Last Will and Testament...

When I die, there will be a great road trip...someone will entertain a momentous road trip on my behalf...one last amazing, sunset laden, endless humming highway, Grand Canyon, endless blue skies bleeding into vast, almost bottomless starry nights.  There will be camp fires, and ancient roadside motels, and truck stops with buzzing parking lot lights.  There will surely be notes on road maps and photos that will someday fade...there will be an early morning in Monterey, watching the fish trucks empty out on Cannery Row...there will be winding Blue Ridge Parkway, and endless empty cracked highway and gravel road, and dirt path.  I will be buckled into the passenger seat, and people will talk to me.  My wife, my brother, my daughters, my friend Dustin maybe...whoever wants to see the mountains and count sunrises with me.

I want to hear stadiums roar, and the wind whip through prairie grass.  I want to see Wounded Knee, and Yellowstone.  I want to drive the Pacific Coast Highway with a Tom Petty soundtrack.  I want to sit at diner counters, and knock off parts of Route 66.  I want to drive across Florida causeways, and walk across a few bridges over misted rivers on our way to wherever.  I want to see the Hotel Lorraine, and stay in the room where Gram Parsons died at the Joshua Tree Inn & Motel.  I want to go to one last concert, or six.  I want to listen to music float up into the California night sky at The Hollywood Bowl. I'd like to hang out in the balcony at The Troubadour.  I hope that I'll get to spend days wandering New York, and walking the park with my daughters. I want to meet new people, make friends, and move on.

I want wander Utah Canyons and ride a carousel with Zoey.  I want to float down the Mississippi, and watch Minor League Baseball.  I want one more trip on the Greyhound.  I's like it if I got the chance to swim in the ocean with my brother.  I'd like shoot baskets in an empty gym, and smell the new ice in some distant hockey arena.  I hope that I might get to drink pints with friends, spilling tears and beer and stories across entire evenings of laughter so full it leaves us sore.  I want to sit on the hood of a car and watch the train roll by, and I'd give anything to find a swimming hole and dive in with best friends.  I want to watch the boats harvest kelp from a campsite in Capitola, and sit in the Big Sur sun.  I want to spend a week in San Clemente with the people I love the most.  I want to go to Vegas one more time...again, and again.  I want to walk the Backbay all the way to Fenway.  I want to watch just one more game from the rooftops at Wrigley. I want to stand on giant boulders in Bishop, and feel the cool chill of a desert night, and I want to watch the stars with you.  I don't want to be alone...not ever, not once for the rest of my life...my long, full, life.

Can someone promise me that?  Can someone assure me that something magical will happen when I'm gone?  I hope so.