Tethered

“The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.” – Raymond Carver

Ryan loved to fish.

Every summer, Ryan would load up the boat with my husband, Scott, and his uncle Darcey, snacks packed, bait in the cooler and enough gear that you would think they were planning to survive on the water for a week instead of a few hours.

I would wave them off from the shore.

Sure, I was invited, but apparently, being silent is key to successful fishing. It might come as a surprise that this is a concept I struggle with.

Quiet for me lasts about as long as the snacks and a carefully read People magazine.

They could spend hours out there, waiting for that first tug on the line.

I suppose that is the art of fishing. You cast your line out across the water and wait, never quite knowing if anything will take hold.

For a while, nothing. Then that first small tug. The line pulls taut and suddenly you know there is something on the other end.

Sometimes you reel it in. Sometimes you lose it along the way.

And then you cast again.

I think people find each other much the same way. Sometimes a connection takes hold and stays. Sometimes it goes slack. Sometimes, after years apart, you pick up the line and find there is still something there.

Some of the people in our lives have been with us from the beginning. Others have reconnected after time apart, and still others have joined us along the way. Each has mattered in their own way.

I could tell a hundred stories about the people who have found their way into our lives and what they have come to mean to us.

One friend of ours never even knew Ryan. This year, he bought hundreds of green ribbon pins and started handing one to every customer who comes through his door.

Every single one.

He never met my son.

He is a father. A son. A brother. A husband. Maybe somewhere in all of those roles is an understanding of what it means to love someone so much that the thought of losing them is unbearable.

Maybe he doesn’t need to have known Ryan to understand.

There were other friends who looked at that first year after Ryan disappeared and understood, before we said a word, that we couldn’t do things the old way.

The holidays came. Birthdays came. All of those firsts you don’t ask for came anyway.

Abandoning everything we had always done felt a little like abandoning Ryan, too.

So they made space for us inside their own celebrations. A way to hold onto the traditions we knew without it feeling like we were forgetting.

Some of those people are still beside us.

Others aren’t.

I suppose some connections are a bit like catch-and-release. You hold onto them for a while, and then you don’t.

I used to think that somehow made them less important.

I don’t anymore.

Not everyone is meant to stay forever. It doesn’t mean they weren’t exactly who we needed while they were there.

So many people have filled our lives in ways both big and small, often without ever knowing they were doing it. They showed up. They knew when to call. They made us laugh when we didn’t think we could. They have understood and accepted even the messiest parts of us

All those little things added up.

An abundance of plenty we didn’t know we would need.

Maybe the holy places aren’t places at all.

When Ryan disappeared, hundreds of people came.

Then thousands cared.

People searched mountains and roadsides. They brought food. They sat with us. They sent messages. They wore green. They remembered birthdays and anniversaries and days that probably meant nothing on their own calendars but everything on ours.

The years have passed, and so many of them are still here.

Still saying his name.

Still wearing green.

Still looking.

Still reminding us that Ryan matters.

I don’t know how we would have survived without them.

For years I think I believed Scott and I were the ones holding onto the line. Holding onto Ryan. Holding onto hope. Holding onto whatever pieces of the life we had before February 17, 2018, that we could keep from slipping away.

But maybe I had that wrong.

Maybe all this time there have been people holding the other end.

And when our hands got tired, they held on a little tighter