What Death Can Touch

By Robert Miskimon

Peter Danforth discovers the intersection between physical death and spiritual transformation after the death of his daughter. Through acceptance of a higher power, his journey takes him from alcoholism, loss and suffering to serenity and the ability to release his ties to "the world."
What Death Can Touch is a manifesto that proclaims death to be only the beginning of an unimaginable, strange new journey.

I read this in two sittings. What Death Can Touch is the engaging story of a journalist who fights against alcoholism and the grief that follows the shattering loss of his daughter. We follow the inner and outer life of newspaperman Peter Danforth from his struggles in California to a surprising climax in the Pacific Northwest. A great read. Geoff Baxter, San Francisco.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 7, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462801602

Robert Miskimon

Robert Miskimon was born and raised in Richmond, Va. and now lives in Washington State. During a long career as a journalist, he covered farm labor in the Salinas Valley of California. His previously published novels are A Wind Is Rising and Plastic Jesus.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Peter awoke trembling, breathing hard, covered with sweat. His breath came in short, panicky spasms. Whatever dream, memory, or premonition had jarred him awake was now lost in the depths of his subconscious. But just as quickly, his conscious mind snuffed out the awareness so that he was left baffled, shaken and frightened. He glanced at the clock: 4:10 a.m. The caged doves in the neighbor’s yard cooed outside his window in a strange, otherworldly warble. He shivered briefly, trying to get his bearings.

Sleep was impossible. He got up, made himself some coffee, sat at the weathered picnic table in his small apartment on the upper level of a two-story ramshackle apartment house with sloped stairs and rotten balconies. He stared out of the pockmarked windows. The table still smelled like eucalyptus trees in his back yard, where he’d purloined it from the house he still owned just a few blocks away. The loss of his home and family stuck like a bolus of broken glass in his gut; he felt tearful and confused, but tried to find some way to think of the separation as spiritual progress. Most of all, the loss of his daughters, Ellie and Claire, seemed unbearable and cruel. Without their sweet softness, the world seemed cold, grey and harsh—like the nascent morning outside his window.

He thumbed through the AA literature from the previous night’s meeting and found a passage from the Twenty-Four Hours A Day meditation book for Aug. 12: You may see lives altered and evils banished in time. You can become a force for good wherever you are.

Smoke from the meeting still clung to his breathing passages, and Peter coughed. Drained by this rude awakening, he felt the leaden sky might fall at any moment. Throughout the whole day, Peter was oppressed by some nameless fear, a vague sense, just below the level of consciousness that something horrific was lurking just around the corner. It was almost as if he were an actor in a slow-motion dream, where all is predestined but only revealed to the dreamer in an agonizingly torpid and relentless unreeling of destiny. The weight of the sky seemed to suffocate all thought and paralyze any feeling.

He decided to stop by the house after work to check on Claire and Ellie. The house was empty and still, devoid of the clatter of children and dogs which had filled it for so many years. The yard was overgrown with weeds. The simple dignity of the yellow Victorian house, however, promised to endure. The smell of salt air reassured Peter that this century-old Redwood Grove landmark had weathered many seasons of human habitation and, like the Monterey Cypress in the front yard, would survive many more generations yet unborn.

Peter knocked perfunctorily on the front door, paused, then slowly entered. There was a smell of cigarettes in the air: Jeannie Eggleston had been visiting Gretchen, because that was the only time his estranged wife smoked. Dirty dishes were piled in the kitchen sink, and a broken window on the back porch gave a direct view through the house to the lush green avocado trees in the back. There were several burnt-out, unreplaced light bulbs, piles of clothing on the floor, windows and doors left open and unlocked. The place had the open, airy, impersonal feel of a college dormitory.

Peter noticed that the makeshift wiring he’d installed to provide lighting for a handmade desk in Ellie’s room made a perfect toe trap for anyone passing in or out. He found his hammer in the bottom of a large toolbox and nailed the wiring under the oak threshold plate as he tried to guess when Gretchen might return. Ellie had taken a bus to Calaveras County to visit another 15-year-old high school friend who was spending the summer there with her father. Claire, Ellie’s 10-year-old sister, was in Port Townsend visiting her grandparents for a couple of weeks before school started.

Ellie’s room was a microcosm of Peter’s 16-year marriage to Gretchen. In one corner sat the huge stuffed bear Ellie climbed on as a toddler in Connecticut. Now stuffing protruded through tears and holes in its black fabric. Her door was covered top-to-bottom with stickers of every imaginable size, shape, color and origin. The white four-poster bed had replaced her crib carried from her birthplace in St. Croix where she spent the first six weeks of her life in an incubator because of low birth weight and prematurity. Her emergence as a teenager was evidenced by posters of Bob Marley, surfing images and bumper stickers from Southern California beaches plastered on the wall.

Peter noticed that the bookshelves he’d constructed in Ellie’s small upstairs room sagged under the weight of years of collected Cricket magazines, Nancy Drew mystery books, and other childhood paraphernalia. He remembered the sunny afternoon when he nailed the fiberboard sections together in her room between sips of cold beer, and his feeling of pride and accomplishment when the shelves fitted neatly into place in the corner of her room. He smiled as he glanced at a photograph of Ellie with her precision swimming team. She had more than compensated for her frailty at birth and had developed into a healthy, strong, blonde-haired young lady.

Peter started for the kitchen to replace some of the burned-out light bulbs, when the phone rang. Its ringing seemed far away. He tried to decide whether it might be someone calling for Gretchen or Gretchen herself, and he would find himself thrust into the middle of yet another ugly scene. Remembering that he was still a legal owner of half of the house, Peter lifted the receiver in the kitchen.

Who am I speaking with? asked a brusque male voice.

"This is Peter Danforth.

Are you the father of Ellie Danforth?

Yes.

This is Doctor Bradley at Elkhorn Lake in Calaveras County. Your daughter has been killed in a boating accident.

What?! Peter’s breathing stopped abruptly.

Your daughter was on a sailboat that was involved in an accident this afternoon. She died at about 1:30 p.m.

Peter’s head exploded, and his stomach started to heave in great oceanic contractions.

He dropped the receiver and fell to the floor, aware only of the coolness of the dirty linoleum and his own hot tears.

Have you been drinking again? Gretchen asked as she stood over Peter. I think it’s time for you to leave now.

Peter slowly raised his head. Gretchen could see his bloodshot eyes.

No, no, you don’t understand. Ellie… Ellie has been killed. She was killed in an accident.

Gretchen turned and started to walk out of the house.

Wait! Didn’t you hear me? Ellie is dead! She was killed in a boating accident. Here, talk to them yourself. He thrust the telephone receiver in her direction.

Gretchen walked slowly toward the telephone, then placed it to her ear.

This is Gretchen Danforth.

Peter watched as her expression turned from fear to panic, then to hysteria. Gretchen began to sob quietly, but held the phone to her ear, nodding as if listening to someone on the other end. After a while, she put the phone down on the kitchen counter and silently went into the living room, sat in a rocking chair beside the window and placed her head in her hands, now crying louder and breathing audibly.

Peter picked up the telephone receiver again.

Where is my daughter?

We must perform an autopsy, then you have the choice of cremation here or having your daughter sent there.

I want my daughter sent home. I want Ellie home, do you understand? Send Ellie home, please.

By the time friends descended on the Danforth home, Peter felt as if he were outside his own body, witnessing the events unfold. Periods of curious detachment were followed by the awful awareness of what had happened. His mind could focus on the enormity of the situation only for a brief time and then some mechanism would shut off the awareness and shift his consciousness into a softer, more bearable state.

These periods of relative ease were always followed again by renewed waves of horror and sadness, so that normal eating, sleeping or feeling were out of the question. His entire body was numb and time seemed to flow lazily like thick molasses. Peter wasn’t really sure most of the time whether he was actually awake or simply fighting his way through an unbearable nightmare.

As word of the death spread through their circle of friends, the telephone began to ring incessantly. People came to the front door, extended their arms, and muttered in hushed tones their profound disbelief and wish to help. A physician from down the street whose wife had just born twin daughters came to the door and gave Gretchen a bottle of tranquilizers. Several AA friends came and gave Peter warm, strong hugs and sat quietly to listen and offer prayers.

Somewhere in the midst of this human tide of compassion, Peter grasped that he had yet to notify his family in Piedmont. His first call was to his mother. Haltingly, he found the words to tell her.

Oh, my poor baby! she said, her voice trembling. I’ll be there tomorrow.

Peter then called his stepmother, Denise, because his father was in the University of Piedmont hospital awaiting cardiac bypass surgery and he feared that the shock of the news might prove too much for him. She decided to wait until after the surgery to let him know of his first grandchild’s death. Soon, the telephone was ringing with condolences from far-flung brothers, sisters and relatives as the steady stream of visitors continued.

Jim Morello, a large, good-natured, bearded man who had given Peter many hours of advice and support in the slow refurbishing of his Victorian, drove Peter to the Monterey Peninsula Airport to await Claire’s arrival the next day from Port Townsend. The two regaled each other with small reminiscences of earlier times when their children were younger, and shared memories of the preschool their daughters had attended.

Peter’s eyes anxiously scanned the passengers as they disembarked and headed for the terminal.

It’ll be good to get that kid back home again, huh? Jim said.

Peter saw Claire’s head of thick brown curls in the distance as she walked slowly and dreamily toward them. He threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

Hi, sweetheart, he said, fighting back tears. I’ve missed you. We’re so glad you’re home.

At 10, Claire’s innocence seemed to protect her against some of the devastation. Peter was overcome with a desire to protect and nurture her as the last remaining bit of joy and divinity in his life. As they walked toward Jim’s car, Peter became aware that Claire was the only thing in life that he really cared about. He made a vow to himself that he would never let her down.

Gretchen had been heavily sedated so Peter was called upon therefore to make decisions regarding funeral arrangements. He went to the funeral parlor with his old friend, former drinking buddy and current AA partner Geoff to pick out the casket for Ellie. This is the hardest part, Geoff consoled as they walked together into a large room where the various models of caskets were displayed on shelves that reached to the ceiling, like a warehouse for outfitting the dead. Peter catatonically pointed to one of the monstrosities, then quickly turned and left.

Sweetheart, I’m going down to the funeral home to say goodbye to Ellie and take some of her special things to her, Peter said to Claire. Would you like to come with me? Claire hesitated, then agreed. They drove in teary silence just four blocks to the funeral home and went inside together. Peter retrieved from Ellie’s personal belongings a silver and jade bracelet which he had given her when she graduated from San Carlos School, and grasped it in his hand as he approached her casket with William on one side and Geoff on the other.

Thick makeup covered Ellie’s once-vibrant complexion. Her platinum blonde hair shone radiantly around her head but Peter noticed electrical burns on the inside of her bare arms, which could not be concealed—even with the thick makeup. Ellie died when the aluminum mast of the sailboat on which she was cruising with five friends touched overhead electrical cables from a nearby hydroelectric generating plant. The force of the 20,000-plus volt shock threw her into the lake where she slipped to the bottom. It had taken scuba divers three hours to recover her body.

When Peter approached the side of the casket, he shook violently and began to hyperventilate. William and Geoff steadied him on both sides by clutching his arms tightly. Peter placed the bracelet in the casket on Ellie’s side, and cried out: I love you Ellie. Claire, too, was sobbing and swept quickly past the casket behind Peter.

The diminutive Mexican-American priest wore a white robe and spoke with a thick accent as he conducted the funeral service. The small cemetery chapel in Monterey was filled with friends and family, including several nuns from San Carlos School. The priest offered his own poetic message about the seasons and life cycles, then read a tribute written by one of Ellie’s teenage friends, followed by a short elegy by Peter: You were rainbows and sunsets, giggles and cookies, sunshine and laughter.

Then the pallbearers, friends of Peter and Gretchen, lifted her casket and carried her outside to the freshly dug gravesite, which Peter had selected because of its proximity to a playground across the street. The priest silently circled the casket, sprinkling holy water with his silver chalice. Claire sobbed softly standing next to the casket. A sea of loving bodies enfolded her—touching, offering soft words of comfort—as Ellie was lowered into the cold earth.

Six days later, on his 40th birthday, Peter moved his belongings back into the house to recapture the family and home that meant everything in the world.

My name is Peter and I’m an alcoholic.

He stood before a group of about 150 laughing, talking, smoking sober drunks at an AA meeting that night at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.

I’ve been asked to share for a few minutes some thoughts about my recovery. I want to thank everyone for being there for me recently when my daughter died. You were there for me when I needed you, with your prayers and hugs. I’m quite sure that it was no accident that I found the program when I did. Otherwise, I doubt that I would still be alive myself.

Peter could see several people wiping their eyes, and he distinctly heard a muffled sob in the back of the room.

I started drinking when I was 15, and I drank for 25 years until just a few months ago. The very first time I drank, I got drunk, kissed a girl, got in a fight and got sick. And it never got any better than that! Peter was relieved to hear a ripple of laughter.

"I drank on the weekends after I got married. Then I started to drink a couple of nights during the week, but never at work. Pretty soon I was drinking every night and really getting into the booze on weekends. Before long, I would drink wine at lunch during the week, and then in the afternoons. It got so bad that, just before I came to this program, I could drink until I became unconscious and never get high. I attempted suicide several times, and generally felt that I had made a one-way trip to hell.

"I’ve been hospitalized because of my drinking, and have been arrested because of it. I just thought that was what newspapermen were supposed to do—stay drunk all the time—until I came here and realized that I had a disease. And then you gave me the good news. You told me I would never have to hurt that way again.

You told me I was not alone any more. And you told me to trust God and come to meetings. That’s what I’ve been doing for about three months now, and I must say that I am truly grateful for the love and acceptance I’ve found. You’ve made it possible for me to stay sober, one day at a time.

A roar of applause filled the meeting room when Peter returned to his seat. People shook his hand, patted him on the back, and thanked him. His sponsor, leprechaun-like William, sat next to him and beamed.

Where the hell have you been? Gretchen said. You smell like a goddam ash tray!

I told you I was going to the meeting in Monterey. Yeah, these clothes do stink. I’m putting them in the wash.

As he passed her in the kitchen, Peter could smell the alcohol on her breath. She had the slow, lugubrious, pugnacious expression of a drunken sow. Since Peter moved back into the house in the midst of the turmoil surrounding Ellie’s death, an uneasy truce had been unofficially declared with Gretchen. AA was the most visible and volatile of the current issues that threatened to ignite a powder keg.

William called you today, she said with a disgusted sound in her voice. That man is very strange. He just kept changing the subject when I tried to talk to him about your drinking. Why does everyone in AA just change the subject whenever I try to discuss something of substance?

Part of the reason may be that we take no one’s inventory but our own, Peter replied. William is my sponsor. He’s supposed to call me. Maybe he just wanted to see how I was doing.

What does that mean?

It means that I can talk about my own drinking, but not about anyone else’s drinking.

Oh, all of you AA’s are so goddam self-righteous! she said, pouring herself another glass of wine.

Peter walked out of the house and drove to the Alano Club in Monterey. Alcoholics Anonymous offered him solace, a place where he could be unconditionally accepted and understood, and a conduit for changing old ideas that had brought him only misery. One of the ideas he questioned was that his marriage to Gretchen could be healed of years of drunken behavior and could surmount Ellie’s death. But, increasingly, Peter came to resent the God that had taken Ellie from this world. AA teaches surrender to, and complete reliance on, a higher power to achieve sobriety. Peter’s anger and disappointment held in check any outright embrace of a God that could allow such brutality. He was torn between the comfort and relief that reliance upon this higher power had brought him by removing alcohol from his life, and a deep suspicion that he had only indulged in some elaborate self-delusion to convince himself that the world is a safe and beautiful place full of love—when in fact his experience taught him that the world is a place of terror, disappointment, loss and incredible brutality. Often, had it not been for his love for Claire, Peter would have entertained his thoughts of suicide more thoroughly. Instead, he shoved them at once from his mind and pushed onward.

The Carmel Beacon had become a second haven for him—Peter’s home in the world of ideas and politics. Here, Peter could find a different sort of fellowship and support as well as a sense of accomplishment in getting the newspaper out every Wednesday. Putting words on paper had a healing effect on him and gave the veneer of order to his life. Peter published his elegy to his daughter, with a recent photo of her, in the newspaper as his editorial for the week. He threw himself into extra projects at the newspaper. There was a special section to be completed on the opening of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the yearly fall fashion edition, and the usual detailed coverage of Carmel and Monterey County governments. Peter also was a correspondent for The San Jose Mercury, which had a large appetite for quaint stories about Carmel ice cream cone controversies, dogs sent to jail for walking on the beach, and the political aspirations of local movie stars.

A few days after he returned to work, Peter picked up the telephone at his office to hear his brother Walter calling from Piedmont.

I’ve got some bad news for you, Walter said. Dad passed away this morning after his heart surgery. His last words were, ‘Tell Peter his head is on my shoulder.’

Once again, Peter’s head felt as if it would explode and his body became numb all over.

CHAPTER 2

Peter rode silently in the front of a convoy of black limousines with his stepbrother Gary and sister Polly to the gravesite for his father’s funeral. He remembered the depersonalization he experienced when he first saw the small attic room at Denise’s house in Piedmont which was to be his, having been sent at the age of 13 by his mother to live with his father and stepmother and her two children. The room originally had been a maid’s quarters, and its ceiling was sloped to the roofline, which made the cramped quarters seem even smaller. It was barely big enough for a small studio bed, a window fan to blow some of the hot summer air out of his room and a small desk for his studies. There was a tiny closet, which Peter had to bend over to enter, and a compact bathroom overlooking the driveway.

That summer before Peter arrived at his father’s house had been one of defiance and rebellion. He drove off in his mother’s car without a driver’s license into the streets of downtown Piedmont only to be arrested at 2 a.m. for driving the wrong way on a one-way street in view of the white columns of the Capitol. He slipped out of his bedroom to roam his neighborhood at all hours of the night. He put his hand inside a girl’s blouse to feel her budding breasts—the same girl who later married his stepbrother. One evening that summer, his mother Beverlie took him out for a hamburger and milkshake. Peter had a premonition that this would be her ultimate rejection after years of summer camps, military school, and countless surrogate male figures thrust into his life that he detested. Peter especially recalled his arrival at Greenbrier Military School in the mountains of West Piedmont at the age of 13, an expensive warehouse for forgotten or misplaced boys whose parents either had military aspirations for their sons or who viewed the 150-year-old institution as an alternative to reform school. Peter’s roommate was a huge adolescent from Pittsburgh with black hair and ripening red pimples all over his face, by the name of Mike Kelley.

When Peter tried to sleep in the upper bunk the first night, he was awakened by the squeaking and jostling of the steel structure as Mike masturbated vigorously in the bunk below. Within a few days, Mike proudly showed off his techniques. When his roommate wasn’t around, Peter sat at his desk by the window where he’d placed an upright portrait of his mother, and listened to his scratched recording of Autumn Leaves as the tears of hurt and bewilderment rolled down his cheeks. He stared adoringly at his beautiful mother, wanting to ask what he’d done to deserve this banishment and to ask for her forgiveness and affection. Before he returned home at Christmas time, Peter hustled $13 in cash for buy Christmas presents for his family by polishing the boots of the other cadets. His services were in demand because he’d perfected a technique of spit-shining the patent leather military boots.

I’ve had custody transferred to your father, Beverlie said. We’ll go downtown to city hall tomorrow to talk to the judge and then you can go live with your father.

Peter and his mother climbed the wooden staircase, which spiraled up the cavernous interior of Piedmont City Hall until they reached the judge’s chambers where they waited outside on a wooden bench. Sitting next to them in strained silence was his father—dapper, well dressed, urbane and smiling tensely. Peter was soon distracted by his father’s bright, cheerful manner and his obvious joy at the prospect of having him live under the same roof.

Although his mother had shamed him by saying, You’re just like your father! whenever she was angry with him, Peter had retained childhood memories of pleasant rides in his father’s convertible to visit the train yard and watch engines being switched, trips to the state fair, and outings for ice cream sundaes. On the long drive home in his father’s air-conditioned black Buick convertible, Peter noticed his medical bag in the back seat and reflected how different and how unlike his grandfather his father was, although both were physicians. His grandfather was stern of bearing and given to quick bursts of impatience or anger, while his father was humorous, irreverent and fun. Peter laughed at his father’s burlesque antics as they drove home.

In the midst of this shuffling of residences and caretakers that came to characterize his adolescence, Peter developed a fierce craving for home—his own home where he could feel the solid earth under his feet, enjoy the sunshine and hear the laughter of children as they played outside. He was determined to live a different kind of life than the one he’d known. In this new life, money and social prestige wouldn’t be important at all. What would count the most would be love and closeness, fun and freedom, fresh air and sunshine, and the steady beat of hearts synchronized in a lasting bond of family.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

"We’re so glad to have you here," Denise said flatly, greeting them at the front door. The house was a brick colonial-style structure in the once fashionable West End of Piedmont, within eye and earshot of the Country Club of Piedmont. It was behind Peter’s grandparents’ home, in which his mother grew up and where he had spent many hours as a young boy, riding his wagon on the terraced back yard and practicing piano in his grandmother’s parlor.

Denise’s forehead twitched as she spoke, and her eyes blinked rapidly. Why was she so nervous? Because he had disrupted her life? Even now, 30 years later, he still felt responsible for her discomfort.

As they approached Hollywood Cemetery, Peter recognized many of his father’s old friends in the sea of faces that swept slowly past