COMING HOME
IS LESS OF A VENTURE
Journal of Healing – Aug. 13, 2003
By Mary Koch
You’re driving home from summer vacation. You make that last turn onto your block
or your road with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. Is the house OK? Then relief.
There is the welcoming, familiar look of home.
For husband John and me that last turn used to be the sweeping curve where Highway 97
turns north into the Okanogan Valley. As newspaper owners, we felt a proprietary
responsibility for the whole valley, not just our house. We would look with anxious
anticipation toward the sky. If it was a good homecoming, the sky would be clear. But
sometimes smoke billowed from the mountains and hung ominously over the valley.
"There’s a fire," John would sigh. We knew that while we were away our
small news crew – stretched by our absence – had been covering the story.
Fires are always larger than the territory they consume. Beyond the havoc and
destruction are the stories. They are usually sad stories, which is why they must be told.
* * *
THE LAST TIME I covered a wildfire was a blistering Saturday afternoon, the
second summer after John’s stroke. Some of our staff were on vacation, and I was en
route to the office to catch up.
John was with me, riding in the back of the van in his wheelchair. It would not be a
fun afternoon for him. He could do nothing but stare at his former office, blocked by
paralysis from doing the work he loved.
I heard the fire siren and right away spotted smoke near Highway 155. "Let’s
check it out," I told John. "I should be able to get some easy pictures from the
road."
I followed the fire trucks at a discreet distance, but as I barreled up the highway I
started to ask myself: Just how discreet is this – covering a wildfire with a totally
paralyzed stroke patient in the back of the van?
I shot a couple pictures and high-tailed it out of there. It was, I finally admitted to
myself, time to quit the news business. You can be a conscientious newswoman or a
conscientious caregiver, but you can’t be both.
* * *
HOMECOMINGS from this summer's vacation were a daily event. We went to Chelan
for the annual Bach Fest, driving down each day for the concerts and returning to our own
beds at night. We averaged two hours on the road for each hour of music. I figured our
fossil fuel consumption qualified it as an all-American vacation.
Mid-way through the week, we rounded the curve on Highway 97 and spotted smoke.
"That big mushroom cloud in the distance is the fire in the Pasayten
Wilderness," I explained to my mother, who had joined us for the week. "But THAT
smoke," I pointed to a separate plume, "is much closer to home."
Thirty minutes later we drove past the devastating fire that destroyed and damaged
homes, demolishing remnants of the past and charring futures for families who lived and
loved in those homes.
The reporter in me still aches to stop, witness, record. Perhaps by telling the
stories, reporters feel they somehow help in an otherwise helpless situation.
The caregiver in me kept driving, eyes on the highway, intent on a safe homecoming.
These days the final turn on our route home is less sweeping. We round the quiet corner
onto Bartlett Street, where the white stucco house waits intact, where two anxious dogs in
the window are barking their welcome.
(Mary Koch writes about health care issues and her experiences as a
family caregiver. Her husband, retired newspaper publisher John E. Andrist, was severely
disabled by a stroke in 1993. They welcome your letters at P.O. Box 3346, Omak WA 98841 or
e-mail them.)
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