few ventured to New York City to view the Macy’s fireworks—if we even knew they existed, since they weren’t televised until 1991. Long Beach, the street, and Disney fireworks were my realm of night-sky Technicolor.

It was July 1983, and we had just purchased our home the previous October. We struggled to meet our mortgage, new car, and utility payments. Our vacation money was therefore extremely limited. Hope and I cuddled as we watched the fireworks from the boardwalk. Hope exclaimed how she loved the fireworks, as she too had grown up watching them. I responded that these paled in comparison to the Magic Kingdom’s. Hope had never been to Disney World, and she said, “Let’s go, I want to see them.”

I recall vividly how fun and whimsical we were before we had kids. We would venture for a day or weekend or week on a moment’s notice, stretching every nickel as if it were a dollar. And with her wishes, within three weeks we were in our new Subaru, driving 1,115 miles to Disney on a shoestring budget. We stayed twenty miles away from the Kingdom, paying $19.95 per night for a room. We bought several loaves of bread and jars of Goobers, the mixed peanut butter and jelly spread. Every slice of bread was removed from the bag and then placed back as Goober sandwiches to be enjoyed as breakfast and lunch. We reserved the scant money we had for dinner and our daily Mickey Ice Cream Pop. Oh, how the mention of the Long Beach Boardwalk prior to Superstorm Sandy evokes this and so many other fond memories, as well as the empty pit of caregiver loneliness.

Decades and chemotherapy treatments later, the wooden boardwalk metamorphosed from a place of excitement, exercise, and future dreams to a splinter-filled excursion. During Hope’s treatments and recovery, I would take her to the boardwalk to get fresh sea air. There was not much discussion of our lives and future. We would walk in solitude, conversation intermittent. The walk was not vigorous or long but brief, pointed at getting some salt-air life into Hope’s lungs. These missions were as frequent as my memory wants, for the boardwalk was both my past optimism and present morosity.

Many times Hope was too ill to join me on boardwalk strolls, and I would walk them alone. Alone was becoming more of our relationship outside our home or the hospital than together. Alone is what a caregiver becomes. Alone starts years before your best friend leaves you. A caregiver cannot plan with others, because plans depend on medical whims. When the opportunity arose I would get away from our home, the hospital or care-giving responsibilities to recharge my depleted energy. I made the trip to the boardwalk, hiked at the local preserve, took short retreats alone because either no one was available or I just wanted to be left to my solitude to de-stress from the pressures of care-giving. I walked, hiked, and cried terribly all alone. I hid this aloneness from my family and friends. I didn’t want their sympathy or, often, their company, because alone was what my body required. I estimate a good several years of caregiver aloneness during Hope’s seven years of illness. I wanted to cry alone, ponder alone, and be alone, for the chore of talking to doctors, nurses, coworkers, and friends wore on my tired soul. My body called for rest alone. You realize you are alone even though friends and family surround you, because your best friend can’t hold your hand with a smile of future. Paradoxically, you also wish for someone to join you, preferably your spouse, but you know she cannot. You are confused by both needing to be alone and accompanied at the same time, with no inner satisfaction to be found.

About a month before Hope passed, and we entered the hospice program understanding that she was now living only on borrowed time, we took a ride to the boardwalk. Hope was confined to a wheelchair at that point, and I parked in a handicap spot, not caring if I got a ticket, so I could easily wheel her to the ramp up to the boardwalk from the street level. It was early March, and the air still held the winter’s cold even on this sunny day. Hope, frail in health, was bundled not only in a coat but also a woolen wrap, giving her the appearance of a Russian babushka. I unfolded the wheelchair from the rear hatch of our SUV and helped Hope into the chair as one does for elderly parents—which neither of us had. Our parents were alive and still spry in the late’70s. Hope was elderly before our parents were, and this thought sank deep into me as I started to wheel her toward the wooden ramp. It must have dawned on her too. As we approached the boardwalk she started to cry an illness cry. When you are very ill even crying takes enormous effort, and her tears were sparse as her face showed the weariness of years of illness. She said abruptly and decisively, as a two-year-old might instruct her mother, “No, take me home. I don’t want to go to the boardwalk. Take me home now!”

I didn’t understand at that time why; she loved it so much, but years later I fully comprehend her demand. Hope’s boardwalk memories of us discussing our Disney fireworks trip or how many children we would have or if we should buy a home or wait or where we would retire to were now going to vanish. I took her home and don’t remember anything else about that day. What I do remember is a few days later I needed to escape alone. I wanted to be in misery alone. I wanted to curse the world alone. I wanted my pity alone. I had finally realized I was going to be truly alone very shortly. I drove to the boardwalk and looked at the wooden ramp and cried for old memories. I walked the boardwalk and cried and cried and cried. It was a chilly March, and the tears coldly embraced my face. I realized I was alone and would be truly alone in the coming weeks and months for a time undefined. Thirty-one years of partnership was being erased as the waves erased the sand. All those who judge me for how I decided to recover please understand: Aloneness for a caregiver starts years before your best friend dies. It is empty and pitiless. It is crueler than after your spouse dies, because loving companionship cannot be. There is no hand to hold in tender affection, but a clenched fist as one cries out for a finger to grasp. I was raised by two parents who were always fondling and loving. That was my essence, and I needed love back, I needed to walk the boardwalk again with a smile of future.

In 2012 the once-a-century superstorm Hurricane Sandy came and washed the Long Beach Boardwalk into the swollen Atlantic Ocean. The boardwalk washed out to sea, as did my past life. Did the Divine whip up the storm to destroy the promenade of my memories? The boardwalk was rebuilt, as was my dedication to living life to its fullest, which included finding a new hand to hold as I strolled, again dreaming of a future.