The road to Minneapolis feels different when I’m alone. Six hours of sky and asphalt, the same route my husband and I drove so many times. Today, the car is quiet except for the music — and somehow, every song knows exactly where to take me. Back to the city. Back to him.
Thirty years ago, I moved here for a man I’d just met, who became my husband. Nine years later, I left — not because I wanted to, but because death has a way of rearranging your life whether you’re ready or not. Six months after his funeral, I sold our house and moved to South Dakota. I told myself it was to be near family, to help raise the granddaughter we loved like our own. That was true. But it was also because I couldn’t breathe in those walls without him.
Now, my son lives in the city I left behind. He’s not a “party and lights” city person — he’s a homebody who likes the hum of nearby neighbors, the comfort of restaurants within a short drive, the rhythm of going into an office. He likes the peace of his own space but would never choose farm life. We’re opposites in that way.
We don’t see each other enough. Life, distance, and the weight of everything I’ve taken on keep getting in the way. But this weekend, I came for his birthday. I didn’t want plans or tickets or “special.” I just wanted to be with him. Dinner where he wanted, a movie on his couch, the quiet comfort of belonging in someone’s everyday life.
And still — driving in — I felt the pull. The neighborhoods, the skyline, the ghost of late nights cruising in the city. We’d all load into the car, grab fountain pops and maybe a late-night snack, and drive the streets to see the local “sights” — good and bad. Downtown lights and pulsing clubs. Questionable characters on the corners. The familiar stereotypes of neighborhoods at night. The city after dark was its own living thing, so different from the daylight version.
Then Pink’s When I Get There came on, and it stopped me in my tracks. It could have been written from me to him. Her relationship with her dad, the way she describes him — it’s how I imagine Darrell in my heart. Is there a bar up there where you have a favorite chair, where you sit with friends and talk about the weather… Darrell had several restaurants where he’d meet friends and spend hours debating politics and life. He always parked “in front of the door” — or went somewhere else if he couldn’t — just like the song says, first in line. He loved sunsets and would stay to watch them, and if he was with a date, he’d call it watching the submarine races — even though you can’t see submarines. Every lyric brought him back to me, and the songs just kept going from there.
It’s been so long since he died. People think grief fades, that it packs itself neatly away. But it doesn’t. It waits. For a road you’ve driven before, for a lyric you’ve heard a thousand times. For the right combination of familiarity and love to open the door.
I’ve built a whole new life since then — a farm, a rescue, friends I never would have met if I’d stayed. And still, part of me wonders what it would be like to have never left. Would I have been happier? Or would I be here, wondering about the farm instead?
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know.
What I do know is that when I sat on my son’s couch that night, full from dinner and half-watching a movie together, it felt steady and good. Familiar in its own way. I could almost picture Darrell there too — not in the shadows of memory, but just in the room, part of the evening. Past and present aren’t so far apart, after all. Sometimes they meet right where you are. And that, for today, is enough.