After the death of his father, Michael D. Horner, Nick Horner was plunged into a terrible depression. His loss and sadness led him to question his daily life and distance himself from his friends and other family members. It wasn’t until He remembered his father’s fascination with Everest and that he proposed to take his ashes to the topthat the young lawyer from Tampa, Florida, began to heal.
For Nick Horner the cause of his father’s death remains a mystery. Michael Dean Horner passed away on February 8, 2023 due to a rare neurodegenerative disease yet to be diagnosed. The previous months were spent at Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville, where he arrived after being admitted to the emergency room at St. Joseph’s Hospital last December.
The lack of answers and the loss of his father plunged Nick Horner into sadness and isolation. The lawyer was even planning to quit his job at the Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick firm; However, his bosses gave him permission to be absent for as long as he needed. For the rest of the family, it was not easy to confront the death of the patriarch either, her sister left the semester of her doctoral program and her mother was alone facing a diagnosis of breast cancer.
Dealing with grief, one mountain at a time
When Nick’s cousin told him that he had done the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, a tour that includes river valleys, Tibetan villages and half a dozen mountains, the young man thought he had found the perfect way to honor his father’s life and say goodbye to him. “I thought it was what I needed to put my mind in order and at the same time everything fell into place. Dad had never left the country. I told myself: I’m going to take him there,” he said in an interview with Tampa Bay Times.
Since he did not know if upon arriving in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, his father’s ashes could be confiscated, he decided to take two urns, one in his carry-on luggage and another in his checked suitcase. Although he was nervous, he had no problems and his healing journey began. He spent six weeks walking, disconnected from the digital world, contemplating the mountains, seeing the stars, thinking about his father’s spirit and reading It’s okay that you’re not okayby Megan Devine, a book focused on grief.
Climbing Everest was a physical challenge that gave Nick Hornes perspective. His father was fascinated by this mountain, but he never traveled to see it, his approach was through documentaries, films and projections on the IMAX screen. When the lawyer reached the Khumbu glacier, on the Nepalese approach to the summit of Everest, he took out the urn and scattered his father’s ashes. “That’s where I think he would want his final resting place to be,” she said..
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