The past few years have been trying.
As we emerge from almost three years of closures, isolation,
masks, and vaccine arguments, we all look for things that we can be thankful
for. Things that make our days a little brighter, our minds and hearts a little
happier.
Me?
I’m just glad 2022 is ending a little better than 2021 because I
spent the last 5 weeks of last year driving around with a dead 85-year-old
woman in the back of my van.
It wasn’t anything weird, not like I picked up a hitchhiker
in Paulden and thought “Hey, I wonder what he has in his duffle bag?”
No. Nothing strange like that.
It was my mom.
She passed away on November 16, 2021, on the exact day of
what would have been her and my dad’s 63rd wedding anniversary.
It wasn’t the marriage that killed her, but quite possibly the
children that resulted from that union.
I am the youngest of six kids and the oldest, my sister, is
almost exactly 7 years older than me.
Yep. Six Kids, seven years.
My parents were married in the days before cable TV,
Netflix, and evidently conversation, so they spent a lot of time…well, making us.
We, in turn, didn’t make it easy for them - various
incidents involving mischief and mayhem, emergency rooms, principals’ offices
and police stations, several cases of detention both educational and penal, and
no less than three visits by the local fire truck.
Yet she made it to 85 and all but one of us kids made it
long enough to say goodbye.
Since we siblings are scattered around the Southwest, our friends,
relatives, and many of the people whose lives mom touched are spread around the
globe, and COVID was still a valid concern among the rapidly aging population
that makes up our social circle, the service was held on Zoom.
Several hundred people near and far logged in and shared
some laughs, some tears, and a lot of great stories.
My brothers & sisters and I aren’t much on pomp &
circumstance, don’t go in for much ceremony, so when it came time to put my mom
to rest, we had a bit of a conundrum-
What DO you do with the remains of an 85-year-old woman?
An urn for the mantle? No takers.
Maybe meet up & scatter the ashes?
Logistically it would be difficult, and we had already had a
nice reminiscence with friends and family, a few of us were at the time taking
care of other elderly in-laws and extended family, so travel was a challenge,
and again, not much on pomp & circumstance, so what do we do?
When my dad passed in 1988, he had made the specific request
to have his ashes scattered, hypothetically, in an area of
California where such things were frowned upon. Frowned upon to the extent that
when we asked the powers that be, we were not so politely informed that, no,
it is not allowed and if we tried, we would probably be arrested.
At that time, I was living outside of what “Polite Society”
refers to as “Laws” so my brothers and sisters unanimously agreed that, if one
of us was to bend said laws, it might as well be the one who had three
different drivers’ licenses from two different states in three different names.
So, I packed up dad in a shoe box, visited a city park in
San Francisco, and let dad go for an eternal swim in a duck pond.
While I’ve cleaned up my act somewhat since 1988, in the
eyes of my family I am still the one who is best suited for disposing of a body.
So, I began planning for a road trip, with an 85-year-old
dead woman in the back of my van.
In an effort to protect my then 12-year-old son from his
degenerate father, and also avoid talking about the box inside the plastic
bucket in the back of the van, I told him “Pop has to go to California to take
care of some family stuff.”
Since my wife couldn’t take time off work, I was planning a quick
out-and-back run, stopping to leave a little bit of mom at
some of her favorite places, including the hypothetical duck pond.
When the trip fell on the days my son would be off school
for winter break, he begged to go.
Hitting the road with your dad for a Boy’s Road Trip without
his mom looking over our shoulders?
This could be fun AND trouble, but I still
hadn’t found a way to casually bring up the fact that Gramma was in a plastic
laundry detergent bucket behind the back seat.
Would he be a little freaked out by the fact that, even
though she was now harmless ashes, his beloved Grandma was in a white bucket
with a blue lid that had “Kirkland- 200 loads” printed on the side?
Does he share the same mental attitude towards the dead that
his dad, aunts, and uncles do?
Or is he “Normal”?
A two-thousand-mile round trip would let me know.
Our first stop was the California-Arizona
Border, the Colorado River.
Since this river splits our immediate family, I thought this
would be a nice first stop in mom’s next journey- hypothetically.
We stopped, stretched our legs, took a couple of pictures,
and I discreetly said goodbye to a little bit of mom.
“What are you doing pop?”
Nothing, get back in the van.
Over the next few days, we made a few more stops to visit
family and I took the opportunity to say goodbye to a little bit more of mom.
That stretch of highway where she got pulled over and we
never let her forget her brush with the law?
Check.
The park that we as kids hated because it didn’t have
swings, or a lake or anything fun but she really loved because it reminded her
of the farmland she and her family worked in the Central Valley back in the
30s?
Check.
The beach she used to take us to, even though she hated the
beach but knew we loved it?
Check.
All these stops we made- important to me, important to her,
and me just thinking my son was along for the ride while I was being discreet, being
slick, leaving a little bit of mom behind along the way.
Hypothetically that is.
Then, on a crowded rush hour stretch of 580 outside of
Livermore, CA, we were stopped.
Bumper-to-bumper Bay Area gridlock.
Those High Occupancy-Carpool Lanes that, unlike Arizona’s “2
people per Vehicle” require 3 people?
They’re moving along at a brisk pace, yet here we are at a
complete stop.
“Hey Pop, how come we can’t go in the Carpool Lane like in
Phoenix?”
Well, in California it’s 3 people per car, not two like back
home.
After a long pause, he cautiously said … “Hey Pop. I got an
Idea. If we get pulled over, can’t we just tell the cop we’ve got Granny in a
bucket?”
Yep- he knew what we were doing… he knew what we were doing
all along.
There’s no pulling the wool over his eyes and he truly is a
Santos through and through.
Over the next few days, we continued our journey and he had
just one request- Could he be the one to put Grandma, who he loved, in the
swimming hole-slash-duck pond to join the grandpa he never met?
Reflecting on this Boys Road trip that took place just about
a year ago, I got to thinking-
Thinking about my own mortality, my own life, my own legacy
and realized something- I just hit a milestone- a big one.
My dad passed away when he was 56 years and a few months
old- and just last week, if I did the math right, I turned 56 and that same
few months.
On December 6, 2022, I officially became older than my dad
ever was.
I have been on this earth, not counting duck pond water,
longer than my father and, I don’t know why, but that was a real punch in the
gut- living longer than my dad.
Since I personally never expected to live as long as I have
and anyone who knew me between 1984 and 1993 is equally if not more surprised that
I’m still around, I know for a fact I will never see the 85 that my mom did,
but I have 1 goal.
To stick around for the next 3 years, until my son gets his
driver's license, so he can put me in a plastic bucket and go on a road trip.
Hypothetically of course.
