Instructions

After viewing Lake Champlain from the Vermont side, we set off home.

Remember I told you what Grant said about slow drivers not being a problem?

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We very soon encountered Super Putt. (Putt-putt is Grant’s name for a slow poke.)

Periodically, the line of cars came to a place where the front of the queue could have passed, but to Grant’s increasing annoyance they all seemed content to putt along behind the leader.

After many miles like this, eventually they began to overtake, till there was just one other car in front of us and it too finally made the move, with us following on, but before we got very far, it was putting along.

One of these days, I’m going to record the muttering and moaning at such times!

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It’s not as if we were in a tearing hurry, as he’d pointed out himself not an hour before.

My friend is a very competent, considerate and careful driver. But he is horribly impatient!

Luckily, I am impervious to impatient drivers.

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My father loathed driving and detested drivers who were inconsiderate enough to be on the road at the same time. He called them a variety of colourful and inventive names.

When, much later in life, I had occasion to go on the road with my brother, I found that he had inherited Dad’s impatience, though not his actual dislike of driving, which was fortunate considering how frequently and how far he sometimes drove.

After my father came to live in Seattle, my brother and I took the old man on a couple of long holidays, travelling by road to distant national parks. It was before GPS and, presumed to know the route, having made the arrangements, I was positioned in the front seat, map in lap.

Really, I would have preferred skulking in the back seat, leaving the Smith men to enjoy their litany of complaints!

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Dad got an appetite for those road trips when I took him on a sight-seeing journey around Utah in 2000, just before I left New York for Washington State. I had been to Utah the year before, to visit Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab and when I spoke of it, my father expressed an interest. He was a difficult man whose company made me uncomfortable comfortable, but he was my dad and he was very old and alone.

There were times when he seriously tried my patience, but I am grateful we had that holiday in Utah. I had never seen him as relaxed or content and we actually had fun together.

On his 88th birthday, I almost ruined things by getting myself lost in the wilderness, but he didn’t know that until I suddenly turned up, having managed to intercept a distant vehicle before it drove off. I’d left Dad in the car “for a minute” while I went to look at something or other that was too far for him to walk.

Which is proof of how easy it is to become disoriented in the wild.

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It was very hot and I had no water, but my main concern was that I’d left an 88 year old man alone in a car in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, I managed not to panic. After all, I simply had not walked that far! I came up with a certain way of getting help:

For sure, if I squatted down to pee, someone would show up.

It failed.

Then I spotted a car slowing down to pay the entrance fee at the remote (unmanned) gate. My feet sprouted wings. The young occupants must have wondered who the sweaty lunatic was that rushed up to them and they claimed not to have room in their station wagon, clearly full of camping equipment, but apparently I can be quite persuasive when the need arises.

Father had no idea there had been a problem. He was sitting happily in the hire car reading when we pulled up next to him. The look on his face said he preferred not to be disturbed!

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Neither of my parents expressed final wishes. It was something they didn’t wish to talk about which is understandable, but burdens the next-of-kin with having to make difficult decisions while in an emotional state. When my mother died, Dad offered no input, allowing my brother and I to take care of arrangements. It was only long after that he wrote to my aunt, saying he didn’t think her sister would have wanted her ashes buried where they were. Not that he had other suggestions even then, but why could he not have said!

And since I’d made such a poor decision for my mother, you might think he would have ensured I got it right for himself, but no. In his case, I was left in a very muddled state of mind.

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It will perhaps sound dreadful, but I could not bear the thought of having Dad’s ashes in my apartment, so I left the box in the garage where I caught sight of it every time I went in or out and felt horribly guilty. Obviously, I had to make a plan, but what?

One day as I set off in my car, I turned on the radio and got my answer.

The radio was tuned to a classical station and as the very familiar New World Symphony came down the airwaves, I knew I must take Dad back to Utah. He had been a photographer, so we’d been to Kodachrome Valley which he’d liked very much.

My brother arranged to meet me in Seattle and we drove down to Utah. I’d bought a copy of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony which had been one of Dad’s favourites, and as we scattered his ashes beneath Grosvenor Arch, I played the music on the car’s CD player.

Perhaps at least I got it right for him. Be kind to your children. Leave instructions!

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