I CHOSE THE MOUNTAIN - an excerpt

I sat upright in my bed as sleep disappeared with a jolt.

“BOB, STOP IT! BOB, PLEASE.” As I rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I saw my father in his bathrobe by the piano, swinging the hatchet, like chopping a tree. My mother stood swaying, arms over her head, trying to block the swings, blood splattering her slip.

“DAD, STOP IT.”

Unhearing, my father continued to swing, connecting with a pumpkin-like sound. I punched him with a fist, hard as I could in the back. My father turned, wild eyed, and raised the hatchet. I wheeled through the room, through the kitchen and out the back door. I jumped over the fence and ran around to the front of the house.

As I walked toward the Ingram’s house, my mind vibrated, over and over, “Go back!” I ran back to the front door, opened it slowly and looked around.

Nobody.

As I crept through the living room I heard water running in the bathroom.

My mother was in the tub, pressing her wounds with a washcloth and water. Large slabs hung from her head, gashes on her arms.
I looked in the mirror, said, “Shit, what will happen to him now?”

“Don’t swear!” my mother scolded me. “He’ll probably have to go to a hospital.”

“Where is he?” I walked to the kitchen. My father lay in a pool of blood. “I think he’s dead.”

Prologue

A warm breeze swept across the patio. I sat sipping my morning coffee, my fiercely loyal companion, Chase—my golden retriever—at my side. I gazed out over the reef as slow waves tumbled from the whitecaps, gently drifting toward the dock, shimmering beneath the rising sun.

That morning, from our sea-facing condo on the north side of Ambergris Caye, my wife of thirty years spoke with conviction. “It’s time,” she said, “to share your story.”

A story of triumph, after years spent reclaiming a life that was upended too early—before I had the tools to understand it. A life spent searching, unraveling, reaching—through bottles and beds that proved empty, through three marriages that served more as placeholders than partnerships. A life shaped by a decades-long relationship with alcohol, and a quiet, persistent ache for something more.

What I eventually discovered was not outside myself, but within: something sacred, waiting to be named and understood. And now, at eighty-one years old, I’m offering you this story—this account of what it means to rebuild, to heal, and to finally become whole.

This is what happened when I chose the mountain.