Salted

Have you ever been to the Salt Flats in Utah? The drive sucks, but if you actually take the time to stop and get out, the view is pretty amazing. 

It was June 21st, 2019 when the kids and I decided to do just that. We were on our way back to the tiny, rural town of Elko, Nevada, and we were crabby. 

Like, really crabby…

I pulled off to the side of the road and climbed out of my beat-up, decade old Kia van. Jack, my then pre-teen with a “life is so boring” attitude, immediately started complaining about how he didn’t want to get out. But I didn’t budge.

It had been a long two hours of driving, all three of my kiddos were going stir crazy, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I could stand another second of the bickering and whining. 

If I’m really honest though, it was more than that. There was a pit in my stomach, one that grew with each passing mile, signaling to me that we were getting closer and closer to being back in the town we all hated.

Doing my best to stay calm, I sighed and frowned at Jack. 

“Dude, you don’t even know if you’ll like it because you’ve never done this before. Come on, just give me a couple minutes of memory making with you guys. Besides, once we get back to the RV, you’ll have plenty of time to wallow in self pity.” I ruffled his hair and gave him a weak smile.

Back then, even that was hard for me…smiling, that is. It had been just over six months since I lost my brother, Zach, in a car crash, and since that God-awful day on January 8th, smiling was painful. 

No. 

Worse than that. 

Smiling felt…wrong.

Jack pulled his head away from my touch—clearly hating the affection—and grudgingly put on his shoes. I’m pretty sure he rolled his eyes, but I chose to shrug it off, letting him get away with a little disrespect. We had all been under a lot of stress, and weren’t really feeling ourselves.

The grief of losing Zach and moving out of our beloved town of Ogden—away from our support system, the amazing school we loved, all our friends, and the immense beauty and opportunities that Utah had to offer—was gut wrenching. 

I didn’t have a name for it then, but now realize what we were experiencing was compounded grief. I admit, I’m not sure if I heard the term, or made it up, but basically, compounded grief is like the domino effect of despair. It wasn’t just losing my brother, it was all the things that happened because we lost him. The ‘ripples’, I guess you could say. One thing after another fell apart, collapsing on top of each other, and essentially crushing the joy out of life.

When he died, we felt the need to move closer to his wife and their five kids. We wanted to help, to be a support to them like we’d done many times for one another in the past. But his wife couldn’t stay in Elko anymore (and I don’t blame her), so the week my husband, Jon, started work at the mines, she had their belongings loaded onto a moving truck, and returned to Florida, where she and Zach spent the majority of their lives together.

Despite having been a best friend of mine for over a decade, Zach’s wife and I didn’t know how to grieve together, and our relationship was ruined. So here I was, grieving Zach, grieving his wife and their kids, grieving the home we loved, and pretty much hating most of life.

Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, not only were we living in an RV with three kids and three cats while we waited for our Ogden home to sell, but I was also being treated for a lifelong form of leukemia. 

Every single day, with no promise that I would ever be able to stop treatment, or that it would continue to work, I forced myself to swallow poison for the chance to stay alive. Chemo blows, no matter how it’s administered, but there was something mentally debilitating about having to physically put that tiny pill in my mouth at the end of each day.

Needless to say, I was SUPER fun to be around back then! (Insert eye-roll here)

Back to the subject though.

Nathaniel and Alaura (adorably nicknamed Lulu) skipped happily towards the water as Jack peeled himself away from the comfort of the van. I smiled a little, letting the pain that accompanied every moment of bliss thread its way in and out of my heart.

Breathing in the warm air, I filled my lungs with a welcomed freshness. It was about 80° or so. The gentle sun warmed my skin, a stark contrast to the cool breeze that whipped around my tired body, twisting strands of short, brown hair in front of my oversized sunglasses. Clouds spanned the sky like a mixture of cotton balls, some intact, some stretched thin. They were as white as the miles and miles of salt that covered the ground before us. 

I stood still, taking in the scene. It was beautiful, and yet, sadness had a way of casting heartbreak onto everything I saw. The shallow water reflected its surroundings like mirrored glass. The only way to know the difference between what was real and what was a reflection was by watching to see where the wind created ripples in the water and distorted the image. 

It eerily reminded me of what my world felt like the last 6 months…as if I was living in a reflection of reality. I could see what was going on, I could mimic what life was playing out in front of me, but the slightest gust of wind quickly distorted my reality, leaving me feeling unstable, and almost as if I didn’t really exist. 

Nope, not going there, Alisha. We’re not going to dwell on the pain…I thought to myself, determined to focus on the good.

With my back to the road and a resolve to not go down the rabbit hole of negativity, I looked further at the vast alabaster blanket of earth that seemed to continue into eternity. The silhouetted mountains in the distance were other-wordly, and had me questioning once again, as I had so many times in the past, “How can anyone see things like this and not believe in God?” 

I took a few more steps towards the beauty in front of me. Stopping at the edge of the water, I glanced down, admiring the perfectly white salt under my feet. Even with my eyes shaded by sunglasses, the brightness was nearly blinding. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, a thought whispered in my mind…

“Look a little longer, take it all in, commit it to memory.” 

“Mom, this is AWESOME!” yelled Nate, interrupting my thoughts as he took off his shoes. He’s always been my adventurous one, and is typically the first to explore new areas and to try new things. Lulu followed suit, kicking off her flip flops and tiptoeing towards the water. 

Within seconds, both kiddos were loudly regretting their decision to shed their footwear. Apparently, salt is not sand.

Rather than the soft ground of Florida beaches we were used to, the salt here crystallized, changing from a grainy substance, to rock-solid death traps. Walking barefoot on them was equivalent to, if not worse than, stepping on legos in the middle of the night! 

I checked their feet, making sure they weren’t cut, and had them put their shoes back on. I didn’t care if they got their shoes wet, it was more important to me that they got to splash and play in the shallow pools of water than it was for them to stay clean and dry. 

With my flip flops still on, I waded into the water until I was about calf deep. It was the perfect temperature. With each step, water splashed on my legs, and within minutes evaporated, leaving a white residue behind. 

I glanced up, again feeling the need to commit everything to memory. I focused on the sound of my children laughing, the splashing of the water, the cars that whizzed by us in the distance. I visually snapped pictures in my mind of everything, desperate to not forget what it felt like to experience joy, or at least, to hear my babies experiencing it. 

I had this fear that surfaced about a month after Zach died. The chemo I’d been on had a nasty side effect of brain fog, and between that, my fatigue, and my grief, I was terrified that my memories of Zach would fade. I spent hours every day trying to remember everything about him, but after a few days, I noticed it became harder and harder to get the memories right. It was like a punch to the gut when I finally figured out the problem. It wasn’t just fatigue, grief, and chemo. It was my fault.

For years, I assumed I’d have a lifetime of opportunities to make memories with Zach. Most of the time we were together, I took it for granted, and put very little effort into paying attention to the world in front of me. I was always in my head, either reliving the past, or worrying about the future.

Crap…I’m doing it again, I realized. I was getting distracted from the present. 

I took out my phone, opened my camera, and hit record. The quality wouldn’t be great, but I wanted a video nonetheless. I wish I had taken more videos in the past. I wish I would’ve known how precious those videos would be…how much they would’ve helped me remember Zach by. There’s something so different about seeing and hearing a loved one on a video versus looking at still pictures. You don’t realize how much you miss their mannerisms, their voices, their laughter…

Instantly, that familiar ache, the one that had become all too common, crashed into my chest. Anytime I let my guard down too much, I was reminded of a painful truth…

Zach’s gone. He’ll never experience a moment like this again, he’ll never experience any moment with us again…life was never going to be the same. 

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I forced my grief back into its box and clicked stop on my video.

Jack, having found 2 large clumps of crystallized salt, made his way towards me with a huge grin on his face.

“Mom, look. It’s crazy how it’s a bunch of little rectangles, right? It reminds me of Minecraft!” Keeping the larger clump for himself, he reached out and handed me a smaller, semi-dome shaped clump. “Here, I got one for you, and one for me.” Colorful prisms of light danced on its surface, shimmering in the sun. Despite the warm day, it was cold to the touch. 

“That’s awesome, dude. You taste it?” 

The expression on his face was hilarious, and I couldn’t help but laugh…really laugh. He looked at me as if I was gross for suggesting it, and crazy for thinking he’d actually lick something he picked up from the ground. 

Unlike Nate, Jack was born with a very mature and old soul, one that was overly cautious. His adventures mostly took place in his imagination.

“What? It’s just salt, lick it. I give you permission!” I took my cluster and proceeded to lick the side. “Eww, it’s salty!” I said.

Jack wrinkled his nose in disgust, “Duh, mom…it’s salt. Of course it’s salty. Why are you so weird?” 

I just smiled. I loved being overly obvious to him.

Nate and Lulu, overhearing our conversation, ran over to see what Jack found. 

“Oh, can I taste, too?!” asked Lulu, an eager smile spreading across her cute face. 

I passed my rock to her and let her lick the opposite side.

“Yuck! It’s so salty! Jack Jack, can you find me one?” She clasped her hands together and put on her best “pretty please” look for her big brother. She knew she was adorable, we told her all the time, but Jack told her the most. And boy, did she have him wrapped around her little finger. 

“I’ll find you one, Lulu. C’mon.” 

As they searched for another cluster, Nate jumped in and out of an abandoned tire that had been encased in salt crystals. It wasn’t until that moment I noticed just how much debris was strewn throughout our wet playground, glistening like statues of brine. A long piece of metal, an old anchor, a shovel, and other random items, discarded haphazardly through the years. We tried to free some of the objects from their pixelated white cocoons, but it was impossible to loosen them from the salt’s grip. 

It was then, while kicking a salt covered piece of garbage, that I had a thought pass through my brain. Look how the salt made this trash strong…beautiful even. 

Boom! That same little voice whispered again. “Remember this, Alisha, commit it to memory….”

The words felt like more than just a random thought. Crazy as it sounds, they felt like a memory—like someone had said it to me before, and their words were being pushed to the forefront of my mind after being buried a long time. 

It wasn’t a super spiritual feeling, but it did feel important. Like something about this experience was going to have to be shared, and in great detail.

But why?

After letting the kiddos enjoy a few more minutes of freedom, I corralled them back in the van, and got on the road again. As they vegged out on their tablets, I thought about how much I was struggling. 2019 had been the worst year of my life, bar none.

Losing Zach left my faith bent so much I felt like I was going to break at any second. I desperately tried to cling to gratitude for my blessings, praying it would keep me from sinking into depression, but my resolve was weakening. Nothing I had encountered in the past—not sexual abuse, or fractured family relationships, or even leukemia—hurt as much as this.

Not wanting to spiral, I changed the direction of my thoughts. There was something about the Salt Flats that nagged at me, telling me to remember everything. I replayed our little impromptu excursion again and again, trying to piece together what I was feeling, and why I was feeling it. 

It was weird. Nothing in particular felt important about our stop, yet, EVERYTHING felt important. 

I said a silent prayer, promising God that I’d remember what I could, and asked Him to help me understand why. It wasn’t until later that night, that He revealed an answer to me.

As I lay in bed, worn out from the long drive and yet another day of heavy emotions, I did my best to quiet my thoughts so I could sleep. Somewhere in that place between consciousness and dreams, a picture—so clear it played like a memory—emerged in full detail in my mind.

I saw myself, standing barefoot in a pool of dark, shallow water. I was in the middle of the Salt Flats again, but this time, I wasn’t surrounded by sunshine and warm skies. Instead, there was a large storm splitting the heavens in half. Lightning pierced black, growling clouds as the storm rolled closer towards the calm sky on my left. I wasn’t afraid, but I also didn’t know what to do or where to go. 

I dropped my gaze to the water. Just below its glassy surface, was a rectangular object. I focused intently on it, trying to figure out what it was as it slowly floated closer and closer. It broke through the top of the water and calmly bobbed on the newly created tiny waves.

It was a book. The cover a perfect replica of my surroundings. White salt, with dried wave patterns, spanned the ground. In the distance, I could just barely make out the silhouetted mountains. The sky was split in half, with a storm approaching from the right. 

In bold, white lettering was the word SALTED at the top, and on the bottom was my name. Like flashes of lightning rapidly striking down on me, image after image flashed in my brain of stories and experiences I lived through, lessons from the scriptures, analogies of things I found meaning in, and then, a command…

Seek. Teach. Write. Repeat.

That was almost five years ago, and since that night, I’ve been working on my first book, Salted, (which is so, so close to being done!). But it’s been a long road, with lots of do-overs, detours, and deep dives into the unknown. 

In the process, I’ve been led to share what I could in small doses on social media, in talks, on podcasts, and now, in this blog.

I’m not the best writer, I have no idea how to keep things short (obviously), and I haven’t played some big significant role in history, but I’m willing to be vulnerable, I’m happy to admit that I don’t know even a fraction of what there is to know, and I’m brave enough (or maybe stubborn enough) to continue to live my purpose the best I can.

When I think back on that day in the Salt Flats, the thing that stands out most is the trash that was there. The way the salt grew up, over, and around it, completely encasing it in an impenetrable shield of beauty and strength, has become the visual I live my life by. 

I want to be salted, just like that trash. I don’t want to sit around waiting for someone else—whether that’s another human, an angel, or God Himself—to come by and remove the garbage from my life. I want to take all the ugly things, all the hurt, and the unfairness, and the tragedy, and I want to wrap them up with so much beauty and strength, that it turns them into something that connects me with eternity.

I don’t want my garbage to define me. I want it to refine me. 

I want to seek out the salt that will purify, fortify, and sanctify me. 

I hope the experiences I share aren’t the things people remember most. I hope they’ll remember what I did with those experiences, and instead of feeling bad…maybe, just maybe…they’ll feel inspired.

Today, March 1st, would’ve been Zach’s 39th birthday. In his short 33 years of life, he did an incredible job at inspiring others, at turning the trash in life into things of stability and beauty. 

He wasn’t perfect, but man, was he Salted!

So, to the world’s most “okayest” baby bruder ever, I dedicate this blog, Salt for the Soul, to you. Thank you for being who you were, and for helping me remember who I’ve always been. Life won’t be the same without you, but it will always be better because of you.

Love and miss you,

Your Seester.