It burns like a blazing fire; like a mighty flame. Many waters
cannot quench love, rivers cannot wash it away.
— Solomon
I’m alone in the Alps in Trentino-Alto Adige, the mountainous region on the border between Austria and Italy exhuming an ancient iceman who’s been entombed in the frozen ice layer for several millennia.
Why I’m here instead of being back in Toronto working out a family crisis is a question beyond me—suffice it to say, I’m elusive as the abominable snowman I’m tasked with excavating…
And truth is, it’s a distraction from a personal dilemna for which I have no immediate solution.
My daughter broke contact with Linda and me for 3 years and got married without inviting or even notifying us.
Yeah, so maybe I’m bitter and burying myself as well, while I free some ancient herdsman from his unfortunate entrapment.
But being the dispassionate professional I’ve always been, I spend the next few hours inside the tent meticulously picking away at the icy sheet that entombs the corpse.
He’s a young huntsman and as I work, I puzzle over what led him to hike in these treacherous mountains.
He looks to be no more than twenty—his reddish brown hair, still perfectly preserved.
I notice a brown leather satchel in the ice beneath his hand. I chip away for twenty minutes until I finally free it.
The leather flap is frozen shut, so I place it near the propane lantern to let it thaw.
While waiting, I notice tattoo marks on the youth’s arm just above the wrist—I’ve seen them before—symbols of betrothal.
The tattoo was etched into the boy’s flesh with a flint knife smeared with ashes. Perhaps, by his father.
This was not just a young man out hunting—this was a man betrothed—on a journey to fetch his wife.
I sit back and stare at the youth’s face. In the repose of death the features have relaxed back into the face of a child.
A great sadness descends upon me. I grieve for this grown boy—for the parents who would never see him again.
They’ve lost a son. They’ll never look upon his face, hold him in their arms, or say goodbye. They can’t bury his body or mark his grave.
His child bride is also bereft. She’ll grieve his loss the rest of her days.
A newlywed, just like my daughter, cut off from family.
I pull back the tent flap and go outside and stand looking at the snowy waste.
The sky has cleared. Overhead, the great constellations slowly rotate.
The vault of heaven is like a celestial star dial—the circling stars marking times and seasons.
I can’t comprehend the number of nights he has lain here beneath the stars. Cut off. Abandoned.
I begin to cry—for him—for me—and for our own loss.
But the stars are indifferent—unaware of the frisson sweeping over me—they’re also oblivious of the child-man in the tent.
The black emptiness is alien—unfeeling—dead.
This is no place for me.
I go back in and pick up the sodden leather satchel and carefully pull the flap back.
Inside are stones—black beads of glass. A wedding gift.
Loss upon loss.
I think of our lives—our struggle and pain.
Gunnar is spending the night with friends—Linda is sitting alone by the fire—Pauline is living estranged from us.
And I’m somewhere back in time, grieving another family’s loss.
It’s strange.
Inner space can be as desolate as outer space.
Tomorrow, Gunnar will come and we’ll extract the boy’s remains.
He’ll probably end up on display like the previous iceman—a lifeless shell of what he was.
The curious will come—point to his tattoos and wonder.
But what he is will be lost to them.
They’ll see the desiccated corpse, but the inner mystery won’t be discerned.
Still, perhaps parents like Linda and me will come who will know—who may stand in the gap and grieve for him.
Will they understand his last thought was to scrape his way up from the grave and come back to them?
Will they perceive that his outstretched hand says it all?
Perhaps not…
But I’ll do what he cannot—I’ll go home and try to bridge the gap, the rift between our daughter and us.
One loss is enough, and one more, far too much. Life is too short for remorse.