Storm

I had it in mind on this early summer camping trip to read a Psalm a day, sacred songs of praise and glory, but also doom, fire, and anger at God, which I definitely can understand. My husband, Si, and I are camping near our home in Idaho, at Bruneau Dunes State Park, a familiar place.

Last January, I was asleep when the ring tone snuck through my Do Not Disturb setting notifying me that my oldest son, Kieran, was dead. 

Black clouds blow in from the west, bellies hanging low, pregnant with rain. A mackerel sky, fishermen say, in the east. The wind is gusty and cool. In the distance, stands the dune.

Bruneau Sand Dune is the tallest single structured sand dune in North America. Wind blows sand away, but I’ve lived in Idaho forty years and it’s still here. Sand waxes and wanes over and through the dune like an hourglass. Tiny grains filter, drain, and speck the surrounding landscape. The dune changes but it stays. I think of darkness, light, and eternity. 

Kieran worked on a tender in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Tenders are vessels that transport fish to a processing ship or plant. He ran engine checks, replaced parts, fine tuned. The work of a Chief Engineer. His spirit is there on the docks and piers, in the wind and sea.  

Air currents whistle through the openings in the camper. It’s sturdy for a trailer, but there are always holes and cracks where the wind slips through. The storm moans, rattling around the corners of the RV, carrying tiny particles of grit. Sand has collected in this basin for twenty thousand years. It piles up on the windward side until the edge of the dune collapses under its own weight. 

My son loved a tall dark-haired young woman named Tonia. He'd lived with her in the Scottish countryside half the year and they’d talked of marriage and children. The things that might have been.

Outside the camper, birds cry out, upset about the pending weather. Around here, lightning flashes and thunder booms without rain, but tonight’s forecast calls for a downpour. Last night a few droplets fell, enough to chase us into the camper, but we left the screen door open. Si and I like to watch storms, feel the wild electric energy, smell the earth. Forecasters predict approximately when, but not what a storm will do: what branches it will knock down, who might get struck by lightning, what fire might start, what flash flood might drown someone. 

You don’t know the damage until it’s over.

Over the dune, wind intensifies into howls, like a mother keening in grief and the rain pelts down, thrumming on the aluminum roof. I miss my son: his laughter, his good heart, the man he could have been. Healing doesn’t come easy. Grief is wily. It sits in wait and surprises you when you least expect it.

A priest told me that Kieran is alive in another dimension, an invisible world beyond the physical universe. That I’ll see him again someday.    

Si opens the screen door of the camper to let in a breath of air, a fresh, clean smell. The rain slows to a drizzle. An edge of cloud cover appears, where before darkness reached to the horizon.  The ancient words of Psalm Twenty-Three come to mind. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Patches of blue sky shine through and the wind dies down. For a moment, shadow and sun exist as one. 

Love crosses the boundaries between space and time. Sometimes memories stir more solace than pain. Clouds part, a glow backlights the dark, and I whisper Kieran’s name.

Kim Steinberg and her husband, Si, live in the small high desert city of Boise, Idaho. Kim enjoys tromping through the foothills, walking by the river, and traveling to places unknown. Three half-read books sit on her side table waiting to be finished. Kim lost her oldest son, Kieran, January 20, 2023.