THE PROBLEM with having no past was that I had to rely on others to tell me about it, but I also needed a photo of a place or event that they described to make it more real. What helped me even more was to actually stand where I’d stood when an important life event had occurred and walk myself through the motions of the original experience so I could re-create those moments. After getting my SPECT scan diagnosis, I’d buried my hopes for more flashes of childhood memories. But by seeing the places where they had occurred for myself, smelling the air, and visualizing what had taken place, I could imagine the rest. With Joan at my side, I felt that re-creating the most meaningful memories of my past was as close as I was going to come to recovering them.
So far, I’d been to Hawaii, Dallas, Oceanside, Palm Springs, and San Diego, and now it was time to retrace my roots in Chicago. Joan and I had been talking about taking a trip there, to see where our life together had started, but we wanted to wait until the weather was bearable. Once we’d made it through the winter months, we set off for the Windy City on Friday, March 19.
We landed at O’Hare that afternoon, and as we were heading into the city in our rental car, I immediately noticed how different the landscape was from Phoenix. Dismal and dirty, this was a world of gray. Not a single tree was in bloom as we drove west on I-80, parallel to the railroad tracks, where garbage was strewn about and black smoke spewed from factories.
Once we arrived at the Westin Hotel, on the Magnificent Mile, I was struck by how grand everything was. The skyscrapers were so tall I couldn’t even see the tops, which disappeared into the white cloudy sky. But I loved the hustle and bustle and wanted to get out into it right away. As we made our way down Michigan Avenue, people scurried around us while we gawked at the upscale window displays in department stores.
I also noticed the contrast in weather, not just from Phoenix, but even from when we’d left the hotel an hour earlier. The long-sleeved shirt I’d worn was fine at sixty-four degrees, but now the temperature had dropped to thirty-nine and the wind had also picked up. Joan had told me about Chicago’s strange weather, but now I could feel the goose bumps for myself. I could see why we’d moved to Phoenix.
We went back to the hotel to grab our leather jackets before flagging a cab and heading to meet my cousin Brad for dinner at a steakhouse. I enjoyed Brad’s company and laughed at his stories, but since getting to know him again I hadn’t been able to shake the need for caution I felt around him.
Over dinner we discussed our plan to visit my old neighborhood in Calumet City. Brad warned us to be careful because things had changed there since I left. By the time I was in college, my parents had moved to another part of town. “I wouldn’t go down there unless you’re packing a gun,” Brad said. “You don’t want to remember it like it is now.”
Brad said he regretted missing our wedding, but my mother and his father had been at odds. He also explained that I was supposed to have been a groomsman at his second wedding, but I couldn’t get away from work.
“I wish I would have been there for you too,” I said.
After dinner Joan, Brad, and I visited a couple of different restaurant bars along Rush Street then put Brad on a train to Naperville and headed back to the hotel around 1:00 A.M.
As I lay in bed that night, I wondered what the next few days would bring. I knew I had another day of light fun before getting to what I knew would be the most challenging part of the trip: visiting Taryn’s grave in Skyline Memorial Park.
When we woke up on Saturday, an inch or so of white fluffy snow had fallen. The wind was blowing, lowering the thirty-five-degree temperature by at least ten degrees, which helped me understand the true meaning of wind chill. When we began to get pelted by big drops of wet snow, I was prepared. Wearing the black scarf that Taylor had made especially for me, I zipped my jacket all the way up.
While Joan was having lunch with her friend Manny, an NIU cheerleader she’d coached in 1986, I met up at Ditka’s Restaurant with Brendan Dolan and Darren Stahulak, who had played on the offensive line with me in college. Although I’d talked to Brendan on the phone several times since my accident, this was my first time meeting him in person. We’d been friends since college, Joan said, and I soon found out why.
As we racked up a sizable bar bill over the next six hours, we chased away more than a few patrons with stories of our college football days. It was good to hear a different perspective on my past, which Joan had been unable to show me, and experience some more of the male bonding I’d heard so much about.
Before we knew it, it was eight o’clock, and I’d had far more to drink in that one sitting than at any other time since my accident. Joan and Manny joined us for another hour of laughs before she and I headed over to Carson’s Ribs to put some food in my vodka-filled stomach.
We managed to sleep in until 9:00 A.M. Sunday, when I woke up with an empty feeling. I knew it was going to be a difficult day for me and even more so for Joan. I was finally going to see the grounds where one of my children now lay, and it really bothered me that I had no memory of placing her there, let alone visiting her on birthdays or holidays. I’d never asked Joan about this, but I imagined that we’d visited her grave every couple of months during the five years before we moved to Phoenix in 1993.
We checked out of our hotel to move closer to the south, had breakfast at a pancake house, and headed to Tinley Park, where Joan and her two brothers had grown up in a modest house. I’d been expecting something bigger, but the squat ranch-style house was only about two thousand square feet, including the basement. Joan said the new owners had left the caramel-brown brick but had repainted the blue wood siding a sage green and also had replaced the garage with a carport. Otherwise, she said, the working-class neighborhood looked just like she remembered.
She showed me the schools she attended, the route she walked each morning, and all her friends’ houses. Her eyes were bright with excitement as she recalled playing in the park and described a bit about each neighbor.
As far as I was concerned, my life hadn’t begun until I’d met Joan, so my top priority was to see where I’d met, proposed to, and married her. So from there we drove to Zion Lutheran Church, where we’d had our wedding. As we pulled up to park, I recognized the beige brick building from the footage my mom had sent us. We entered through a side door and saw that people were settling into the pews. A service was about to start.
“They haven’t changed a thing,” Joan whispered as we made our way up to the front.
Joan guided me to a seat right behind where we’d said our vows. As I listened to the music and the pastor speaking, I pictured us standing there facing the front with the groomsmen to my right and the bridesmaids to her left, then closed my eyes. After watching the video, seeing all the photos, hearing Joan’s description, and now sitting in the church, I was able to visualize the two of us looking into each other’s eyes and promising, in front of our family and friends, to cherish one another until death do us part. For the first time in my recovery, I was able to connect with an emotion about a past event. With our wedding photos and video in mind, I felt just as I must have at a fresh twenty-one all over again. It was an incredible moment for both of us.
We left the church out the main doors, stopping to take a photo of ourselves where the guests had thrown rice on us as we’d emerged, holding hands, on our way to the limo. Joan and I, still holding hands, looked at each other and smiled with the mutual understanding of what I was experiencing—feelings of gratefulness that she was still standing right next to me twenty-five years later.
Next Joan suggested we find a White Castle to sample one of our favorite shared teenage treats: sliders, greasy minihamburgers, served with pickles, ketchup, and mustard. Apparently I used to eat eight or ten at a time. But now I was sickened after only one bite.
“I can’t eat this,” I said, thankful that we’d already arranged to get some pizza and buffalo wings with her niece Julie.
Finally it was time to go to the cemetery, which was surrounded by open fields. Joan and I both have plots there, and Taryn was buried at the foot of them, near a fifty-foot-tall oak tree, about ten feet from a private road. Its branches were bare, but I could tell that in summertime its leaves provided some nice shade for Taryn. Joan’s grandparents were also buried in another section of this well-groomed, peaceful resting place.
It was windy and cold, in the upper forties, and the sun was trying to peek through the clouds as we parked the car. I took a deep breath, let out a long sigh, and opened the door.
“There’s Taryn,” Joan said, pointing.
We made our way to our child’s grave, which was marked with a bronze plaque. A small bronze vase on a chain was turned upside down to keep debris from collecting in it. Wearing jeans and dress shoes, I knelt down on the hard, wet ground, and with my gloved hands I brushed the dirt and dried leaves from the plaque. I’d seen a photo of it in the Taryn scrapbook, but touching the frigid metal surface helped me connect the emotional loss of my daughter to this tangible place.
The plaque read, “Our daughter, So small, so sweet, so soon, Taryn Blake Bolzan, February 27, 1988,” and knowing it hadn’t changed in two decades helped me understand what I must have felt being there before. I turned the vase right side up and potted the small bouquet of green and white carnations the groundskeepers had left there as a memento on St. Patrick’s Day.
“Does it feel like it just happened, or does it feel like twenty-one years?” I asked Joan.
“It feels like it just happened,” she said softly, breaking into tears.
I hugged her and held her for twenty minutes, listening to the wind blowing and the birds chirping. Joan showed me where we’d once hung a bird feeder, made by Joan’s dad, over Taryn’s head, where it drew sparrows and cardinals. She also told me that the groundskeepers had removed the wreath blanket that had been placed over the grave during the winter and would replace it with a new one next winter.
Feeling the chill in our bones, we got into the car, turned on the heater, and sat for twenty more minutes, talking about the memories that my accident had taken from both of us. Because Joan had been under sedation for the C-section, she couldn’t remember much of Taryn’s christening, her baptism, or the funeral arrangements I’d made and told her about afterward. Because I’d been the sole keeper of those memories, they were now gone forever.
“They were just so precious,” Joan said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and they’re gone.”
Although I knew there was little or no possibility these memories would come back, I couldn’t help but hope that one day I would remember seeing my daughter in the hospital with my own eyes, holding her lifeless body outside the recovery room, and sharing those painful memories of that tragic day with Joan.
The mood was heavy as we drove for about a half hour to Thornwood High School. Because it was Sunday, the gates to the main part of the school were locked, but to our surprise, the giant indoor track and field, where I’d wrestled, played football, and thrown the shot put and discus, was open. We walked through the halls of my old school and stumbled into an unlocked gym.
At first I didn’t want to go inside. “I’m not going in there,” I said.
But Joan thought it would be fun. “Let’s just go in,” she said. When I wouldn’t budge, she disappeared inside and came out a few minutes later.
“You’ve got to come in here,” she said, beaming.
“No,” I said, feeling annoyed. “Why are you doing this?”
“You have to see,” she said. “Your name is hanging on the wall!”
Well, that got my interest, so I followed her into the basketball gym and broke into a big grin. There on the wall I saw a long narrow yellow banner with my name spelled out in black block letters along with the names of seven other alumni who had gone on to play professional football and baseball.
“This is why we go exploring,” she said proudly.
It felt funny to get excited about seeing my name on this banner, but I couldn’t help myself. We spent another half hour walking the halls and looking at all the historical sports photos and championship trophies behind the glass cases. We never found the football memorabilia, which must have been in another building.
From there, we drove past my childhood apartment complex in Calumet City and headed to the area where I’d lived in high school and visited during college. From seeing pictures, I recognized the dark brick triplex, which we’d called a three-flat. When we got out of the car, I saw a guy parked in front of us get out of his vehicle with a gun handle sticking out of his back pocket, so we quickly looked around, took some snapshots, and jumped back into the car.
I felt no emotional connection to this place or to its run-down strip malls filled with pizza joints, fast-food fried chicken and fish places, and check-cashing storefronts. People didn’t take care of their lawns, and everyone parked their junk cars on the streets, which gave it the feel of a poor, depressed neighborhood. I felt less connected to my childhood haunts than to Joan’s in Tinley Park, perhaps because she didn’t know enough about my years in this area to tell me any stories. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel I was missing anything.
I was happy to leave for my folks’ apartment in Orland Park, about twenty-five minutes west on I-80 and four miles from where Joan grew up. My sister Candi welcomed us into my parents’ tiny but spotless two-bedroom unit, with its flowered couch and refrigerator plastered with family photos, where we talked for a while before going out for dinner.
Afterward, my mom’s close friend Maggie and her husband, Paul, came over for a surprise visit and shared stories about me and their daughters, Lisa and Yvonne, who were close to my age and had been like two more sisters for me.
Maggie seemed to be the only one in the room who remembered that I’d lost my memory. My parents were still starting sentences with, “Remember when . . . ,” but Maggie always said, “I know you don’t remember, but let me tell you about . . .” I immediately liked her and thought she was a wonderful, funny, and warm person. Paul was much quieter, but I could tell they’d been very close to my parents for a long time.
My father shared some photos of his parents and two brothers that I hadn’t seen before and also told some stories of growing up in a boys’ school in Pennsylvania after his mother had died and his alcoholic father beat him and the younger of his two brothers—one time so hard with a metal pipe that he put my father in a body cast. After that episode they were made wards of the state. It was hard for me to hear these stories because I felt no child should have had to go through such pain, especially not my father.
Every time I got together with my dad I could see that I was a lot like him. He was a family man who wanted the best for his children and was truly in love with his wife and enjoyed the time he spent with her. I could tell that he was a gentle giant—someone happy with who he was and what he had done in life. It was always good to spend time with my parents and Candi to share new memories with them, but after such a long day, we were happy to hit the hay at the Westin in Lombard.
On Monday we took the one-hour drive to DeKalb to spend the day tooling around the NIU campus, search for the tree where I’d carved my marriage proposal to Joan, and meet up with Phil and Linda Herra. Phil had played on the offensive line next to me and was Grant’s godfather, and other than Brendan and Jerry, he had been my closest male friend over the years.
Driving around the geographically expansive grounds, we found our respective dorms and saw the brick buildings where we’d attended classes, then parked the car at the lagoon where we used to picnic and feed the geese. The campus, which now has an enrollment of more than twenty-four thousand students, seemed much bigger than I’d imagined and was swarming with kids walking to and from class.
We strolled among the stand of white birch trees lining the grassy area around the lake until Joan stopped at one with a V-shaped trunk she thought was the one. She said she’d identified the tree years earlier, and although this one no longer had any visible marks, she figured either the carved bark had peeled off or it was too high above our heads now to know for sure.
Joan had told me the story early in my recovery, and as we stood there, the story came back to me: early that morning I’d told Joan I needed to run an errand. When I came back, Joan saw a screwdriver in my hand and wondered what I’d been doing.
“Let’s go to the lagoon and feed the geese,” I told her.
After gathering up some cereal and old bread, we headed over to the lake, where Joan saw me walking around, inspecting the tree trunks.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“These trees are cool,” I said. “Have you ever looked at them?”
Of course, she had no idea what I was doing, which was trying to guide her to the message I’d carved into the bark.
“Not really,” she said.
When Joan still didn’t find it on her own, I had to help her out. “How about this tree?” I said, pointing directly at the message: Will you marry me?
Joan smiled broadly and asked, “Are you going to get on one knee?”
“Of course,” I replied, doing so. “Joan, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said, tearing up with joy.
By standing in the very same spot where I had carved and said those important words, I was again able to visualize and re-create one of the most seminal moments of our life together. It almost felt like I was there doing it again.
From there, we met Phil and Linda at a greasy gyro place we used to frequent in the eighties. With all this unhealthy food I’d consumed, I was starting to see how I’d gotten into the bad eating habits that led to the gastric band surgery.
The four of us then went to Huskie Stadium, where Phil took me on a tour of the new facility that housed the football team and workout areas and also down to the field, where we’d played our games. Even though the scoreboard was new and they’d installed some different seats on the stadium’s east side, I really got a sense of what it must have been like to play there. I smelled the mildewy scent of the artificial turf, looked up at the aging stands—red seats below and gray metal benches up in the cheap seats—and imagined a crowd of fans cheering us on, even in the icy winter months.
Phil also showed me the coaches’ offices, the wall featuring the names of former Huskies like me who had gone on to play in the NFL, and the infamous forty-degree switchback ramps that curled around inside the stadium walls and also outside, where we had to do what I was told was my least favorite drill: running wind sprints during our off-season workouts. It really meant a lot to me that Phil had taken the time to bring me closer to him and my college football experiences.
After that Joan and I stocked up on NIU fan goodies at the bookstore, buying shirts, jackets, coffee mugs, and lapel pins, then we stopped for a taste of DeKalb’s famous beer nuggets. Joan said we used to eat bagfuls of these deep-fried pizza dough chunks dipped in hot marinara sauce, which most girls blamed for their “freshman fifteen.”
I slept well that night after such a memorable day. For the rest of my life I will cherish the new memories I made, walking the same footsteps that I had thirty years earlier, and I hope to return to watch some football games there in the future.
Tuesday was our final sightseeing day, and our first stop was in Glendale Heights, where Joan and I bought our townhouse and where we were living when we brought Grant home from the hospital. Like Grant, the trees that were babies back then had since grown up, although the townhome still looked like it did in the pictures I’d seen.
Next we visited the first house that we actually designed and built ourselves in 1990 in an upscale development at Aurora’s Stonebridge Country Club, the site of many a high-profile golf tour. The house was surrounded with gorgeous oak trees and flowers, including tulips just like the ones we’d planted. Joan told me we’d held quite a few functions at the huge clubhouse nearby, including Taylor’s christening party and the Easter Day celebration when Taylor decided she no longer needed her pacifier and gave it to the Easter Bunny.
Although I still didn’t really know who I was, our trip to Chicago gave me a stronger sense of identity. The impressions I gathered by walking the streets, the playing fields, and the halls where I’d roamed all those years ago seemed to fit with what everyone had been telling me about my past. After I saw the neighborhoods where I grew up, where everyone worked hard and yet no one was rich, my consistently strong work ethic and the innate toughness I’d heard so much about now made more sense. Nothing had been given to me; I’d had to earn it all, and that was what had driven me to win and succeed, both on and off the playing field. I could also see how growing up in the Midwest, where family was so important, had instilled such a solid commitment to family in me.
Oddly enough, the pride I felt about my parents and where I came from seemed to belong more to the new Scott than the old one. Based on what Joan had told me, I’d never been a fan of Illinois, nor had I felt the need to live near my parents. I’d wanted to get away from there and make my own mark on life somewhere else, somewhere new. But going back there had made me realize how important it was to know where I came from; it had made me who I was—and could still become—even if I was living in a different state. I was a product of my parents, a working man and his loving wife, a mother of three. Why wouldn’t I be proud?