It’s time to tell you why I took Willie’s car keys. 

Let’s program the DeLorean to take us back a few years.  

OK. Flux capacitor fluxing …

Our visit to the past finds Indy alive, and he and Willie living on the independent living side of the Temple of Doom. 

Indy stopped driving a year and a half before our arrival to this past.  

I insisted Indy and Willie get driving evaluations, to assess their ability to drive safely. 

They, um, both failed.  

Indy should no longer drive, we were advised. There was no question his disease was progressed far enough to keep him off the road. 

Willie, however, was as capable of redemption as Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve. A few classes and Willie would be A-OK. 

And I knew — knew — I should have paid Willie’s tester to utterly and completely fail her. I was this close to Willie never driving again. But this guy — this guy had to offer Willie a Mulligan. 

Three classes later, Willie was back on the road, the caveat being she could only drive familiar roads, during the day, and in good weather, avoiding highways altogether. 

Six months later, Willie drove herself and Indy home from Cape May. 

“I only took back roads!” Willie insisted when I confronted her. “I didn’t take any highways!” 

“Then how,” I asked, “did you cross the Delaware?” 

Oh man. Wouldn’t you guys give anything for Willie to have crossed the Delaware dressed as George Washington? 

The reality of caregiving for a failing parent is the complete inability to legally, forcibly change dynamics smacking of impaired safety. 

For example, when your Willie has dementia and is living alone, you can have all the guardianships and powers of attorney the courts will grant you. 

But those documents won’t allow you to move your Willie into assisted living against her will.  

You have to wait, say, for the police to find your Willie walking on a bustling road, in the cold, in the dark, dressed head to toe in black like she’s Johnny Cash.  

And if your Willie violates an agreement to avoid highways, you have no legal recourse. This agreement had no way of being formalized. And Willie did, as she pointed out, get home safely.  

So as our DeLorean deposits us at the Temple of Doom on this long ago day, Willie and Indy have two cars.  

One is Indy’s old minivan — the legendary minivan with no back seats, no floors, and vanilla extract bottles filled with something most definitely not vanilla extract. 

The other is Willie’s sedan.  

You guys know Willie’s sedan.  

Yes, you do.  

It’s the one with my aunt and uncle’s ashes in the trunk. 

I do not know why my parents filled their cars with dead people and mercury. But then, I once took a road trip with them with a Tupperware of leftover fruit salad on the center console. They dished it out with a slotted spoon. 

So we can ask so many questions about the contents and practices within my parents’ cars.  

But we will get no satisfactory responses. 

It’s like the conversation my husband and I had recently after he discovered my parents once created bunk beds for me and my sister by balancing my sister’s four-poster bed atop my four-poster bed.  

No, they didn’t secure them.  

And no, we didn’t have a ladder. My sister climbed up the footboards to get to the top bunk. 

“I wish,” my husband said, “Willie was OK, or Indy was alive. I’d ask them why they did that.” 
 
But I can tell you what they’d say. Willie would say they did it to save room, although they did nothing with the extra space created by stacking the beds. 

And Indy would say they did it because “Mom wanted it,” with Indy rarely denying Willie anything she wanted.  

So I can tell you the mercury was in Indy’s car because that’s where he kept it. Likewise the ashes.  

And the fruit salad would have gone bad had they left it behind. 

I mean, duh. 

As we exit the DeLorean, Indy’s car is parked, Willie’s car is gone, and the Temple of Doom’s administrative assistant is calling me. 

Now, when you have a parent living in a facility, and that facility’s name comes up on your phone’s screen, it’s never good. 

I mean, it’s not like they’ve been awarded a scholarship or won resident of the month.  

A few miles away from the Temple of Doom, I am driving with my son, having just returned from Montana with my husband. 

I’d spent time on my own in Montana. We were there for a meeting with my husband’s outdoors organization. 

And he had stuff to do. 

Listen. When you’re indoorsy, and your husband is outdoorsy, you take your romantic trips however they come. 

During my time alone, I reflected. My relationship with Willie had grown so fraught. Where had I gone wrong? I asked myself. Where could I do better? 

Willie had a dying husband, a failing mind, and flagging independence. I decided wherever I could, I’d grant Willie compassion. Space. Kindness. 

I knew this might be difficult. But I was in grief support and hot yoga. And I had a healthy husband — more than Willie by far. 

So when the car’s display showed a phone call from the Temple of Doom, I held that compassion so fiercely, despite my heart’s new residence in my stomach and the Parkinsonian shake to my hands. 

“Nobody is hurt badly,” the assistant said when I answered. 

With breath held, I waited for her next words. 

When she spoke, it felt like a week had passed. 

And a week is exactly where we’ll pick up our story.