Go Tell it on the Mountain

So here I am. Tucked away in a lodge in Tanzania, so close to Kilimanjaro I can almost feel its shadow caressing my body. Just a little more than a year ago I swore I'd spend my 51st birthday climbing Kili, one of the Seven Summits, as the tallest mountain on each continent are called. I'm five days late. I'm okay with that.

I spent this afternoon packing my kit bag, which the porters will carry, and my pack, which seems disconcertingly heavy - and that's without the six liters of water I'll be lugging. I'm trying to drink as much as possible now, before we set off. There is little that is as important in high altitude trekking than staying hydrated. I learned that on my rehearsal climb to Colorado's Quandary Peak when I ran out of water. It was amazing how fast altitude sickness hit me once I stopped drinking. 

I'm less than 24 hours away from the moment I'll set foot on Kilimanjaro and yet I still can't quite believe I'm here. I'm disconnected from my emotions, though I can feel them gliding under the surface of everything I experience. Maybe I'm afraid to let them rise, because I know once they do they will be uncontrollable. 

It seems years, decades, even, since I pledged to climb Kili. So much has changed. I've been to Israel and the Galapagos Islands, both life altering trips in their own way. I've roamed around the South with a new lover, who was beautiful and wild and reminded me of a Kerouac character. I write for Woman's Day now, a twice-monthly column on the magazine's website that challenges and delights me in equal measure. I've grown. I'm immeasurably stronger than I was before my heart was broken to bits by loss.

But I still struggle. I still feel a far distance from joy. My brother's death over three years ago still can bring me sobbing to my knees. I still struggle to process the end of my relationship with a man I thought would love me forever. I still mourn and fear my parent's disintegration, hastened, for them both, I suspect, by my mother's recent dementia diagnosis. 

I ask myself almost daily when I'll feel peace again, contentment. I hope that when I summit Kilimanjaro's 19,341 feet that I will leave some of the pain of the last three years there. I brought a few handfuls of my brother's ashes with me to toss at the sky, to be taken by the wind and spread like stardust over the continent where mankind began. 

I don't kid myself that this will erase or even alter the pervasive sorrow caused by his death I live with every day. But then I don't want it to, because with this sorrow I honor him. And I know standing atop the highest free-standing mountain in the world won't save my parents. Maybe I'm simply running from them, from how sad their decline is, from how much it hurts to witness to it. But I want to make them proud of me. I want them to find pleasure in the exploits of their mountain-climbing daughter.

My friend Sera gave me a small Mayan talisman in the shape of a man for my birthday. It's to represent the only person who ever broke my heart, and the misery his brutal leave-taking caused. It's to represent the love I still feel for him, too, the confusing mix of rage and fondness the thought of him brings. I'm to leave it on top of Kilimanjaro, in the snow or scree, to be worn down by the elements. To be forgotten. Because in the end, anyone who demands you be less than you are doesn't deserve the space in your soul his memory takes.

Serafice, and my trainer, Steve Jury, who ascended Kilimanjaro last year, both tell me that once I drag my body to summit I will be emptied of much of what weighs me down. Climbing Kilimanjaro will almost break me. Only about half of the people who attempt the summit make it. It will hurt. It will reduce me to my most elemental self, allowing so much that is unnecessary, that harms, to dissolve.

I hope they're right. I'm ready. Because once that weight is lifted, who knows how high I can go?