NO SHORTCUTS TO
THE RIGHT PATHWAY

Journal of Healing – Oct. 19, 2005

By Mary Koch

  My husband’s paid caregivers rearranged their lives and worked long hours so I could visit my mother in Tacoma last week. En route, I had a stop to make in north Seattle, so I allowed myself the rare treat of driving Steven’s Pass, which is the lovelier but usually longer route.

            As I drove, drinking in the glorious fall colors, I played a book on tape, a commentary on the Twenty-Third Psalm by Rabbi Harold Kushner (famous for writing the book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”). It was almost too rich an experience – like eating a hot fudge sundae while drinking a chocolate milk shake on the side.

            Nonetheless, the 23rd is good driving material. There is, for example, that line about being guided along “right pathways.” The rabbi warned against the folly of taking shortcuts in life, and I was reminded of a veteran nurse who helped train me to care for my paralyzed husband.

            “Never take shortcuts,” she warned. “Never reach across the bed when you should walk around. Every shortcut will create at least twice the amount of trouble in the end.”

*     *     *

            THE RABBI reached the valley of the shadow of death about the time I got to Tumwater Canyon. Usually the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains are royally outfitted in autumn with golden aspen and bronze tamarack. The Tumwater these days sports a panoply of brilliant colors from the more fiery end of the color spectrum. The ground cover that cloaks the naked mountain walls has turned red, yellow and orange as if to echo the flames that raced through that canyon only a few years ago.

            Above the breath-taking color loom the charred skeletons of trees, throwing a shadow of black stripes across the riotous hues. The shadow of death.

            Rabbi Kushner notes that humans are the only creatures to have foreknowledge of their death. That awareness is the shadow under which all mortals live. It is not death that is so fearsome, but dying, he observes. Yet the color that returns to a forest after a fire is like the promise of a rainbow. “I shall fear no evil.”

*     *     *

            “FOR GOODNESS and mercy” got me as far as Woodinville, where I did exactly what both nurse and rabbi – not to mention the psalmist – had warned against.  I had a fine set of directions from the Internet but impetuously tossed them aside and devised my own “shortcut.”

            Ignoring the fact that street numbers were going in the opposite order of what I thought they should, I became amazingly lost. I had no idea there was such a residential labyrinth north of Seattle. Eventually, inevitably, I stumbled onto Interstate 5, the clogged freeway I usually love to avoid. I gratefully coasted onto the “on” ramp, stunned that I’d been traveling due north when all the time I thought I was progressing at least somewhat southerly.

            I arrived two hours late for my appointment, foreswearing shortcuts for all time.

            How soon we forget. The next day I was driving with Mother to a high school chum’s new condominium. I’d been given explicit directions but compulsively chose my own course. We didn’t get lost, but I had to admit that if I’d followed directions we would have arrived sooner.

            “When will I learn?” I moaned. My 89-year-old mother offered no encouragement.

            “I’ve learned it all,” she said. “But now I can’t remember it.”

© Mary Koch, Omak, Washington 2005

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