Waiting for a lost key, listening to Kris, Merle, Johnny and Willie and thinking about running away from home and time in a long-gone ’54 Ford with a scratchy radio….

            LOST MY FOB. With my apartment key attached. Other than family and loyal pets, the most important thing an apartment dweller has. Lost it. Spent a chunk of the morning retracing steps, avoiding going down to the office and confessing to an old-age dumbass moment. Until I had to.

            So, I sit here waiting on a new set, plans for the day in the dumpster, low gray clouds outside the door. The Highwaymen on Google Home. Kris, Merle and Johnny are gone. Willie sings alone now.

            I dream of running away from self-pity, the impending loss of a love locked inside a memory care center, joints and bones aching. I dream of the road, and I want to go…

            Toss the tent and sleeping bag in the car. Maybe some other supplies. Some old beer, maybe Blatz, in the cooler. Head out. No idea where. I suspect the car’s computer, smarter than I am, will point to the west, to empty spaces and unending vastness, then the rise of mesas and finally mountains. A horizon blue on top, dusty brown on the bottom that never can be reached.

            Maybe just play AM on the radio, the single band of my first youthful runaways. In a 1954 Ford, three on the column and the only air coming through the windows. AM radio back before talk took it over, when country music and old rock and roll came out scratchy, cranked up high to over come the wind in the windows. And on a clear night, 2 a.m.! Lordy! It was the Grand Old Opry coming in from six states away. 

            My old road trips were about discovery. Wows every mile. This one I’d ride with ghosts and I’d talk with them, ask them now they’re doing. My grandfather probably would say “slow down, then turn here” and take me to a place he’d been. My wife, still with me but sitting in a memory care center but still sitting next to me, would look at me anxiously and ask “do you really know where you are” and I’d answer truthfully, “nope.”

            My kids, no doubt, would leave voice mails and texts saying “Dad, why don’t you answer? Where the hell are you?” Same sorts of things I used to say to them when they were kids. 

            One time, years ago, I was sitting in a golf cart at a high school reunion with a beautiful girl turned beautiful older woman. I asked her why she’d left our hometown.

            “My daughter died, and I ran away from home,” she said. It was all I could do keep from crying in the golf cart. That single line, said quietly and with a shrug, summed up loss and grief better than any writer could. 

            Nobody’s died. But loss doesn’t have to end up with a casket. Sometimes it just rides along with you until you stop for gas and it goes to use the bathroom and you drive away and hope you’ve left it behind. Maybe…

            Anyway. I’m still here, waiting for them to bring my new Fob and key. When it comes I will go to the grocery store and pretend I’m going somewhere else and I’ll listen to Kris, Merle, Johnny and Willie on the way. Running away from home in my head….         

                  Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He also writes the intodementia.com blog about his family’s experience with dementia. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].