Burning bridges…
The first time I saw the Dewey Bridge was on a drive with Eddie. We were in his truck, along the back way from Cisco to Moab, camera gear piled in the backseat and the radio scratching out gospel wails.
The highway hopped and hugged the muddy Colorado, and we studied the light on the rolling wild as we waited for the lowering cut of the river through the rising cliff faces. In a town that’s not there anymore, there was the Dewey Bridge, white and stark against the open cerulean sky, like the skeleton of a geometric cloud.
I’m sure I have a photo of it the way it was, clean and angular over the boiling brown of the river, but that was in the film days and my memories will have to do until I can find and scan the slide.
It was a favorite stop of ours, whoever came along, even when The Wife would roll her eyes as her husband and her father both jumped out of the truck and set off for yet another admiring examination of its sturdy wooden presence, lens caps popping off, and we couldn’t explain it to her. The best we could do was that we enjoyed it because it was here. You never know, we said. It could be gone tomorrow.
This is what it looked like the last time I saw it. Eddie was home in bed with the tubes and drugs and infections that would kill him. The Family and I had tents and sleeping bags and a vague itinerary, but I wanted to visit the bridge to see the damage caused by one little boy playing with fire.
The Boy, our boy, not the little boy who burned the bridge, had just been designated the official matchstriker for our campfires on the trip, so I also wanted to take advantage of this opportunity for teaching respect for the flames.
When Eddie died, there was some struggle. Not just with his death, which was difficult enough. He and The Wife’s mother had been divorced for many years, and his wife, who The Boy had come to think of as his grandma, had evidently harbored some resentment for Eddie’s daughters from his first marriage.
The evidence is distasteful and petty, but the end result made it clear that Eddie was what had held the two sides together all these years, and with him gone there is no crossing.
The Boy doesn’t understand, and it saddens him. And really, all I can do is show him this photo and tell him to remember when it was good that Eddie was here.
And that burning bridges is never a good idea.
In: I'm the Dad, life · Tagged with: Dewey Bridge
on August 8, 2008 at 8:58 am
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That’s about a half-dozen shades of sad.
on August 8, 2008 at 12:22 pm
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thanks for stopping by, guys, and for the nice words.
twobusy, I’ve really been enjoying your blog.