Image h.koppdelaney
When the surgeon took the golf ball sized tumor out of my father’s head he apologized and said my father would be lucky to see two more months.
As a family we dug in for a fight to the finish that would last 500 long days. Slowly, the disease stole all my father’s faculties until he sat shuddering in a wheelchair, one arm limp around my shoulder as I hoisted him up and carefully walked him to the toilet.
Death hung in the rooms of my childhood like October fog and settled into the creases of our young faces like fine dust. After it was all over I had to get out. Out of the house, out of the state, out of the goddamn hemisphere.
Everyone deals with profound grief differently. There is no right way, but there are plenty of wrong ways. Only one thing occurred to me, Italy.
What I would do in Italy was beyond me, all I knew is that I had to go.
Photo Gret@Lorenz
Italy elated my mind, piqued my imagination and began to sketch for me what it could be to live again. I was twenty.
The stigma of death was never far and often while standing in a cathedral or trying to will myself to sleep, I was keenly aware that I was running. I knew behind my constructed guise of a carefree traveler I was a young man under a curse.
My grieving mind took to the natural wonders and the tumbled vestiges of earlier times with the frenzy of an addict. Each fresco, each statue, each bored Madonna was so far from the stale, malignant rooms I had dwelt in that I nearly worshiped them.
Photo tres.jolie
Verona: I climb the stairs to the height of the first hill and wash my face in the flow of a tiny fountain. Further and further up until I meet the ruined ghost of a castle, survived only by a great perimeter wall. I hoist myself up. I relish the final passages of a book that I had been taking my sweet time with. Reading the last line maybe ten times I shut the cover and look out on the afternoon.
Somewhere far but not too far a bell rings. Something good sneaks into my heart and I feel close to that good, held by that good and a part of the infinite sum of the good. Then, like an inspiration, I think of my father. An undercurrent deep within me stops, and my mind hitches at the change in velocity.
I feel myself stop running.
I stay on the ledge of the old castle wall for a good while. When I do finally leave it is with the unhurried pace of a man who strolls for pleasure, not runs for his life.
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27 Comments... join the discussion!
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This is beautiful.
After my mother died suddenly due to post-operative complications I left London to spend 3 months traveling the US by Greyhound. By crying my way through overnight bus journeys I managed to find peace and by talking to strangers (the way my mother would have done) I channeled her spirit.
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thank you. I felt compelled to write this because I knew I am not the only one who has looked to travel for healing. After that first time I got out of the country to tramp around everything was different…but nothing had really changed….
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Wow. Excellent piece Josh! Thanks for sharing that.
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Beautiful piece.
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Thanks for sharing this Josh. It makes me feel thankful.
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brilliant…glad you felt you could share this.
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Wow, Josh. Thank you for sharing this inspiring, touching, liberating and beautiful piece.
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Thank you for this, it is eloquent, deeply personal, and completely beautiful. Keep traveling.
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I lost my dad one month ago in almost the same way… I also had an incredible urge to get away.. I refer to it as “trying to walk off a broken heart”. I just came back from a ten day trip to Croatia and Slovenia. Wherever I went the pain managed to catch up with me but everything I saw was, like you described, more vibrant, beautiful, moving … the proof I needed that last year is not what life is… that it is actually grand, wonderful… worth it.
I am far from done traveling. Because I’m still not well, but also because when you lose a loved one, you tend to view your own life in its entirety…. the limits of it… it can be quite depressing, but it also invites you to explore those limits… go now, see what you want to see, don’t postpone.
I am so happy to have read your article! Thank you!↵ -
thank you for your heartfelt comment Emona.
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Beautiful. Josh. Absolutely beautiful.
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Great article, Josh. My mother also died slowly of brain cancer and I know those gloomy, death-tainted rooms all too well. I headed off to the Andes where volcanoes and hotsprings worked their special magic on me.
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Literally brought tears to my eyes. Great work and thanks for sharing it.
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I am in a hotel, drinking out of a plastic cup, in Reno and reading the comments to this post was the perfect hing before I head out into the Nevada desert for Burning Man.
Peace!
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Beautiful article Josh!
It is true and I always advice anyone I know around me: Travel can heal most of the pain we carry around in our lives.
Thank you for sharing.
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Awesome, loved the ending. I always feel the need to run too, I think travel is therapy.
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Great piece, Josh: honest, and brave. I love the last two paragraphs. It’s funny how sometimes we really do feel something move within us when we reach a new perspective on something important. Strange how you feel it in the gut, not your head (or heart).
I’m also struck by how many of the comments allude to a similar experience. Same for me: my dad died very suddenly in 2005 of a brain tumour. It was only 6 weeks from realising something was wrong, to his death. Ultimately, that was my impetus to quit my job and start tour leading, which in turn has lead me to where I am now.
Even after his death, he continued to influence my life to the better.
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This is beautiful. My family-of-four turned into a family-of-three when I was just a kid, and I carry my father with me everywhere I go, trying to show him what he might have seen.
Thanks for writing this. Wishing you well.
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Thank you for sharing your story. Travel can be a great healing tool. The people you meet and the places you visit can open your eyes and soul and show you different perspectives about life.
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Great article and really moving, it feels like you have finished a chapter in your life book and began a new one.
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Thanks for sharing this gorgeous essay, Josh.
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Wow… I’m thankful i came across your beautiful essay. You made it black and white what my heart doesn’t say.
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Thanks for the article. I completely relate to your story (unfortunately). For me, travel made me realise there is so much good in this world and for that, i am forever grateful.
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Thank you for sharing that story with us. i am sure many would become inspired and encourage especially those people who are suffering from serious illness that there are still hopes when you only believe.
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Good job, Josh-man. You may be interested in Robert A. Monroe.
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This piece is like a good sigh in the evening, after a nap. Wholesome. Thanks Josh.
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