It’s a long way home, if you are coming from Dalhart USA, especially
when you must stop and pick up a Sharon, and you have to listen to the Dallas
Cowboys lay a stinker of a game in New York.
Come on guys.
I dealt with it by letting Skip drive. I dealt with my anxious riding while Skip
drove too fast and tail-gated too many cars by burying my head and brain in my
computer documenting this trip.
This one I’m doing from home.
We drove right at 3,000 miles on our epic quest. If you look at it on a map we sort of made a
loop from Waco/Austin up to Paris, across to Lubbock and up through New Mexico
and Colorado and into Utah and back to Colorado and eventually back to
Waco/Austin. Okay, it’s not really a
loop, I just don’t have another word for it….so loop it is.
We witnessed the topographical changes from central Texas to
east Texas pine and cedar trees and cotton in dark soil to Lubbock’s scrub oak
and cotton in red soil to the pines and colorful aspens in the mountains. The cotton in east Texas is ahead of the cotton
in west Texas and west Texas, Lubbock, was greener and had standing water in
the fields. We saw snow in Colorado
(sounds like a song title --- use it if you want).
We saw deer and elk and antelope and lizards and
chipmunks. We saw and heard people from
all over the world. We saw amazing
natural, God given beauty, not just in parks but in small north Texas towns and
fields and in the faces of the servers and clerks and fellow travelers in
Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.
People are fascinating. I love people.
We hiked and played golf and wondered and wandered and
talked and listened to music that described what we were doing and how it
felt.
We saw where Marty was born.
We saw where she was formed, we saw where Marty and I met and where our
babies were born and where we found peace and where we had fun and ultimately
where Marty died. We made the circle and
in a particularly fitting way we closed that circle with as much grace as we
could muster.
I started this quest looking for closure. That’s not what I found. Hell, closure is just a word that I’m not
sure exists in real life, with real things in that real life. I don’t know.
I found enjoyment in simple things, I found some new friends, talked
with old friends and I found good, hard, belly aching, coughing laughter. Ultimately I rediscovered some marvelous
memories and some of what Marty and I were before she got sick.
I sat on a rock in Utah and looked out over this enormous
expanse, this marvelous creation that had taken millions of years for real
nature to form. I sat on that rock and
somehow found a sense of peace I haven’t felt it a long time. I walked away from that rock feeling lighter,
feeling less burdened, feeling less sad.
It was a healing.
I can’t recommend the experience enough. If you do it, you have to find a good friend,
a friend who will laugh with you and laugh at you, a friend who will cry with
you and sing badly with you, a friend who generally smells okay and doesn’t
snore. Mostly you need a friend, someone
you love, someone you know loved your wife and someone she loved who was
willing and able to go on a quest.
Then you must make a plan, a flexible plan and just go. You go to find yourself; you go to remind
yourself of who you are and what you have done, you go to honor all that was
and all that will be. Just go.
Taking care of Marty was the most decent thing I’ve ever
done. Taking her around the state was
one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Somehow, somewhere, Marty watched, laughed, gave directions and advice, cussed
and cried. It was just right.
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