Jared Bloch
Enrique at Harley Davidson's headquarters
Milwaukee, Winsconsin - There is nothing finer than going to your best-friend-of-20-years’ wedding, unless it going to his wedding and catching up while riding motorcycles around aimlessly.
I wake up again as we are arriving to Milwaukee and see white-capped waves breaking on Lake Michigan.
Jared Bloch
One of my recurring fears is the image of locking myself out of my apartment. I check, once, twice for my keys before leaving in the morning and even jingle them in my pocket on my way to work. And today when I went to log in to my blog for Geneva Lunch, and seeing the error message, I felt the same sinking feeling I imagine, standing outside the apartment door with information slowly dawning that my home is suddenly inaccessible; I panicked thinking I had confused my login information yet again, until my wife informed me that Geneva Lunch has moved to a new format, erasing the old login codes.
Jared Bloch
Valais, Switzerland – It is an evasion of sorts and an escape marked by sadness. My sister in-law passed away last week at the age of 52; too young a death to accept, and yet that is exactly what my wife and I need to do in order to honor the life-affirming woman that Conny was.
Leaving Geneva for the Valais
In that spirit, I headed to the mountains of Valais, invited by friends to take over their chalet while they were on vacation.
Part of me is reticent as I board the train with my faithful dog Rocky of 12 years to head off into the hills. I am not experienced at mourning, and even as I savour the Paul Auster novel I am reading on the train, I think of my love, rushing off to Colombia to bury her sister.
Only the book’s bittersweet commentary on love and loss consoles me as we trundle along through the pass from Vaud into Valais. Riders are a mixed bag of kids soaking up the European summer, moms taking their kids out to visit out of touch friends, and locals headed out to the country for some fresh air.
Upon arrival in Sierre I ask the local bus driver if I can stuff my mountain bike into the cargo hold.
Surprisingly, given the sparse traffic and large bay for camping equipment or similar, he responds that I will have to get the funicular up to Montana, and then ride down the mountain to my destination, Mollens.
Jared Bloch
[Ed. note: Jared Bloch's post is so moving that I am leaving it at the top of the page for a couple days, to encourage as many people as possible to read it.]
Tuesday,
My daughter wakes up lazily – she’s on vacation – and calls to me from her bedroom.
“Dad come here, come here before you go. I had a dream of the baby,” she tells me. “She was born and she was a girl. She had gray eyes and brown hair.”
I smile imagining the baby she is describing and savor this thought on my way to work. Some days earlier she had a nightmare she told me about, where she was with friends and they all died. I tell her that dreams are metaphors and that they point us in a direction but don’t tell us the whole story.
Two days later,
Our little girl's first and last footprints
My wife calls me at work, desperate, telling me her water has just broken; she is five months pregnant.
I race the ambulance to the hospital on my bicycle and arrive just as they are pulling her out on a stretcher. She is pallid and terrified, crying. They admit us into an operating room and connect her to all the lines and machines meant to sustain life.
After 10 minutes a doctor comes in and tells us what we already know – she is in labor and she will give birth shortly.
We ask the doctor if there is a chance of saving the baby, any chance, can we keep any hope? He tells us first in French and then in English, that a 5 month old baby cannot survive outside of the womb.
He repeats this to make sure we understand and says he will return in a few minutes to confirm we are ready to give up our baby even as she enters the world – but really we have no choice in the matter.