A Higher Calling Read online

  We began our twelve-hour drive to Highland Falls, New York, with no furniture and no apartment to go to. On the drive up, we were trying to look up places to live, but we weren’t having any luck. When we were about two hours outside New York, we found a Realtor online who told us she had a perfect place for us. We said we’d take it, sight unseen. We didn’t even look at the pictures. We signed the contract in a McDonald’s parking lot at 10:30 p.m., as soon as we arrived in Highland Falls.

  We didn’t know it at the time, but our 467-square-foot apartment was a former carriage house owned by J. P. Morgan, a famous banker who once owned a huge estate in the area. While the horses and other four-legged friends were long gone, the eight-legged critters had taken up residence. Without any furniture, they were easy to see as they crept about on their long legs, making audible crunches when we stepped on them.

  We didn’t waste any time hopping on Craigslist to find some stuff for our tiny apartment. Somehow, we ended up looking at furniture in a $2 million mansion. We had rented a U-Haul to pick up a couch and a bookcase, but once we arrived, the family told us they were moving and wanted to get rid of a bunch of stuff.

  “Anything you want you can have,” they told us. Rachel and I looked at each other with wide eyes like, You say whaaaaat!?!? It was such a God thing. He kept providing when we had nothing. We ended up leaving with the couch and bookcase, plus a bedroom set, end tables, gold-rimmed mirrors, a mattress set, a table, and chairs. And they didn’t charge us for anything! We took so much of their furniture that our U-Haul was completely full, so the man gave us the keys to his trailer. We hitched it to the back of the U-Haul, and he asked that we just drop it off at his brother’s house after we’d unpacked. Then he asked if I’d ever towed a trailer before.

  “Yeah, of course!” I said.

  I’d never driven a trailer in my life, but I wasn’t going to admit that, absolutely not. All men instinctively know how to drive with a trailer attached. It comes naturally to us. Just spin the wheel this way, then swing it back, and voilà! Too easy.

  Once the furniture was loaded, I started to back down, and we waved goodbye to their entire family standing at the top of the driveway. I turned the wheel this way, then swung it back. Immediately the trailer started to go off the driveway. I pulled forward and tried again. I spent twenty minutes trying to get out of the driveway.

  The kind man came up to me after the sixth attempt. “You want some help?”

  “Nah, I’m good,” I said as Rachel covered her face with her hands trying to hide her smile. “The steering wheel is being a little figgity, that’s all.”

  All the while, Rachel was coaching me from the passenger seat like she was a grand master trailer operator and pit crew chief. We eventually got out of that complicated driveway, and to this day there are probably tire tracks in that yard. I bet they had to plant a garden to cover up the ruts. Good thing they were moving.

  RACHEL

  The unexpected generosity of total strangers almost made up for the tiny apartment with no dishwasher, no washing machine and dryer, and all the bugs. At least we had a real bed now! I love looking back at where we started because everything we built together was from the ground up and due to the generosity of others. I’ve learned that generosity produces joy on all fronts. There is joy in giving, knowing you’re helping someone. Joy is also felt when you’re on the receiving end, knowing someone cares enough about you to help.

  A few months later, when Harold’s recovery time at West Point was over, we moved on post at Fort Benning, Georgia, where Harold was stationed.

  We felt like royalty walking into our 950-square-foot apartment! Our new home was double the size of our last home, which meant we definitely did not have enough furniture to fill it. Luckily, we were only about two and a half hours from Harold’s family, and they gave us some of their old furniture to help fill it up.

  Harold’s grandma (Ganga, as we call her) had a basement that looked like an antique furniture thrift store, and she basically let me go wild. She had everything from unused oven mitts to mounted deer heads, and she usually had two of each item. She would pick up random things and ask me if we wanted them. The best of all was an old washing machine that still worked.

  “We’ll take it,” I said with enthusiasm.

  It sure beat driving to the laundromat and always needing quarters on hand to wash our clothes. We brought that baby home and found it came with a nice surprise inside: a dead rat! I can’t help but laugh thinking about how cheap we were. We could have bought ourselves a new washer, but I’m pretty low maintenance and didn’t want to spend the extra money.

  I must admit having a washing machine did make things easier, once the rat and dead rat smell were gone. We still didn’t have a dryer, though, so I’d hang our laundry to dry in the bathroom. We made do with what we had and were always more than happy.

  We’ve become experts at finding new and creative ways to have fun that don’t cost any money, like playing air hockey on the upside-down kitchen table, although there wasn’t any air. (I crushed Harold, by the way.) For our first New Year’s Eve together, we didn’t get all fancy and go to a party that had fireworks. Instead, we wore our sweatpants, covered our faces in one-dollar exfoliating face masks, set up our cornhole in the hallway, and drank out of our crystal wedding goblets that one of my mom’s friends had given us. We didn’t have much, but we knew how to have fun with what we had.

  It wasn’t long before Harold’s military training picked up and he was gone a lot, which meant I had a lot of lonely nights. I really wanted to get a dog to keep me company, so I came up with my best sales pitch, trying to convince Harold it was a good idea.

  I did my research and found what I thought would be the perfect dog for us: an Australian shepherd. We brought adorable six-week-old Ranger home in January. A month later, while Harold was away for a week, I couldn’t sleep one night and randomly came across an Australian cattle dog puppy for sale on Craigslist. My dog when I was growing up, Boomerang, who still lives with my parents, is an Australian cattle dog, and he is the best. I messaged the lady and drove there the next day to see the dog. It was love at first sight. I couldn’t get ahold of Harold, so I brought the puppy home and named her Tracker. A few days later, Harold finally called and said, “I can’t wait to get home. What are you up to right now?”

  “Taking out the puppiesssss,” I said.

  I was a tiny bit nervous to hear his reaction. He certainly wasn’t enthusiastic, nor was he upset; he was simply indifferent. In my defense, we had talked about getting a second dog so that Ranger would have a friend to play with. They already felt like my children, and having them with me during Harold’s frequent absences was a game changer.

  At the beginning of February 2016, about two months before Harold would leave for Everest, we decided to start actively trying for a baby. We’d been going back and forth on whether we should wait until after he got back. Harold really wanted me to be pregnant before he left in case he didn’t make it back. He said he wanted me to have a part of him with me, no matter what happened.

  It wasn’t as clear for me. I was struggling with the possibility of getting pregnant before Everest because of all the unknowns. Since the first trimester is the scary zone, with the highest possibility of a miscarriage, I thought about how hard it would be if I had a miscarriage right before he left for Everest. Or while he was on Everest. The weight of the pain from losing my baby would be unbearable to begin with, and the thought of having to go through that traumatic experience by myself was unsettling. Plus, Harold would be going through the loss too, which would be distracting and emotional when he should have his full focus on Everest.

  Instead of being able to live with the excitement of possibly getting pregnant, every terrifying scenario ran through my head on repeat. If I did get pregnant and, God forbid, something went wrong on Everest r
esulting in Harold’s death, I’d instantly become a single parent with no stable job to support our child and no father to love him the way I knew Harold would.

  Maybe the most terrifying scenario would be if I didn’t get pregnant before Everest and Harold didn’t make it back. I would never get to have kids with the love of my life, the one thing I wanted more than anything. I’d never get to look at my child and notice all the little ways he resembles Harold, like the way Harold’s face lights up when he smiles, or his crazy wild personality, or his tender heart and the way he loves to snuggle more than anything. I wouldn’t get to tell our child stories of his incredible father and the way he fiercely loved me and made me laugh all the time. I wouldn’t get to do any of those things because our family wouldn’t exist if Harold didn’t make it back.

  The movie Everest had recently come out. The film is based on Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, which is about the deadly day on Everest that killed Rob Hall and several others. Harold’s father called him one day and told him he’d just finished watching the movie. He then warned him not to watch it with me because it was intense. Especially given the reality of Everest being just around the corner for us.

  We were in the car when Harold’s dad called, and the phone was on speaker. I had been reading Into Thin Air just to gain some general knowledge of Everest, so I quickly put it down. I had no plans to watch the movie either. I had enough of my own fears already, and reading or watching terrifying events taking place on Everest would only make things worse. I certainly wasn’t naive; I just knew I couldn’t remain strong and supportive of my husband if I allowed my fears to take over.

  HAROLD

  I, on the other hand, went online and started reading articles about it. I found an article from Jan Arnold, Rob Hall’s widowed wife. What I read was interesting, especially as we grappled with the decision of whether to try to get pregnant. As it turned out, Jan and Rob got pregnant with a baby girl right before he left for his Everest expedition. Jan described the last conversations she had with Rob when he called from a satellite phone as he was stuck near the summit. “I willed him to move, to try to get himself down the mountain, but I accepted he just couldn’t.”

  As I read, I was in tears, knowing this conversation was one Rachel and I could be having in just a few short months. And, like Jan, Rachel could be pregnant. What confirmed my desire to get pregnant, however, was what Jan said toward the end of the interview, addressing how she coped with Rob’s death: “For some weeks, I didn’t feel alone, as I had his baby daughter inside me, moving even. I found those movements comforting.”*

  RACHEL

  Wow. Yep, I’m in tears. It’s been four years since I lived those fearful moments, and that story just brings it all back. I could feel myself in her exact situation. That could have been me.

  It’s painful to revisit these emotions. I knew that even experienced climbers don’t always make it back alive, so the odds might be even worse for Harold. I had no control over what might happen to my husband or my future.

  As I thought about the risk, the worry felt overwhelming, and I turned to God. I couldn’t pray only for Harold’s safety; I had to pray also that God would carry me through this, no matter the outcome. That meant I had to fully put my faith in God.

  If the worst were to happen and I lost my husband, whom I had only just begun to share my life with, somehow I would survive with God’s support. If we did end up having a baby and my husband wasn’t around to throw him up in the air, pretending he was a rocket ship, or chase him all around the house as he squealed at the top of his lungs, running and flailing his arms…If Harold missed his son’s first word, which would have been Daddy had Harold been here…If he never got to witness the pure joy our son felt each time he saw a plane or school bus and then ran into my arms to get a better look…

  I prayed that if Harold wasn’t here for all those things, I would be able to be what our child needed. That I could somehow fill Harold’s shoes and bring out the same amount of laughter and joy as Harold would have. I could never replace what would be lost, but I needed to put my faith in God that at the end of the day, we’d be okay.

  I knew if the worst were to happen, it would be a long time before I’d be okay again. I wouldn’t be the same, and the grief I would carry would probably never really heal with time. So I needed to trust that God would carry me, because it would take time and perseverance and a strength I knew I would not have on my own to get back on my feet after something like that.

  I knew losing Harold would break me to the core. Just praying for his safety wasn’t enough.

  * Shanee Edwards, “Everest: Rob Hall’s Wife Jan Arnold Shares Her Story of Loss and Fear,” SheKnows, January 26, 2016, www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/1109945/interview-jan-arnold-rob-halls-wife-everest.

  May 7, 2016

  Being on this mountain reminds me of the deadly events and harrowing news stories I’ve read over the last two years. At this point, thousands of attempts have been made to climb Everest and almost three hundred people have died. In 2014, sixteen people were killed in a sudden avalanche at Base Camp. About a year later, nineteen people died at Base Camp after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake triggered another deadly avalanche. As a result, the mountain was closed down by the Chinese government and there were no summits in 2015.

  I can’t help thinking about the avalanche on Everest in April 2014. I specifically remember learning about Menuka Magar-Gurung, the twenty-five-year-old wife of a Sherpa who had been among the sixteen killed on that tragic day. She told the BBC, “I still feel he’s alive,” as she tried not to cry. In her arms, she held their ten-month-old son, Anish.

  Then I remember Anita Lama, a twenty-three-year-old who was widowed on the same day, talking to the BBC while carrying her eleven-month-old daughter. “I never thought that such a tragedy would happen,” she said as tears filled her eyes.*

  After seeing this report, my eyes had grown red with tears. The eerie similarity in ages and stages of life between these women and Rachel terrifies me now. I had been given a raw and unfiltered look of what I very well could put Rachel through. The tragic events were described as the most deadly day in modern mountaineering. How Rachel supported me after these devastating avalanches, I’ll never know.

  We talk on the phone tonight at Base Camp under the moonlight and the watchful eye of Everest, but I decide not to share with Rachel the stories of sorrow that have been plaguing my mind.

  Hearing her sweet, caring voice breaks me, and I can’t help but picture her as the next grieving widow on the news.

  * Surendra Phuyal, “Sherpa Families’ Sorrow After Killer Everest Avalanche,” BBC News, May 8, 2014, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27316009.

  12

  The Dirty Truth of Achieving Big Dreams

  RACHEL

  When we got back from our honeymoon, I started vlogging my daily life. Sometimes I’d include Harold (who was still slightly uncomfortable talking to a camera), but it was always through my lens. I had just reached one thousand subscribers.

  Naturally, when Harold needed assistance with social media and began to increase fundraising efforts for the Everest expedition, I stepped in to help. I created and edited promotional photos and videos highlighting our cause of raising awareness for PTSD and Soldier suicide, started establishing a social media presence, and coordinated our efforts with our publicist, Amy.

  Every good team needs a strong team name, so Harold and I gave ourselves the name Team Hungry. The story behind the name stems from our honeymoon while we were in Naples, Italy. After a long day visiting Pompeii, Harold and I had just gotten off our train and decided to walk back to our hotel. We could have easily taken a taxi for fewer than the seventeen francs we saved from paragliding, but we decided we should save the money.

  It turned out to be an hour-long walk in blistering heat. We were
so thirsty, and I kept singing, “I’m so hungry! I’m so hungry!” over and over again. A little while later, Harold’s stomach started gurgling, making me laugh so hard. That’s when I said, “We’re Team Hungry,” and it stuck.

  It may sound silly that we call ourselves Team Hungry, but it reminds us that we’re in it together. When we’re going through the ups and downs of life, I can always look over and see my best friend fighting every battle with me. I highly encourage couples to come up with a team name, preferably something that will make you laugh during the tougher moments.

  If you’ve ever been part of any kind of team, I’m sure you’ve experienced a time when not everyone got along. Maybe a teammate made a bad move, didn’t give it her all, didn’t show up, or just started needless drama. The way forward is to refocus and realize you’re on the same team.

  I know I am better when Harold is on my team, and vice versa. We balance each other, show up for each other, and fight for each other. Together we are stronger. Tangible ways I show Harold I’m on his side include encouraging him, praying for him, and never leaving him to tackle his challenges alone. I try to take the initiative and find ways to be helpful, offer insight, or brainstorm new ideas.

  We have a better chance of reaching our goals when we use our unique set of gifts to help each other, and ultimately there is no one I’d rather celebrate every victory with than Harold. If we lose, at least we lose together and cheer each other up over some Moose Tracks ice cream and half-baked chocolate chip cookies.