Too Near the Edge (2 page)

”Sharon Meyer. Her husband passed away at the
Grand Canyon last April and she…”

“He passed away at the Grand Canyon? What,
was he fatally ill when he went there?” I interrupted, enjoying my
chance to match Elisa’s outrageousness. It’s a game we play. “Did
he have his hospice nurse along with him?’

“Of course not. He was hiking at the Grand
Canyon and slipped off the trail where it was icy,” Elisa
replied.

I sighed. “Elisa, you know how I feel about
the euphemism ‘passed away,’ especially when we’re talking about a
violent death. Passing away after a long battle with cancer is one
thing, but when a person dies in an accident, let’s just say ‘died’
or ‘was killed’ and be done with it.” I paced wide circles in my
yard as I ranted.

“OK, died, whatever,” Elisa said. “Just be
there tonight, OK? Sharon needs some help, and I want you to help
her. I’m not suggesting her for grief counseling, although she
could use some. It’s the Contact Project I want for her.”

“I’ll be there, and if you want to introduce
us, that’s fine. But she would need grief counseling if she’s going
to be in the Contact Project. I’m not a medium conducting séances
here. This project is a part of grief counseling.”

I knew Elisa was quite aware of this caveat,
but chose to overlook it for her own reasons. Since I’d known her
for almost fifteen years, I was totally on to her tricks.

“It may take some convincing to get her to do
it, though.” Elisa ignored my jibes and plowed right on. “Sharon’s
father is Donald Waycroft. I know you’ve heard of him. He’s a
big-deal behavioral psychologist at the university. Anyway, he
rejects most areas of psychology other than behaviorism as
unproven, and hates parapsychology with a passion.”

“I read some of his articles in graduate
school. He’s definitely a stimulus-response sort of guy. I can only
imagine how he’d view my work.”

“Well that’s his problem, isn’t it? We can’t
let his rigid beliefs get in the way of you helping Sharon.”

I knew it wouldn’t do my professional
reputation any good to look like an ambulance chaser, or to get on
the wrong side of a psychology faculty member, so I was a little
wary of this client referral. “Elisa, I’m not going to talk her
into signing up! You know you’re not doing me any favors with a
referral like this,” I said. “It’s not like I’m desperate for
business.”

“Whew, honey! You’re in a mood.” Elisa
barked.

“You’re right. I’m not in the best mood,” I
said, thinking that I wouldn’t have gone off on Elisa that way if I
hadn’t been so rattled when I picked up the phone. Even if her
friend sounded like trouble for me, I should at least listen to
what Elisa had to say. And Sharon very likely could benefit from
grief counseling. So I took a deep Masuka-like breath and said,
“Tell me a little about Sharon and her husband.”

“Adam Meyer was a web site designer,” Elisa
said. “Kind of cute. Medium height, very fit, blue eyes,
reddish-brown hair, big smile. You might have met him at one of my
parties.”

“Elisa, that description fits half the men in
Boulder,” I laughed. “I don’t remember meeting him, but you always
have so many people at your parties. What was he doing at the Grand
Canyon in April? Not the best weather there at that time of
year.”

“It was some kind of midlife crisis thing. I
don’t know all the details. He fell into the canyon and broke his
neck, so he was dead when they found him. I feel terrible for
Sharon. They’re just about your age—she’s 35 and he was 37—and they
had only been married two years.”

“Horrible,” I said, trying not to picture the
man’s battered body impaled on some rocky spire.

“The strange thing about it is that Adam was
a big-time hiker. He climbed a bunch of fourteeners, belonged to
the Colorado Mountain Club, and absolutely knew his way around in
the mountains,” Elisa said. “Sharon said he was stressed-out and
anxious about something, but it’s not like him to be careless.”

“What was bothering him? Does she know?”

“No. He wasn’t the kind of guy who shared his
feelings easily. He was a good match for her—funny, sweet and very
loving with Sharon and her son, Nathan. They’re outdoorsy and
active, and so was he. Adam even coached Nathan’s soccer team. But
he was more of a doer than a talker, so Sharon never found out what
he was so upset about.”

“So why are you so keen on getting her into
the Contact Project?”

“It’s been almost three months since Adam
died. It was April 15. I remember because we were rushing our taxes
to the post office when I heard. But even after all this time,
Sharon isn’t accepting it at all. She’s convinced herself his fall
wasn’t an accident, even though the park rangers have investigated
and told her it was. She tried to get the police to investigate,
but they won’t because the fall has been ruled an accident. Sharon
just can’t let go of it, and I’m thinking if she could contact
Adam, maybe she could find some peace.”

“OK, I’ll plan on meeting her tonight and see
if she wants to make an appointment to come in to the office and
talk more. Hey, Elisa, I need to go. This drought and the watering
restrictions are doing major damage to Grampa’s garden. I need to
go do some watering or Grampa’s ghost will be tracking me down.
I’ll see you later.”

While I watered the garden, I thought about
what I would wear to the party. Sometimes, when I’m around Elisa, I
end up feeling like an awkward teenager. Elisa’s self-assurance is
much different than Masuka’s, but just as effective. She’s a
beautiful woman, tall and thin with thick blonde hair, layered in a
casual style that always falls attractively no matter what she’s
been doing. She has a look of entitlement about her. Her clothes
are expensive, always natural fabrics—fine wools, brilliant silks
and soft cottons or linens. Her jewelry is simple but stunning—a
jade or turquoise necklace or intricate sterling silver.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m quite satisfied with
being 5’4” tall, with medium length curly brown hair and green
eyes. I really have no desire to stand out in a crowd or be a
fashion plate. But Elisa sets a high standard. She’s the woman
other women take in and instantly envy—even though she recently
turned 40. One glance at Elisa leaves most women feeling mismatched
or pinned together. They check their clothes in the nearest mirror
or store window, pulling and adjusting to restore their feelings of
attractiveness. Elisa is always surprised to hear she generates
this reaction. In fact she refuses to believe it.

For me, that much style is usually way too
time-consuming, which is why I had on old khaki shorts and a ragged
Earth Day 5K tee shirt, while I pictured Elisa sitting on her deck
looking gorgeous in some perfectly fitted tank top and shorts,
sipping herbal iced tea and enjoying the foothills view while
making her pre-party phone calls.

But I can clean up and look almost as
sophisticated or sexy as she does when I want to. I felt the urge
to do it for that night’s party. I resolved to spend some extra
time getting ready, not just to feel well-dressed next to Elisa,
but also because her parties draw exciting people. Pablo would be
at work, so I’d be on my own. Maybe I’d meet a cute guy who’d take
my work seriously.

The watering took me over an hour.
Time-consuming home-and-lawn-maintenance is a clear downside of my
house, which was built in 1872 by an early settler whose family
raised fruits, vegetables and flowers on the land that is now
Settlers Park in west Boulder. It’s the sort of place real estate
ads today describe as a “historic stone farmhouse,” which is code
for sloping floors, small closets, and aging plumbing. But for me,
this house is as comfortable as my favorite jeans and fits me just
as perfectly. I love the cozy rooms with hardwood floors and
mahogany doors. And I especially love the location, nestled against
the Boulder foothills and acres of what is known in Colorado as
open space.

My grandmother, Martha Donnelly, who was once
a prominent Boulder artist, is the actual owner of the house. She’s
been gradually losing her mind to Alzheimer’s disease for the past
twelve years, and now at age 87 lives at Shady Terrace Nursing
Home. I love her dearly. Watching her essence be eaten away by this
mind-snatching disease is so excruciating that some days I’m glad
Grampa isn’t here to see any more of it, even though I miss him
deeply.

Gramma and Grampa bought the house when they
first moved to Boulder back in 1950 when it was a small college
town of only 20,000 people. Grampa fell in love with the big garden
area, and for Gramma, the stone carriage house in back, which
became her studio, was perfect.

Starting at age nine, I spent every summer
with them in this house. Boulder always felt more like home to me
than Topeka, Kansas, where I lived the rest of the year. I remember
those summers as quiet times where the days slid by harmoniously—so
different from the sharp bickering I was used to at home.

To this day, the smell of oil paint in the
studio takes me back to those summer mornings when I painted there
with Gramma. And the cool feel of the flagstone patio on my bare
feet recalls the afternoons Grampa and I spent there surrounded by
the gardens and shade trees. We talked about everything from
Egyptian pyramids to tomato plants. He taught philosophy at the
University, and he was as curious by nature as I am. No matter what
I came up with, he took an interest. Some days we ended up at the
library, where we spent hours looking for answers to my questions,
like how bees know which flowers have the best nectar, or why
Colorado has mountains but Kansas doesn’t.

Grampa was the one person in my life who I
could talk to about anything. I loved everything about him. He’s my
model for what a man should be and I’ve yet to meet his match. I
miss him terribly. In some way his plants seem like part of him, so
taking good care of them is important. It’s a lot of work, but
spending time in his gardens brings to mind fond memories of him
and our times together.

I got interested in grief therapy when I
struggled with my own grieving after Grampa died. I was a doctoral
student in clinical psychology then, and barely managed to stick
with it in the face of my overwhelming sorrow. I knew Grampa would
never want me to quit, so I learned to focus on my positive
memories of him to keep me going. It worked, and inspired me to go
on for extra training to become a certified grief counselor. Death
fascinates me because it’s both mysterious and inevitable. Helping
people cope with it has become the focus of my practice. It’s a
universal issue, although most people don’t like to think about
it.

My current approach to grief therapy isn’t
the most traditional one, but it’s not unique either. After my
first few years in practice, I moved away from steering people
through the stages of the grief process. I found that what causes
people the most pain is a need to resolve unfinished business with
their dead loved ones So I began using a process that helps them
work through bottled-up feelings and complete their relationship
with the person who has died.

Sounds pretty reasonable so far, right? Well
here’s where it gets a little unusual—some would say weird or even
flaky. The Contact Project is where I help people see and actually
talk with dead family members or friends using a process I
discovered while trying to reach Grampa after he died. Yes, I know.
Sounds kind of wavy-gravy, but that isn’t me. I may not follow
mainstream methods, but my project is respectable. It’s not like
I’m telling fortunes over the internet or running some 900 psychic
hotline scam.

The contact process doesn’t always work, and
people rarely get what they expect, but many get some satisfying
communication. Most of them can only make contact once or sometimes
twice, so it’s not like they have the deceased back for nightly
conversation. But overall it helps.

The exception to the one-or-two-contacts rule
so far is Tyler, who now visits me whenever he gets a notion to do
it. He was the first dead person I ever talked to, and oddly he was
someone I didn’t even know. He showed up a couple of years ago
while I was trying for about the hundredth time to contact Grampa,
who had been dead for five years. Grampa was very interested in the
whole area of life after death, which he hoped existed but deep
down didn’t really believe in. He was particularly fascinated by
Harry Houdini. Grampa told me many times that Houdini had made a
pact with a friend that, if he died first, he would contact this
friend from beyond the grave.

According to my grandfather, Houdini never
contacted his friend. This, of course, made Grampa even more
skeptical. Nevertheless, he still had hope. He told me he would
contact me if he could. After three years passed with no messages
from my grandfather, I decided perhaps I had to put some effort
into reaching him in order for it to happen. I started reading
about methods of reaching the dearly departed. And eventually I
began trying out some of the less bizarre approaches.

The method that eventually brought me face to
face with a dead person involved constructing a homemade
“apparition chamber.” In an upstairs bedroom I mounted a four-foot
square mirror on the wall about three feet above the floor. I
surrounded it with a black velvet curtain hung from the ceiling,
using a curved curtain rod to create a small curtained booth.
Inside the booth, I put an easy chair with its legs removed and a
block under the front to incline the chair slightly backward. This
allowed me to sit in the chair and look into the mirror without
seeing my own reflection. When I sat in the chair and gazed into
the mirror all I saw was a pool of darkness.

The theory behind this is that throughout
history people have reported seeing visions in reflective surfaces
such as clear pools of water, polished brass cauldrons, crystals,
and mirrors lit in the midst of blackness. The apparitions appear
as the viewer gazes into the clear dark pool.