A Sign from Riverboy
by Marge Cline
My son Mike hung himself on May 1, 1999. About a year after his death, I received the story below from one of his friends. Mike believed in "synchronicity ", i.e. coincidental occurrences that happen for no apparent reason, but in the big picture, actually can be determined to have a purpose. A great number of these have happened, and while I can't always say why, perhaps they indicate his spirit is still with us.
Nelle Rogers was a special friend of Mike's from Camp Manito-wish. As a sixth grade camper, she was one of the kids Mike shared his love of paddling with. She confessed to me that she had had a crush on Mike the first year she met him. I gave her the book that I have kept of "signs" from Mike and after reading it, she told me she too had a story that should be included in its pages. Her words, rather than mine, indicate that from the day he died, Mike was sending signs to family and friends.
A Sign from Riverboy
by Nelle Rogers
April 26, 1999
"How do I always get myself into these situations?" I moaned. Heather listened with a compassionate ear. "And I never leave myself an out." God I wish there was someway to bow out of this one gracefully. It was the end of the world, the way I saw it. I had accepted a prom date whose mere presence I could barely suffer, to say nothing of dancing with him. To a 16 year old, that's tragic.
"I have faith that you'll figure something out. You always do when you want something badly enough. " Her words were almost comforting, but they melted around me, sinking me lower into the depths of despair. Anyway, I didn't see myself anywhere near that kind of luck. Who does?
May 1, 1999
The night before ACT's....What a night to be restless. I go out on my porch seeking peace in the fresh evening. Even though no one is home and the earth hasn't gone to sleep yet, it's too loud outside. I sit, screened - in from the bugs and my environment, staring at the full moon rising above the ink - black treeline. The wind is blowing around me. I shake my head and blink my eyes as the moon reminds me of God. Like a Compass Rose, three short rays project off the moon (north, east and west) and one long ray spreads its light all the way down to the earth, shedding light on the ground between the house and the forest. Bottles clank together from the direction of the black grove. God is giving me the light to see this trespasser in the woods? For a second I sit paralyzed, terrified more of my instinct than of the perpetrator I've conjured up. I look back at the moon for an answer. Closing my eyes slowly (quietly, as if someone would hear them if I was too hasty) and opening them again, the cross has not disappeared. The sound of the bottles clanking again. Simultaneously, the phone rings. My imagination forces me to blast from my seat, into my house, up the stairs. and into my room where I can hide. The phone is for my sister, but she still isn't home. I settle myself in for the night. As I fall into a early sleep (comforter tight above my head, because, if I can't see them, they can't see me), I wonder about my sign from God. Relaxing; coming out for air, I wonder, also, if maybe I am crazy.
May 10, 1999
"Hi, is Nelle there please?"
"Yeah? " I mumble. I look at my clock. It's half past midnight. Where's the comfort in that? "It's me, " I grumble.
"Hi, Nelle. It's Amy Duchelle..."
My Angel! I could find solace in her gentle, maternal voice. (She was my surrogate mother, leader and friend on a canoeing expedition in Canada the previous summer.) I turn the light on in my room. How strange it is of her to call me so late - and on a school night.
"What's wrong?" I always ask questions that I tend not to really want the answers to. I often think that I have a strange understanding of circumstances at odd moments like this one. So I ask - hoping, praying inside that my premonitions are wrong, but they rarely are.
"It's, um...It's Riverboy..." I see a thousand memories of my greatest teacher all at once, illustrations of his selfless acts and his pure heart...
The first time I held a paddle, I was eleven. He was so patient with us - not to mention attractive to my premature hormones. A dragonfly landed on me, and I pretended not to be scared. My flinch, controlled as I tried to make it, gave me away. He consoled me in an instant. "You know it's good luck to have a dragon fly land on you" And so began my steadfast love affair with these delicate damsel flies. No less with the vessels he taught us to guide.
I see myself the following year at Nash, the dining hall at camp. I am pretending to take a picture of Brookie, because she's sitting next to him at the Staff table that I wish I was sitting at. She flinches, pretending that she doesn't like the attention. Seeing her apparent distress, Riverboy says to me, "No cameras in Nash." I feel ashamed, but not too quickly that I can't get the shot that now sits framed on my vanity.
I see us sitting on the volley ball court by the boathouse, creating patterns in the sand with our hands and bare feet. He's advising me on my most recent thirteen year old crisis: My best friend has kissed the boy I'm in love with. (And while I was out of town...The nerve!) After listening to the situation with his patient ear, he said, "Get rid of the guy; give the girl another chance. Friends will be there for you forever; boys won't." Thus sparking my support of the timeless theory - friends before the opposite sex, a theory I still abide by.
I see my rebellious self at fourteen now. I'm at my first concert, standing outside the Rosemont Horizon, smoking a Marlboro Red and drinking a beer. I haven't seen Riverboy in over a year, because he wasn't at camp the past summer. A glance of his familiar face. Riverboy? "Riverboy!" I watch him turn a little to the left, a little to the right, looking up as if he expects to see some celestial being calling out his name. How absolutely magical, I think, to see this old soul outside of camp. We do our best at catching up amid the noise. I smile to myself, thinking that he is the only staff member that I can imagine just hanging out with. "This is so weird," I say, gesturing to our occupied hands. Barriers are foreign to him.
"Hey, it's wonderful. This is how it's supposed to be." He lives in Palatine, and I should come out and paddle with him some time. On my way out of the concert, he finds me and hands me the flap to his Camel filters: Michael Cline (Riverboy if you wish) 847-359-5047 Three years later, that note lives in my wallet among my other outdated numbers.
I have just returned from a fourteen day trip in Canada. I'm staring at a picture of a relatively tiny speck in the middle of a huge canoe. "Who's that a picture of?" I want to know. Who could it be of? At that moment, I realize that he is a teacher because everything he does is an extension of his self. He is rolling a North Canoe that seats 20 people. This picture is unheard of. I learn that he's not in camp because he's leading a trip. It's then that I decide to write to him and let him know how much he has affected my life up to that point. I explain that I wouldn't be the person I am today if he hadn't touched my life. I tell him that I don't know if I ever would have taken these trips if it hadn't been for his passion, his patience, my awe at his skill, my need to impress him and the aching desire I have to gain just a sliver of the talent he has had from birth. And most importantly, "Thank you."
I see him in his small weathered solo canoe that looks as if he's paddled oceans and beaten Jaws off the bow with his paddle. We're paddling into South Bay just after sunrise. He paddles so definitely and easily on his own. Sometimes alone is the best way to be. I have just returned from the happiest forty-five days of my life, with my six forever friends, from my Motherland - Saskatchewan. It's comforting to be back at camp, paddling under the rising, purple sun. Just before shore, he flips around in his boat, lifts up the stern as if it were a vestigial organ, but not yet extinct to him. He rests it on the sand without making a noise. I'm not really sure what just happened. My fellow apprentices and I almost laugh, mouths stuck open, at the four dimensional art displayed before us. Like a nymph, he leaps lightly out of the boat, onto land, and says, "Anything not to wet-foot it on a cold day." That's never been done before. We're all sure of it. What a treat to see him here.
I'm sixteen now, visiting Miss Amy Duchelle in Madison. "Riverboy," I almost whisper so as not to disturb the innocent diners at Noodles. "Riverboy!" I speak this time in a more normal tone, but it's too loud and busy inside the restaurant. If I could just get around all these people! I spot a side door at the other end and quickly make my way out and around. "Riverboy!" He looks up, to Heaven again. "Riverboy!" He's shocked and smiling. Hard at work, he still finds time for one of his wonderfully comforting hugs. "I thought that was my inner voice reminding me of camp. I don't hear that name very often anywhere else." What a treat to see him here.
I'm seventeen now, applying to work at camp. How bizarre. I remind myself that "...that's how it's supposed to be..." I find Riverboy's aged phone number. I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have write me a recommendation for camp. A lonely voice answers the other end. "Hi, is Mike there, please?"
"This is Mike." No it's not.
"This is Nelle. How are you?"
"I'm all right...How are you doing?"
My entire body feels a black hole sucking everything down. I decide I'm crazy. The life that's usually vibrating off of him without any words is muted. The passion I have always admired in him is gone. All I can see is blackness and distance at the other end. His heart is not on the line. I shouldn't have called.
"Were you sleeping?" I can't imagine that's the case. It's four o'clock in the afternoon. I figure that's a better option that that this strange voice is his.
"Yeah..." he breathes. "But that's okay." Sleeping? - at this hour? I explain why I called (briefly) , apologize for waking him, and tell him that I hope it' s not too much trouble. "No. no...like I said," (I can hear the distance in his voice ) "...I'd be honored to work with you at camp next summer..." His words are empty, floating on the air far above me, twirling around somewhere without any direction. I hang up confused. That's not the Riverboy I know. I shouldn't have called.
Amy's voice grounds me, brings me back to earth. "He actually, he...He died." The certainty of this statement stuck in the phone, in my ears, in her mouth, in the air. I rub my forehead, very much awake now - and very confused.
I manage, "How?" very matter - of - factly. Any form of emotion would be insulting.
"I'm not sure exactly. I just talked to Sam. He said his parents alluded to something about suicide."
Thank the Lord for her hushed, comforting voice.
"I'm sorry. I thought I should call though. The service is in Palatine, the night of the fifteenth. I thought you'd probably want to go. I'm sorry. I know how much he influenced you."
"No..." breathe... "thank you for calling." About to hang up, I need more. "Wait Amy? When did this happen?"
"The first of the month." And that was that. I hang up. I'm alone now. The loud silence weighs me down, but not to sleep. I know I won't make it back to sleep that night. A piece of me is gone now. I sit outside for the rest of the night, staring at the waning moon, listening to the wind rushing through me, breathing in the fresh spring earth.
I heard the world wake up that morning. And even though it was almost dawn, as I made my way inside, I sent a kiss up to the sky. "Good night, Riverboy. Good night, Moon."
At five thirty, like always, I exercised; at six thirty, I got in the shower. I went to school as if nothing in my life had changed. Full of unshed tears and unanswered questions, I entered the school - deaf to the noise and numb. Terrified of life, I knew I had to tell Gavon and Simonie. This soul of rare beauty had affected them, too. His death was a fact that I recited to them, detached from what I was actually saying. Words travel fast at BHS, especially with my sister dating a shallow athlete. I bowed out of my prom date.
The service was that same night. The loss of this passionate soul brought people together from all over the country. We remembered and cried, and paddled and smiled. And we roared out of the parking lot in my friend Mikey's VW bus with the Dead blaring. "This is how he would have wanted it to be," Mike had assured me. "This is how it's supposed to be." 
|
