Two months before my dad died from his battle with cancer, I drove him to Lexington Medical Center in Columbia for a check-up. On days like these—visits to Lexington Medical—during days like these—the pandemic—I’d drop him off at the doors, he’d go in alone, and I’d drive to a nearby parking garage and wait in the car.
I’d roll the windows down, turn the car off, listen to an audiobook, and wait for my dad to call me when his appointment was over.
Five minutes later, I’d turn the car back on and roll the windows up because it was ungodly hot outside. Life is too short to voluntarily suffer without air conditioning.
The previous time I had driven my dad to Lexington Medical, I waited for hours outside. On this day, I waited about thirty minutes before my phone rang. The mariachi horns that kick off Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” blasted out of my phone—it was the ringtone I custom edited for when my dad called.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “You done?”
“Yeah, I’m done.” His voice sounded terrible. I knew he wasn’t feeling well.
I pulled out of the garage and around the corner to pick him up in front of Building 3. Dad was standing just outside the wide, glass doors. Instead of walking up to the passenger door, he pointed at the back door and gestured for me to unlock it. He opened the door, cleared out a few of the items, and crawled across the backseat to lie down.
He said he got sick during the appointment, and now he needed to get horizontal as fast as possible.
This was the way it was for most of the month of July—Dad had debilitating headaches that became so strong, especially if he had to be up and moving around, that he’d get sick. On another day, it hit him after another doctor’s appointment, and I pulled the car over in the parking lot behind a store so he could throw up in semi-privacy.
It’s a strange experience to see your father struggle to do what you’ve always taken for granted he would be able to do: walk, talk, ride in the car.
My dad was in the backseat of the car now, lying down, and I pulled up the GPS to take us home. This, too, I had taken for granted because my dad, even though I had begun to chauffeur him around, still loathed following directions given by a computer. From the passenger seat, he would still tell me exactly what lane to be in, what turns to take, and would never travel on the highway—back roads only.
I took the highway. Better to be quick, I thought.
As I navigated the turns and the stopping and going while my dad fought the pain behind me, a memory came rushing back:
My driver’s ed training when I was sixteen with my instructor, Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller had also been my ninth-grade geometry teacher. I don’t remember anything from that class, but I remember driver’s ed, and one lesson in particular: When I rolled up to the stop sign at a four-way intersection down the street from the elementary school I attended, Mr. Miller told me, “Stop softly, and accelerate softly. I should be able to take a nap while you’re driving, and when you stop, and when you go, I should be able to keep sleeping.”
I never forgot what he said. Since that day, I’ve always tried to drive like there’s a passenger in my car who is asleep, and it’s Priority One not to disturb them.
I remembered this as I drove my father, eyes closed and groaning in pain, back home. I tried to give the accelerator and brake pedals the steady, strong, graceful touch of a ballerina. I took extra care with each turn like I was driving a load of fragile, aged wine from the Chateau-de-Somewhere.
I had been listening to Bob Goff’s Dream Big on audiobook at a low volume to keep from bothering Dad when I also remembered that months earlier, I had created a playlist on Spotify with all of Dad’s favorite songs (creatively named “Dad’s Songs”), made for such a time as this.
I switched from the audiobook to the playlist.
The first song was “You Win Again” by Hank Williams.
I heard Dad quiet down a little in the back.
“What radio station is that?” he asked.
I thought for a moment before answering. How would someone explain quantum physics to a four-year-old? “It’s not the radio, Dad. It’s Spotify. I made a playlist on there.”
“Spa-ga-what?”
This was no time to educate my dad about what streaming music services are. I tried to make the rest of the ride home a drive down Nostalgia Boulevard, a smooth road paved with clouds and other such soft material, while his favorite music played.
Roy Acuff’s “Tell Mother I’ll Be There” came on, and I tried not to think about the lyrics too much. Another Hank Williams song, “I saw the Light.” Elvis Presley, “An Evening Prayer.” I could hear Dad humming along.
At one point, during “Kaw-Liga” (another one from Hank Williams—half of the playlist is Hank Williams), Dad even hit the falsetto when Hank sings, “Kawww-Liiiiiga.” Musically speaking, listening to a sick man trying to a hit a falsetto note might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard. As a son listening to his dad, knowing the clock was ticking for us, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
Something unexpected happens when you find yourself caring for a loved one who is suffering—a sort of training that you didn’t even know was training begins to kick in. It’s like Mr. Miyagi transforming Daniel’s chores into martial arts.
Some of my training was everything I had learned about the power of music from the moment I sat down at a piano at age three, from years of growing up in and working at a church, from years of working at a school and thinking about how to reach kids.
Some of that training was learning how to stop and go like I was driving precious cargo. I trained from the time I was sixteen with Mr. Miller, through the streets and hills of my hometown in Pittsburgh, through the expanses of highways on road trips to California and back again, through every single mind-numbing traffic jam on my commutes to and from work, all the way to the thirty-minute drive from Lexington Medical Center to my dad’s house.
I felt like it was all training for this moment, with my dad lying in the backseat of the car.
So much of what we do and what we go through isn't training for the next rung on the ladder of success—it’s training for love.
I couldn’t take my father’s disease away, but I could drive the way I was taught to drive. I could play music I knew my dad loved.
As we finally pulled into the driveway of my dad’s house, Hank Williams had come back on:
Oh, Heaven only knows how much I miss you
I can't help it if I'm still in love with you
