Dad’s Last Car Trip

Later, when I was thinking of adapting the nature sandpainting that Austyn led at the grief retreat I met her at, she’d send me an encouraging, “You go, girl!!!” Despite being out as trans, I took it with the cheerfulness that she meant it for.

Right around that time, Dad got really sick. He’d sit in his chair most of the day, straight as an arrow like always, yearning to go out driving. He’d make one last trip, this time to the gas station with the dinosaur on its logo, so his battery wouldn’t die. We were beginning to fight - and this time the subject matter was obvious. “You’re gonna kill yourself!” I squealed. “Well, either you help me NOT kill myself, or I take that risk myself. Either way, I’m going out.” It was not fair; it was abuse; and I loved Dad too much to take that chance.

So we strapped into his lavender Toyota Solara, and Dad turned right at the cross-street at the end of the block. He cruised to the gas station, but I still clutched my passenger seat with fear. He got out of the car and slowly walked to the gas pump.

I recalled other, earlier times at this gas station. When I was scared of the new President and joked about one of his new appointees leaving in disgrace. Ha! Now I had graver matters to be afraid of.

Back then, my schadenfreude hadn’t impressed Dad. Politics didn’t interest him much, as there were so many things that unite us rather than divide us. I half-agreed there, knowing how I could get along with people different from my vital positions but still keeping my humanity at the forefront. It reminds me now, as I listened to the BBC cooly report last night that we’re approaching a constitutional crisis here, of the Crosby Stills and Nash line: “Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line, the man comes to take you away.” The man could be fear, it could be your own sense of righteousness, whatever. Or, of course, it could be some external authority figure as well. Your choice. Anyway, my fear that day was of Dad dying on the road, something that I have of myself as well.

We drove home, crash-free. That was dad’s last experience of taking his car out.

Even after that trip, and after he spent three weeks at the UCSF advanced heart failure wing, after he bought a cherry-red walker so he could take trips around the block instead of around town - “Come see what I’m getting, Samantha. Do you like it?” - he’d meticulously plan a trip to Colorado, this time with a travel nurse as his companion. We’d joke that she - of course she’d be a she - would need to be cute. Preferably Asian, the group of folks he’d had a soft spot for since he was a teenager. Until dad rethought it and determined that a male nurse would be more appropriate if he needed help bathing himself. Background wouldn’t matter there.

I was beginning to retreat into y bedroom more and more. That gauzy haze was building up. I was seeing spiders everywhere - the sign from Granny that she was near, that she was with me. A close friend I call my cousin became a medium during this time, somewhat to his surprise. Granny said she was waiting to take Dad home, he was close to death. Something that comforted me a bit. Evil spirits took over my cuz a few times, so we gradually stopped channeling Granny.

I keep the love and the lessons from my grief retreat close by these days. When I went there, I was starving for connection. My close friend had literally dropped off the face of the earth. He has mental health issues, and I worried that he had died by his own hand. Eventually, after the shock of seeing a picture of him in my facebook feed, I resolved that he had discarded me. Ghosted, haunting me in my dreams but never present in waking life except as an aching lack. That was where I was at during the grief retreat - panging with that loss. My groupmates during our nature sandpainting could tell, and after showing my nature sandpainting to Austyn and my group, Heather, gazing at my soulstone protected by a dried up log from the wind, “And you’ll always be fed.” And in a way I am, both from memories of my Dad and my Granny, and from the friends who literally appeared out of nowhere when I needed someone most.

#parents #lossofoaparent #death #caregivers