Believe There is Good in the World
My family went to Flathead Valley in northwest Montana for the last family trip before my oldest son goes to college. The first night we stood on a dock of a mountain lake waiting for the sun to set and watched a man jump waves on a jet ski with a small dog at his feet. An older woman sat nearby on the boardwalk wrapped in blankets with tubes in her nose and an oxygen tank at her side.
After the sun went down, I helped her to her feet and up the bank. We sat at a picnic table for her to catch her breath. Her name was Diane and she wasn’t happy about being left on the dock all afternoon while her daughter sat in the car feeding watermelon to her ferret.
Her daughter is autistic but high functioning, Diane explained. They live next door to each other and Diane tries to help her daughter as much as she can.
Diane said her life hasn't been easy and showed the scar on her thumb where her abusive husband stabbed her with a butcher knife. She tried to leave him, but he chopped up her footlocker and everything she owned in it. He said if she tried to leave him again, the same thing would happen to her.
"He shot at me and went to jail for three years," she said. "He came after me when he was released. Thank God he died so I could finally feel safe."
Diane has emphysema and went on oxygen six months ago. She smoked for 56 years, unable to quit. A house fire made her lungs worse.
As her breathing slowed to normal, she watched the lingering light of the sunset.
"Honey, I won't be around much longer," she said. "I don't want to live like this. I am ready to go."
I hugged Diane and walked her to the car. Her daughter put away the ferret and helped her mother into the passenger seat. Diane waved one last time and I wondered how long “not much longer” will be.
The next day I passed a dropbox for retired flags in front of the Elks Club, a taxidermied buffalo in a glass box above the Greenwood Village Mobile Home Park, and a sign that read, "In Our Hearts Forever Alice and Katie."
Alice and Katie. Names heartbreakingly out of place above the Norco store that sells welding and industrial supplies.
Alice and Katie were a mother and daughter killed by a 23-year old drunk driver from Minnesota in a head-on collision. The wreck happened outside of Kalispell on Highway 35 that runs past lakes, mountains and yellow fields of canola. A memorial of still-fresh wildflowers, lilies, and daisies marked the spot beyond the skid marks where the women died on the Fourth of July. A “To Our Beloved" sash hung from a dozen pink roses and a breeze carried the sweet floral smell toward the Flathead River less than a mile away.
The obituary said Alice, 59, met the love of her life, David "the one & only time that either of them went to the disco." They married two weeks later and recently celebrated their 41st anniversary. Alice loved crafting, reading, huckleberry picking, shooting, and hiking in Glacier National Park. Katie, 31, considered Alice one of her best friends and enjoyed snowboarding, hiking, kayaking and spending time with her friends and family.
David, Alice's husband and Katie's dad, works at Norco. Employees said the family had been watching fireworks at a friend's house. David and his son drove home ahead of Alice and Katie who "chatted a few minutes longer." David knew something was wrong when they didn't come home.
"Thank God David did not see the wreck," said the woman at the register. "He was devastated. Kalispell is a small town and the death of Alice and Katie has been hard on all of us.
"Drunk driving is a problem here," she said. "In May, a drunk driver crashed into a house and killed a sleeping teenage girl. There are white crosses up and down the highways where people died. Instead of flowers for Alice and Katie, the family asked for contributions to be made to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to raise awareness and stop another accident from happening here."
The local news turned from the death of Alice and Katie to the disappearance of 66-year-old Mark Sinclair from nearby Whitefish. On July 8, Sinclair parked his car at the Logan Pass Visitor Center Parking lot at Glacier National Park, leaving his keys and dog inside the vehicle. He was last seen that afternoon on the Highline Trail, a popular route following the Continental Divide in mountains formed over 1.6 billion years by glaciers, faults and an inland sea. Search crews have not found his body, but the trail closed soon after his disappearance because of grizzly bear activity.
We parked in the same parking lot four days after his disappearance, intending to hike the same trail, but watched a truck tow Sinclair's black Jetta Volkswagen away. Stickers on the bumper read, "Williams College," "Colorado Adventure" "Glacier National Park," "Utah Desert Rat," and "National Park Geek."
Our week in Montana provided nature, tragedy, compassion, and community in a state of ranchers and farmers and a population of barely one million people. It was the season of markets in town squares, Flathead cherries, and huckleberry ice cream. At the annual rodeo, bulls bucked off each local cowboy and a four-year-old girl raced barrels on a horse for the first time.
The Ten Commandments hung on the sides of trailers, fences, and churches. A cashier named Sue at Smith's grocery swiped her store card to save us a few dollars every time we came in. A motorcyclist smiled at a red light after students outside Evergreen Elementary School waved to him as he passed by.
The Flathead Thrift Store has half-off sales most days of the week and we bought T-shirts and jackets there. Amish families with women and girls in skirts and head coverings and men in beards and suspenders are regular customers. The store also provides jobs and services to help people with disabilities.
Anna works at the thrift store to give back to the community. She hung pictures and put out coffee mugs with the help of an employee with Down Syndrome wearing a shirt with "Created by God. Designed with a Purpose."
"This store employs 44 people with disabilities," Anna said. "We feed and clothe them and give them a job and housing. We provide services to many more and let them know that they have value and are a part of our community. There is a place for all of us."
Anna points across the aisle to a $2 wood sign that reads, "Believe There is Good in the World."
"Life is hard,” she said. “But the good in the world is right here.”
