Just before I got the jab of Ketamine that would alter my world for the next two hours, and perhaps the rest of my life, I got a ping on my phone from Irene, whom I’d met just a few weeks before. I hadn’t planned to tell her I was trying psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to deal with my depression and grief after Ellen’s death, but I let it slip that I had found a ride home from a doctor’s appointment. Being a mental health nurse, Irene guessed what I was up to. “I am behind you 100 percent,” she texted. “Carry me in your pocket.”

I got the shot and the doctor’s office blurred, vibrant Bubble Gum hues bathing my subconscious, then strobe lights and strange sounds. Suddenly my dead wife appeared as a vision, then Irene. They were holding hands.

When Irene mentioned she had gotten an inquiry about a potential job in Thief River Falls a year and a half into our relationship, my mind briefly conjured images from Frostbite Falls from the Bullwinkle cartoons— The deep freeze. I saw the end of civilization: Vast, uninterrupted fields of corn, soybeans, beets and sunflowers. Dead deer in ditches, blood on the highway, thistles and ragweed.

“Babe, there’s a reason they make snowmobiles up there,” I said.

She was a newly minted Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner with a long history of working with mental health patients in the city. Her master’s degree now allowed her to make diagnoses and prescribe medications, Rural areas were begging for help. Sanity, it turns out, is in short supply everywhere.

Might as well take an interview, I said. I’ll drive up with you and scout the town. It was part mission, part adventure, and a way to spend time together without distractions.

By then, “swallow the sun” had become an apt metaphor for this…thing…we were trying. It was something improbable, if not impossible, something audacious and defiant. Joyous, even.

The feeling grew and unwound over the coming months, not without pain or doubts. I was still crying frequently from grief, often without provocation or warning— something that had quickly ended previous dates. Irene would later tell me what others would not: I was a total mess.

I warned Irene we had significant challenges, besides my depression, which was lifting since the Ketamine treatments.

“Like what?”

Well, race. Culture. Zero kids vs. six kids. Age. Social norms. Wealth gap. I could have gone on with examples, like when she asked me, “Jon, who’s Bob Dylan?” That one almost ended it, to be honest.

The first time I invited her to my condo in downtown Minneapolis, she said no. I pushed her for a reason.

“Can I ask you a something? Are her clothes still in your closet?”

No one else had asked that crucial question. Irene was clearly weighing the situation with stunning clarity. No, her clothes are gone.

“Then let’s go,” she said.

--

Friends and family reacted to our relationship in confounding ways. Many were supportive and delighted I’d found someone, though many added “She sounds great, what’s the catch?” or “So, why is she interested in you?”

They were joking, kind of, but they planted a seed of doubt that was hard to shake.

Others were blunt. One mentioned the Nigerian prince scam. Another sent me an article about a guy who met a Colombian woman on the internet: She drugged and robbed him. More than one friend told me she likely wanted me to raise her kids –despite my telling them most of those kids were already successful and had master’s degrees. When I treated Irene to a short trip, one friend quipped, “so, you are paying her to date you?”

A chance meeting with old friends was decidedly cold and ended abruptly; they had to fly. When I discussed the encounter with another friend, he acknowledged that “some of us think it’s too soon”

“Maybe you all think it’s too black,” I said angrily.

I cut some people off and will likely never speak to them again. Good riddance. Were they all racists? No. Some just missed Ellen and felt uncomfortable seeing me with Irene. Others who loved Ellen never liked me in the first place; Ellen was always the draw in our marriage. A few were —as someone said— “unhappy with their lives and just envious.”

The comments bothered Irene to the extent that she wondered if I needed to find “a retired white woman.” But she was the one who reined in my anger. After some contentious calls with an old friend over distasteful jokes about us, she said: “Sweetie, you’ve been friends for 30 years. You are vulnerable and some people are just trying to protect you. Give him another chance.”

I did, and we remain good friends.

So why did Irene hang with me through those early days? “Because you had promise,” she said. And presumably, I was still hirarious.

--

The drive was a monotonous slog, a boring five-hour ass-pummeling somewhere between the end of the road and rest of our lives. We drove through Staples, the town of 3,000 where I moved to my junior year in high school. From Minneapolis Central, where my classmate was a guy who did pretty well named Prince, to the beaten down railroad town where my grandparents lived, it was a trip that appeared downwardly mobile in all ways.

We passed by the house where my parents and I lived with my grandparents. The house was now abandoned and filled with garbage. Onward and upward, I joked to Irene.

While Irene interviewed all day at the hospital, I did what I do best – hang out and talk to people. At a dive called Biff’s, a farmer and a mechanic were welcoming in a small-town, Norwegian way. Both were born near “Teef,” as some call it, seemingly satisfied to spend their entire lives here.

“Got an all-wheel drive?” the mechanic asked. I did.

“Should be fine,” he said.

I imagine you are not as conservative as a lot of the people around town, he continued.

“My girlfriend’s a liberal, and we get along,” he said. “But a lot of people here are kind of…out there.” On arrival in town, where 70 percent voted Trump, I couldn’t miss the yard with the signs that said “God, Guns, Trump,” and “God Bless Elon.”

“You might not want to argue politics in a bar,” the mechanic said. I assured him I had no interest in arguing politics — anywhere.

Cautiously, he added: “You might not want to, say, put a Black Lives Matter sign in your yard.”

I paused a beat. Then another.

“I think now would be an EXCELLENT time to tell you that my girlfriend is black,” I said.

We all laughed, maybe a little too hard.

“I suppose she is also an immigrant,” the mechanic said.

She is, I replied. Kenyan. You can’t miss her: a beautiful African woman with long dreadlocks.

They looked at each other. “Yeah, we already noticed her around town,” said the farmer.

NEXT: Heaven or Hellhole?

It would take a few months for this to shift.

Writer Gretel Erlich in her excellent “The Solace of Open Spaces,” explained how the absence of things made for an empty canvas for our mind and soul and “invites us constantly to be what we are.”

Out here in the middle we can’t hide— from each other, or from ourselves. It can be excruciatingly isolating, if we let it. Or maybe it can bring a kind of peaceful sanity we haven’t seen in a long, long time. As she puts it, the great wide open can be a place where “despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life”.

That. That is what I craved.

No doubt, the despair had been real. The last two, three years of life with Ellen had been painful. We watched our world shrink, from travels that took us across Europe and South and Central America, the Caribbean and South Korea, to long, tedious drives through the wastelands of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma – all states we had to traverse to get to Palm Springs, California, our oasis from impending death.

These drives became increasingly problematic. The planning took weeks as I gathered our gear for a two or three-month stay in the desert: One suitcase full of medications for her growing list of maladies, most spinoffs from her childhood diabetes. Needles and syringes, batteries and gear for her insulin pump, carb-loaded snacks for emergencies, sugar pills, anti-inflammatory drugs and of course meds for her increasing depression. And mine.

Soon, she needed oxygen to traverse the mountains and anytime we were above 3,000 feet. That meant securing a tank of liquid oxygen the size of a beer keg, then seat-belting it into the back and running a tube to her nose. We needed a portable machine we refilled every time we stopped to eat or use the restroom. I would pack the bags and tie colored ribbons to those that needed to come into the hotel with us. I hate puzzles, so The Pack was mind-boggling. I knew that if I missed one tiny plastic connector for her oxygen somewhere in, say, New Mexico, she could die before we found a hospital.

With oxygen came the walker, then the wheelchair and finally the electric scooter. Our travel routine was plotted out like a military attack: At bathroom stops, I would fill the portable tank, unload the back to reveal the scooter, put the scooter together in the parking lot and take Ellen to the bathroom, then reverse the process and eventually hit the road. Initially, the drive took us two long days, which stretched to four or more.

There was another complicating and delightful wrinkle. We had a dog. He was a small mutt with one ear up, one down, like he was in a state of perpetual curiosity. His bed lay between us on the console and he was a great comfort.

His name was Trouble.

Trouble also knew the routine. At hotels, I’d bring Ellen in first, then Trouble, who would do his zoomies around the room. Then, I’d bring our gear in four trips. We tried to pick hotels with restaurants and bars, eliminating more calculations.

In many ways, it was a wonderful way to spend what we both knew was dwindling time together. We reminisced, sang along to Prince and Outlaw Country music and listened to audio books. Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants made us laugh all the way across Kansas, which is not an easy thing to do. Ellen frequently reminded me why I loved her so much; she knew me better than anyone. Once, we passed a sign for a place called something like “Everlasting Memories.”

“I’ve been there,” I said. Silence.

Aren’t you going to ask why I was there, I asked.

“No,” Ellen said. “Because you are going to say you don’t remember.”

I would be wildly dishonest, however, if I were to imply these were joyous times. I was constantly worried about Ellen and increasingly angry about our station in life. I enjoyed the dead silence in dawn drives while Ellen slept. I flipped off bad drivers with increasing glee. I silently seethed when she forgot something in the rest area bathroom, I yelled at the dog for peeing in the hotel. I fretted about…well, everything.

Despite her lifelong illness – doctors said she’d be lucky to make 35 – Ellen never, I mean NEVER, complained. She was nearly always upbeat and kind and constantly strove to make life less hostile for me. Her nonchalance about her health annoyed me, but she had long ago accepted her reality and had simply chosen to make the best of what she had left. It should have been a lesson, but somehow it pissed me off even more.

“Why do you worry so much?” Ellen asked during one trip.

“I’m afraid you’ll die,” I said. “It’s easy for you to just tag along for the ride; I am the one responsible to make sure you stick around!” (By this point, I had called 911 so many times for Ellen that the first responders knew her by name on the street).

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “Honey, I AM going to die, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

One trip through New Mexico an ice storm stopped traffic for miles outside Albuquerque. We were at a high altitude, and Ellen’s oxygen was draining away. As a former newspaper reporter, I instinctively called the local paper to see when the road might clear, and I explained our situation-- stuck with a wife and dog and running low on life-saving air.

The reporter was polite, but shockingly incurious. A few minutes later, she called back, wondering if she could quote me. She didn’t ask about Ellen but said “my editor wants to know the name of your dog.”

Fucking reporters.

“Trouble,” I said, a bit briskly. “So, I guess you can say, Trouble follows us wherever we go.”

I checked the newspaper the next morning. She didn’t use the quote.

—

Ellen insisted on continuing to travel. She had long ago given up on her dream trips, to Thailand and Africa, because of health concerns. An Asian vacation had been cancelled because the bird flu was threatening. She begged to fulfill her dream to go on a safari in Africa, but the doctor said no. Ellen, the shots alone will make you very sick, he said. Health care is poor. You might die on vacation.

I might also get hit by a meat truck on Lake Street, Ellen responded.

Before our final trip, to Savannah, Georgia, Ellen was in the hospital with pneumonia, just about to be released. We were supposed to leave for our drive in two days. I asked the doctor if we should cancel. The doctor, who had known Ellen for perhaps 20 years as her “best, worst patient of my career,” looked at Ellen. “If I said you were probably doing to die on this trip, would you go anyway?”

Ellen didn’t even blink.

“Yes,” she said.

NEXT: Ketamine Dream Girl and considering the North Country.

The bartender stares, just briefly, then says, “Sorry. We don’t do specialty drinks.”

The bar is named The Rusty Nail, which is –I guess coincidentally-- the name of a specialty drink.

His familiarity with cocktails had been substantial, until he lost his wife of 35 years, Ellen, then met Irene ten months later. He considers sarcastically asking the bartender if he has Drambuie, the signature ingredient of the drink that is the namesake of the bar, but they are newcomers here and have promised to behave, to fit in as much as possible for a liberal and a black immigrant in a land that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. The goal was to avoid politics and become model citizens in this company town of 9,000 just shy of the northernmost point of the United States.

They order wine.

--

We are a few months now into this quixotic adventure, this Not-On-The-Bingo-Card life we chose, which has delighted, confounded and dismayed our family and friends. And to be honest, ourselves. Whether we really chose this life and marriage or it chose us is up for debate. Irene credits God. I lean toward Karma. We agree it’s kind of the same, so you decide.

A little more than three years ago, I was caregiving for Ellen, after a 35-year marriage that was mostly magical, but also fraught with escalating health problems. On her death bed, Ellen made me promise to carry on, to live life as fully, courageously and joyfully as she had. Fall in love again, she demanded, don’t wait. You are no good alone.

She was correct, of course.

She died, I careened into darkness and self-pity. No one wanted to be near me, and I couldn’t’ blame them, even though I did. I was a lousy widower.

The hard turn came after a very loud, profane phone argument with a health insurance company. Police were called. A nurse asked if I owned a gun. I wound up in the psychiatric ER in Minneapolis, with furniture filled with sand --so I couldn’t throw them, I guess. A man down the hall was singing at the top of his lungs Sly and the Family Stone’s “We Are Fam-i-ly!”

Fam-i-ly, indeed. At that moment, he was the closest I had.

“Why in the hell am I here?” I asked the psychiatrist and a social worker, both alleged fans of my newspaper column.

“We were just asking ourselves the same thing,” the shrink said.

They agreed I was at a sudden existential crisis, a months-long depression from loss, grief and loneliness, exacerbated by accumulating life tasks and bills once handled by Ellen. The callous responses from faceless cogs whenever I tried to explain that “my wife is DEAD,” and then the insurance zombies telling me my copay for a specialty medication had increased from five dollars to…twenty grand…had set me off: What should I do, blow my brains out on the CEO’s lawn? I had explained. Heartfelt, but not a great idea. (“I don’t blame you,” said one cop. “But next time, don’t mention where the CEO lives.”)

The doctor made me promise I wouldn’t harm myself or others, then let me go after a few hours, back to an empty, soulless home. I needed to do something, but what?

“You’ve got unique skills and a platform,” said the shrink as I was about to leave. “You might consider writing about all of this. It could do some good for you, and for others.”

--

After connecting online, I met Irene at a Perkins in Blaine, a northern suburb of the Twin Cities. She revealed skeletal glimpses of her life slowly, in the soft musical cadence of her clipped African accent: Born in a small village seven hours from Nairobi in a house without running water.

I asked if my age, 11 years older, bothered her. No, she said, “I have six kids, does that worry you?”

No, I lied.

Irene Moved to Minnesota with three kids and Kenyan husband, then had three more kids. Got divorced 11 years prior, then raised the kids by herself. Three girls had master’s degrees. Irene was a mental health nurse (God! Karma!) studying for her own master’s degree in her mid-fifties. She worked a second job at a nursing home.

I had a successful run as a journalist, enough to be recognized around town, financially secure enough to retire modestly at 59. Her accomplishments and determination, however, disarmed and quite frankly, shamed me. What in the hell was SHE doing here?

I wanted to know more. She said she’d decide in a couple of days whether we would meet again. Then, she took me by the hand and walked me through below-zero temperatures to my car. It was the first time I romantically held a woman’s hand, besides my wife’s, in 36 years. It was incredibly soft.

“We’ll talk,” she said with a smile bigger than the giant American flag rigid in the wind over the Perkins. Jesus, she was beautiful.

A couple of coffee dates later, we took a two-hour drive to a condo she’d bought on a lake, a place to escape the chaos of her kids and job. She was thinking of selling it. The drive up had been pleasant, though overcast and a little brisk. She had already charmed me with her slightly-off pronunciations and Americanisms (like calling me hirarious instead of hilarious; her idiom, “curiosity killed the rat!”) and her poetic African proverbs. When I mentioned delaying a dental appointment because I feared pain, for example, she quipped, “Avoid the elephant only to encounter the rhinoceros.” I was becoming smitten

As we looked out at the lake, the clouds broke and the water glimmered like diamonds or the promise of a new future.

“Jontev,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go swallow the sun.””

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