I love ladders, and lanterns and boats. My artwork is interspersed with symbols of ways to climb, light the way, and float on the surface. The last time I scrawled a ladder onto paper was the day my father went into the intensive care unit. I made the trip to say goodbye, and haven’t sketched anything since; not ladders, or his orange canoe. All the lanterns have grown dark. 

I hear a voice that tells me I need to crawl to the first rung of the ladder, that I will not find it any other way. As I’m crawling a memory flashes before me; I tripped and fell on the concrete when I was running after a child. I sense a group of people crouching over me, holding my hair back to keep it away from the blood pouring off my face. Now I am the one in the hospital, but I am not dying, as he was, I am being bandaged from the fall. My body is crouched on all fours as I search for the ladder and arise from my fall. If I had a pencil and paper I could draw the ladder into existence, but I have nothing left. I feel even less than nothing, I am hallowed out. I am remembering the day I fell, and the night he left this world.

It’s dark. I am following the whistling of the wind; as it grows louder, I feel the first rung of the ladder. I reach up higher with both hands and start to climb. I begin to feel lighter. The ladder feels sturdy beneath my feet. As I climb faster, I see visions at the top of the ladder. A woman is reaching out to me, to pull me to safety. Until then I did not know I was in danger, but now I feel it. I grasp her hand and I ascend with her to the sky, and I can see below us all of the ladders that lead to nowhere. I was going nowhere until I met her.

She only had one word to share with me. ”Listen,” she said as we were whisked away on the wind, flying high above the ladders now. I hear the Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine. I hear the wailing of the wind, but it grows softer, turning into gentle, quiet sobbing, and it sounds like me. It is the sound that grounds me, and I am back in my room alone, when a new sound emerges. It is the song “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the last song my father played on his guitar. I listen and I sing along, letting the music envelop me with it’s gentleness. I look out the window and see the other ladders leading to nowhere. I realize I must still climb them, that the nothingness at the end of the ladder is only an illusion. Someone is waiting there for me with their song.