Road Trip

The day finally comes when I buy the one-way ticket to be with my father. I pack blindly, unsure of what to expect. I pack for snow and for the desert. I pack for a wedding and for a funeral. I pack a black dress.

My father, Ian, was diagnosed in 2002 with a terminal blood cancer called multiple myeloma. After that he told me he divided people into two categories: the living and the dying. Even sick people were living if their bodies were trying to mend and there was hope of a recovery. But in his case, his body had turned against him. He knew we loved him. He loved us. But there was this divide now: we were among the living.

He had a last wish. My dad wanted to die in California, where he lived for more than 30 years, where it was warm. It would be his last roadtrip, Boston to L.A. He would die in a hotel if necessary.

I knew it was time to buy the ticket when my sister Anita called-- tired, sad-- driving home in the dark after seeing my father. He was very weak and his heart was beating irregularly and too fast. Anita is a nurse practitioner. She listened to it and what she heard alarmed her. She told me I should come now. And Diane, my father's wife, called soon afterward and began crying. She told me something had changed.

There was something else that made Anita anxious around that time: my father's insistence that he was fine to drive. When Anita gently told him he wasn't, he was silent. Then he said, "You just killed me," and slowly shuffled out of the restaurant where they were eating breakfast.

It upset Anita, his tireless medical advisor. I mention it because my father was like that as he got closer to death. He was sometimes a smaller version of himself, selfish, struggling to maintain control. My father's roadtrip was a romantic idea, and there were beautiful moments. But it was disappointing too, and stressful.

So I arrive in Boston and we all pile into my sister's minivan-- Diane, Anita, my 18-year-old brother Julian, my father and me. A wheelchair in the back. It's Jan. 15, and we're not sure when we'll be back. I would miss a friend's wedding and leave my work dumped on collegues' laps.

We head West, driving into the sun, into harsh light.

Snow

In Pennsylvania, we drive right into a snow squall and white-out conditions. We take the first exit and find a hotel. Cars are stuck in the snow ahead of us, but a group of guys from a nearby bar push us up a hill to the hotel entrance. Over the 23 days we are on this journey we will often rely on the kindness of strangers. There is a teenager who hands Diane a flower in Santa Fe for no particular reason. There is the nurse at a cancer center who passes me a Kleenex. There is a family in Joshua Tree that runs a dusty motel; they bring a pie to our door.

This first night, Anita and I realize that Diane is up a lot, helping my father to the restroom, and to drink, and reassuring him through bouts of impatience and anxiety. We decide to do all the driving, so she can rest during the day. We head for Oklahoma.

"Trapping remains alive and well in the show-me state," the woman on the radio says. We pass a huge white cross and signs telling us to pray, advertisements for gun shops and fireworks. Like the soft urbanites we are, we miss good coffee. Somewhere in the Bible Belt my dad asks for a New York Times and we burst out laughing.

The part that strikes me is that my father doesn't seem to care much. I read later that people who are dying often disconnect from those around them in their final months because they have so much going on internally. But we are working so hard to do what he wants, and he hardly seems to notice. He sets a playlist of songs for our drive through the Mojave desert. But as they play he starts to talk about which friends should be informed of what as we travel across country. Instructions and last wishes we've mostly been through before, hashed out again and again. The more we talk, the more negative he becomes. He shifts his weight and winces. The songs are over. The desert unseen.

We pass flat yellow farmland, old windmills, always squinting into the sun. The driver gets to wear our communal "Jay-Lo" sunglasses, which are big and brash and broken so that one lens sits lower than the other. Our van is covered in road salt and dust. Somewhere in the middle of the United States I sit by my father while he's awake and thank him quietly for the things he's given me.

Diane keeps a journal. She makes note of the temperature, hoping that as the weather gets warmer my father's mood will brighten. A few entries:

-- "Stopped in Indianapolis for Mexican food today. Sunshine the whole day. Temps went from minus five to 35. Yes... Shower with Ian this morning. Very much need and want this intimacy of caregiving as long as it can last. I adore him and want to be with him and help him."

-- "I spend time in the car, surrounded by flat scenery, memorizing Ian... His hands, his eyes, his touch. Memorize it... hard.. Want to and don't want to reach our destinations."

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we slow the pace. We watch Obama's inauguration at a cancer center as my father receives IV fluids. The nurses are cool, middle-aged women. One has tattoos and wild white hair. We all move our chairs over to the receptionist's computer screen where the ceremony is streaming live. When Aretha Franklin goes deep and churchy I lose it and begin crying. That's when the nurse gives me the Kleenex.

We have three days in Santa Fe. We do laundry and visit a whimsical outdoor exhibit of wind chimes, although my father prefers to stay in the car. We sit in the Jacuzzi at our quaint hotel. We drink beer. Drinking beer is suddenly immensely pleasurable. But my father can't drink and has little appetite. He frowns on us drinking.

He begins to say he's just fed up, and bored. He sleeps more and more, but he's restless. He watches the landscapes out the window, silently. They are becoming more vast and more familiar.

In Sedona, Arizona, he's thirsty, and his urine turns dark. We trade turns staying with him. Anita and I take Julian hiking in a snowy canyon and he seems to really enjoy this little escape. He's been so sweet, just rolling with the punches. He gives my dad long hugs, and tells him, "Your head smells like soap."

Sun

When we arrive in Joshua Tree, California, my father sits in the sun, finally warm. "This is super," he says, his voice barely audible.

I make him eggs and bacon and toast and he eats it all. "That was super, love," he says. Diane and he listen to music on their ipod in the sun, sharing a pair of headphones.

Once we're on the west side of the United States we are in the landscapes my father loves. He had a pilot's license and he used to fly all over here. We stop by an airstrip with a small restaurant in Sedona, on top of a red mesa. My father says, "Go check if they still have raspberry pie."

Diane is wearing Julian's sweatshirt and I'm wearing Anita's top and Anita is wearing my socks. Diane tells us stories that crack us up, about accidentally breaking someone's heart, and her disco days. We listen to podcasts of This American Life and we discuss speech impediments, adoption, the mortgage crisis, you name it. We call Diane the fixer because she is so efficient at finding discounted hotel rooms on the go. Anita's four-year-old celebrates his birthday and we sing to him on speaker-phone.

We are staying at the Joshua Tree Inn. It's a funky place my dad found years ago, with cacti in the courtyard and odd chairs. Musicians stay here on their way to gigs. One morning my father sits in his wheelchair by the fireplace updating a spreadsheet of financials when a grizzled man comes in, picks up a guitar and begins playing softly. He wears a Nascar baseball cap and scuffed cowboy boots. There's tape on the hinge of his glasses. "I can get by without you for a day or two," he croons. "I can get through the night. I can watch TV and drink some whiskey, but what am I gonna do with the rest of my life." Diane cries quietly. That night, Jan. 26, my father's birthday, the owners bring us a fruit pie.

It's in Joshua Tree that Julian tells my father he doesn't want to see him suffer anymore. Julian says he's ready to let go. The words are too blunt for my dad. He sips soup and doesn't really respond. Julian walks into the desert and screams.

I go out to him, and we talk a bit. Despite everything, it's impossible to ignore the beauty of the stars, the jewelry above our heads. It kind of leads us away from the stuff we can't do anything about. Julian points out Orion's sword.

California

We arrive in Laguna Beach, where my father used to live. By now, it irritates him if we are talking on the phone or watching TV around him. The rest of the world seems to be whirring by, preoccupied by trivial concerns, busy at nothing. Anita and I joke about how much we miss having mindless time. Our days are too intense. We find ourselves lying in bed at 9 p.m. staring up at the ceiling, yearning for E! Entertainment.

My father's mood darkens. He starts to cry as Anita is helping him change his shirt. He says he's just fed up. He can barely stand and pivot into his wheelchair now and he's pretty much stopped eating. At his last doctor's visit, at the hospital where Julian was born, the oncologist asks my dad: "What is the one thing I can help you with the most today?"

"I want to die," my dad says.

We set about finding a vacation rental where my father can be comfortable, but we're torn about what to tell people. These places are family owned, and they might not like the idea of someone coming to their house to die. Another act of kindness comes from a salty man who drives a beat-up pick-up. There's a collection of driftwood on the dash. He rents us a lovely little place overlooking a small canyon with eucalyptus trees and gives us a break on the price. He tells us he bought the place with money his mother left him when she died. He says maybe my dad and his mom will have a drink in heaven. "Let's hope they have alcohol in heaven," Anita says.

My father's best friend Colin arrives, and that day my dad's spirits lift. I learn later that it's common for people to have a sudden burst of energy near the end. My dad tells us "No more cell phones. No emails. No computers." He sends us all whale-watching in Dana Point while he sits with Colin, talking on the dock. By now we have entered hospice care and we love the nurse assigned to us. She's a little wacky and very efficient and candid. She and Anita set a drug regime that helps my dad sleep better.

The next day my father sits in his wheelchair, overlooking our little patio and the canyon, full of monarch butterflies. We run errands and take turns sitting with him, just reminiscing. He's a bit dopey on morphine, but finally he seems happy and relaxed. I go for a walk to make arrangements at a nearby mortuary, and take deep breaths of sea air.

That night I make a big pasta dinner for everyone, and a bowl of lentils for my father. He doesn't really eat anything, but he raises his glass of water to offer a toast.

He touches it to Diane's glass. "I love you," he says in his whispery voice.

He touches it to Julian's glass. "I love you."

He touches it to mine. "I love you."

To Colin. "I love you."

To Anita. "I love you."

The next day, Tuesday, he becomes less and less responsive. His breath begins to gurgle in his chest and he slips into a coma. In the early hours of Wednesday morning Anita listens to his heart and tells us it is beating 200 times a minute. My father ran a lot before he got sick and his heart was strong. It is still battling. "It has to let go," Anita says softly.

Shortly after noon, it does let go. Diane calls us to the bedroom as my dad's breathing becomes erratic and then intermittent. Anita marks the time of death on the sports watch I bought her for her birthday a month ago. My father's last breath, and then silence, and then Diane strokes his face.

"How beautiful," she says in amazement. "So sweet... He passed so softly."

My father's spirit seems to linger an hour or two, but there's no doubt it's gone by the time they arrive to take his body away.

Diane is holding her stomach as they wheel the gurney out. Then she jumps up and rushes toward my father's body, and they stop. She puts her hands gently on his feet, his legs, his chest, his head. She brushes the sheet gingerly, like a mother who brushes lint off her child's jacket before they go to school, as an excuse to touch the child one last time.

Moon

Anita and I drive the van back. We have her two little boys with us now. Diane and Julian flew ahead.

We are late setting out, and by the time we get to the desert east of L.A. it's dark already and a huge full moon rises in front of us. We are driving into the moon.

I remember my father as he was to me: the man who stroked my hair until I fell asleep, the man who fixed my car, helped me with my physics homework, played pool with us at Mickey's. The man who insisted that I listen to the drunk on the subway because he was making a good point about American arrogance. The man who flew his plane to pick me up from university after graduation, circling the Statue of Liberty. The man who told me I should quit my job because it was interfering with watching the World Cup. The man who came looking for me in his beat-up Mercedes as I was running, and slowed, and handed me a Gatorade.

We talk about new beginnings. Anita and I make plans to spend Christmas in foreign countries from now on, and I resolve to learn to sail.

"Look at the full moon you guys," I say to my sister's boys. They crane their necks. The little one, Duran Ian Morris, named for my father, howls softly.

"Ahooooooooooooooooo."

"Ahooooooooooooooooo."