Tonight I watched the documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life on HBO made by Brooks’ lifelong friend Rob Reiner. I know a lot about Brooks and many of his movies, but up until now, I didn’t know Brooks father was actor/comedian Harry Einstein who went by the name Parksykarkas. Brooks real name is Albert Einstein, talk about being born under pressure, and one of his brothers was the deceased actor/comedian Super Dave Osborne whose real name was Bob Einstein. The elder Einstein literally died on stage at a Friar’s Club performance in 1958 after delivering a 10 minute act to uproarious laughter. Albert was 11 years old when his father passed. In the documentary, Brook and Reiner go to visit Harry’s resting place at the Home of Peace mausoleum in L.A, resting next to Three Stooges own Shemp Howard. While looking at his father’s placard, Albert sighs, touches his fingers to his lips, presses his fingers to the bronze plate and says, “I miss you dad.” At the age of 77, his dad has been gone for 66 years, but the pain and sadness is visceral in the movie. I miss you dad, the loss and grief over a parent never ends no matter how much time has passed or how old you get.

Robert Lee Hilligoss, father to my brother Kevin and deceased brother Robert Sean, passed away roughly 13 months ago. It doesn’t seem like a year ago, it seems so fresh, like it happened yesterday, but simultaneously, it seems like it happened a lifetime ago. I can still hear the sound of Donna’s voice at 3:00am on a Monday morning, “Baby, dad is gone.” Four simple words that are anything but simple. Since he passed, I made a long overdue decision to see a therapist to work through some heavy baggage including the death of both my parents, a brother, a divorce and the changing nature of my role as a father as my two children have gotten older and started their process of moving on in life. I am not embarrassed to admit this and think we need to be much more public and open about seeking help when it’s needed. My therapist is an older lady, very kind and wise and helpful. Often times I think I am looking at and talking to my grandmother Letha Cook Hilligoss. She’s given me many tools to use as needed. When I feel overwhelmed or down, I can hear her voice in my head, “Ryan, tell yourself you’re Ok. Find your safe place in you head and repeat, you are OK. Breathe. Live with the pain, live with the discomfort. You’ve run away from it long enough. You can run but you can’t hide.”

During one session, she asked me if I was over my dad passing. I was silent as I processed her question. How can I possibly answer that question? She quickly realized she may have phrased her question poorly and asked differently, “Where are you in the grief process about your dad?” I hadn’t thought about it in those words so had to paused and process. Weeks later I still don’t really know how to answer her. Of the five classic stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance, I’ve been all over the place and certainly not in order. Angry?, yes. Denial? Certainly not. Even though it still feels like he just left for a really long trip from which we still await his return, I know he is gone and won’t be coming back in a physical sense, even though his ever present larger than life presence still hangs over all of us at family gatherings and the echoes at the VFW dance hall. Sometimes one stage slides into another from day to day, sometimes all at once. Each of us is different and we all process the grief in our own way, but losing a parent or sibling or other loved one is a universal experience suffered by all.

I use the tools I have been given by my therapist the best I can but sometimes I find my own ways to process my thoughts and feelings. Often times, I’ll go for a drive in the surrounding country side and get lost in my thoughts and memories as the tires hum down the dark county road asphalt. I grip the steering wheel, out my foot on the gas and let the passing homes and farms roll by like so many days and years. Sometimes I sense my dad’s presence next to me in the passenger seat, as usual, he’s looking at the passing sights and giving an ever persistent rambling monologue on all he sees and thinks. His voice is in my head as the miles roll by.

One of the constants in my life and relationship with my dad was driving. Pure and simple, wheels on the road. From day one, driving from point A to point B, short distances, long distances, some interminable. Dad at the wheel driving from Alton to Springfield, home to our family restaurant, St. Louis to Phoenix to visit the Hilligoss crew in their desert relocation. Ten minutes here, 2 hours there, all over Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and other surrounding states. Dad at the wheel listening to the news on AM radio and occasionally a Cardinals game on KMOX as he drove a series of cars from one place to another. A tan family Chevy Wagon, mom’s powder blue Chrysler New Yorker, his 1977 green Ford Thunderbird, the 1964 1/2 green convertible Mustang with a white top he was so proud of and a blue Ford ecocline van we used for catering. Have you ever stopped to consider simply the amount of miles you have either ridden or driven in your life. Between all of my travels with the family and my own driving as an adult for personal and business, I’ve calculated I’ve travelled roughly 3 million miles in 50 years of living. Yes, 3 million miles.

When I was a kid, dad didn’t talk to me directly much, often times if was just the two of us, he listened to the radio and kept the chatter to a bare minimum. If others were in the car, especially adults and family, I wasn’t part of the conversation and relegated to the way, way back of the station wagon. As I got older and especially after I started college, we started talking more. He was a history and social studies teacher off and on for 40 years and knew his stuff. He was fascinated with history, US history, the civil war, Native Americans, WW II and on and on. I studied history in college as well and we could talk and have intelligent conversations about where we as a family and a country came from, where we had been and where we were going as a people. We talked about music, politics, Illinois history, sports and everything in between. We talked, but mostly it was Bob talking as if he were in front of his classroom and I was the student, which I was, the classroom just happened to be on 4 wheels and moving down the highway at 65 miles per hour.

Over the years, dad took me and my brothers Kevin and Sean all over the country and we made several special road trips to take in the sites and experience as much as we could. Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma as we travelled along the ghost of Route 66. In Illinois, Mattoon near where the family was from, Charleston home of Eastern Illinois University where he and I along with our grandmother Letha Hilligoss attended as well as his brothers Ron and Rick. One epic trip, Kevin, dad and I drove up through Minnesota, South Dakota into Montana where we rode horse back through the Bitterroot Mountains taking in Custer’s Last Stand with Native American Crow guides, and on into Idaho, down through Wyoming and the Grand Teton’s where he insisted he get out of the car and bellow “Shane!!!! Come back Shane” just as they did in the movies when he was a boy. We drove to Archer City Texas so I could visit Larry McMurtry’s home town where The Last Picture Show was filmed and Larry’s one million book store collection. Louisville Kentucky to see Muhammad Ali’s boy hood home and grave site. Abraham Lincoln’s two homes in Indiana where he was originally born and raised. We saw as much as we could in the time allotted to us on any given trip, often arriving home exhausted and needing a vacation from our vacation. And all along the way, it was Bob doing most of the talking while we listened and tried our best to distract him and irritate him with our never ending nonsense. While driving through Yellowstone Park one day, he once told me to get out and go make fun of a nearby buffalo. Sure thing, “You stupid buffalo. Just look at you laying there. So stupid.”

For the last 25 years, anytime we were in the car together, I drove and he rode shotgun. My hands on the wheel and him refusing to buckle his seat belt until he heard the ding for the 100th time, “Oh, that must be me.” Yes, it’s you just like it is every time we get in a car. Always a cup of coffee in his hand, half a cup in a Styrofoam cup. I felt better about my chances of surviving the trip if I drove as when he drove he was too busy talking and having a good time to pay attention. So I drove and he rode and talked, his favorite past time and what he was famous for. His memory was astounding as he remembered facts, details, weather conditions, the prices of things like gas, bread, clothes going back to when he was a child. So he observed and talked and the rest of us did the driving. In the last few years, he occasionally would say cryptic things like, “If something were to happen to me, I want you to do…….”, this that and the other. Use this picture for my memorial service, play these songs, give XYZ to so and so. Never at home or sitting down, only when we were driving, that’s how his mind worked, only when in motion would he get serious for a moment. All my life, we shared countless memories, experiences and conversations on the road.

One of my favorite quotes comes from historian Douglas Brinkley in his cross country odyssey journal The Magic Bus, “Not all that is to be learned can be taught in the class room. And so we take to the open road.” Dad would never had read that book, but he exemplified and lived Brinkley’s message everyday of his life. Anytime I miss him, I imagine being behind the wheel with him next to me, hearing his voice explain the history of wherever it was we were passing through at any given moment, the teacher’s lessons never ending.

Today’s a beautiful day, I think I’ll take a drive. Let’s ride Bobby Lee.