Still Here With Me

My dad used to go for joy rides.
Just him, the dog, and the open road curling into the Colorado foothills.
No destination. No timeline.
Just motion. Just air.
Enough freedom to remind him who he was.

He came home late once, grinning like he’d stumbled into mischief.
Said he’d found a nudist colony.
Said they invited him to stay.
I rolled my eyes — then and now.

That was my dad —
curious, grounded, playfully irreverent.
Entirely himself.

These days, when I drive him anywhere,
he brings up those rides again
like I’m the one who forgot,
like he’s trying to charm a stranger.

And just when I think he doesn’t remember,
he lands it —
a detail, a glimmer, a line —
just enough to sting.

I’m the one who took his keys.
There’s always an edge in his voice when he says it,
a wound incapable of healing.

Every time he mentions it,
guilt flickers in me again
as if I had stolen something sacred.

In the early days of caregiving,
I felt like the villain in his story —
the thief of his freedom.

I knew I was right to do it,
and still wrong in a way that sat heavy in my chest.

Now, when it comes up, I meet him gently.

“Would you know the way home?” I ask.
He nods. “Of course.”
“To the big house — the one we used to live in?”
He laughs, because he knows
he might end up on the right street but the wrong door.

We share a sliver of connection —
one soft landing in a long string of hard truths.

Lately, every time we drive,
he comments on the clouds
how beautiful and close they are,
how you could almost reach out and touch them.

It’s a broken record for me.
But for him, it’s always new.
A fresh chance to soak in the sky,
to feel wonder,
to remember freedom
not through movement
but through awe.

I catch myself sighing sometimes,
bracing for the same line again.
But I turn toward him anyway.

I listen as if it’s the first time
because love, at this stage,
is often choosing to let repetition be a blessing.

The truth is,
while I get tired of the clouds,
I never get tired of hearing my dad talk about them.

His voice lifts, softens.
And in that moment,
I hear the man who once drove with the windows down,
open to whatever adventure might find him,
alive to the world.

This is the rhythm now —
grief braided with tenderness,
tiny rituals of release.

I miss who he was.
And I love who he still is.