The distance was roughly 180 miles. It varied over the years, due to road construction and his own moves from one home to another within the city where he lived. And the time it took to travel varied as well, as the government would from time to time change its mind about what is best for us and how fast we should be allowed to travel from here to there. At one point, the speed limit dropped from 65 to 55. The combination of slower speed and ongoing construction was a different kind of killer and made the trip nearly interminable. Later, the limit jumped to 70, or even 75 along some stretches. With much of the construction completed, the higher limit meant less time on the road, back and forth. And the trip was always back and forth, roughly 180 miles each way, the roundtrip nearly as many miles as days in a year. And sometimes it felt like days, and sometimes it felt like a year, the time it took to travel those miles, back and forth. But in a way that neither math nor map can account for, the drive back was somehow always longer.

He would mostly leave on Fridays, early in the afternoon, so that he could be there by 4:00 or 5:00. A brief stop for dinner on the way back meant arriving at home between 7:30 and 8:30. Over time, it became easy to predict, almost to the minute, when he would arrive there and when he would return. He had to allow some extra time on Fridays, because of traffic. The roundtrip on Sundays, though, was usually smoother, with fewer cars on the road. 360 miles on Friday, 360 miles on Sunday, roughly every two weeks. Usually every two weeks, but sometimes it had to be three weeks between trips. And sometimes, on special occasions, it might be a one-day roundtrip, on a Saturday. On those days, the drive back was even longer than otherwise.

Alone in the car, he could choose to listen to the radio, but he often preferred silence. At other times, radio and silence would take backseat to talk and banter and laughter and snores. He preferred that, by far, and would try to capture the sounds and store them in odd places — the console, the glove compartment, under the seat — so that he could let them loose again on the final drive back, the one that was always the most silent and always longer.

It wasn’t long before he developed a habit. When leaving for the last trip home, backing out of the driveway and pulling up the street — slowly, because the car, like him, had now suddenly become heavy and listless — he kept his window down and his left arm extended out and high, waving in long, slow arcs, trying to wave goodbye to loved ones and poor decisions, trying to wave goodbye to a past that wouldn’t go away and a future that would never come, waving and waving and waving until the car and everything behind it was no longer in sight and the only thing that lay ahead, not measured now in miles, was the long drive back.