SUNRISE OVER THE GRAND CANYON

By Harry Knickerbocker

An old white man is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Seeking a last bit of freedom, he decides to take a road trip to the Grand Canyon. He has no living relatives, and his wife is dead. Along the way he meets a young black woman at a truck stop who is working as a prostitute. Although they spend the night together, he pays her to simply be

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harry Knickerbocker
• Release date: Feb 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869202246

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SUNRISE OVER THE GRAND CANYON

A Love Story

Harry Knickerbocker

Copyright © 2024 Harry Knickerbocker

All rights reserved.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

Love consists of this: two solitudes meet, protect and greet each other.

​Ranier Maria Rilke

CHAPTER 1

I am dying. I am dying slowly from brain cancer. I have been treated with chemo and the benefits really didn’t exceed the physical costs. I lost all my hair. And I was so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t eat. I spent a lot of time throwing up. So I also lost some weight. I was weaker when I came out of the treatment than I was before I began. So I quit. Instead of further treatments, I decided to accept my hopeless fate. I am seventy five years old. I am single with no surviving family. Everyone is dead, including my wife of thirty two years. Many of my former friends are also dead. Each death left a blank space in my heart that cannot be filled. And my friends who have not died have lost their youth. They have become physical wrecks. I include myself in their increasingly sparse numbers. My whole generation is headed for the graveyard and there is nothing that can be done. Our time on this planet is simply running out.

When I last talked with my doctor, he was very frank in his assessment of my condition. I guess I expected a little bit of sympathy from him, but it was noticeably absent. He was very matter of fact.

Mr. Nicholsen, he said, I have gone over all your charts. I have looked at all your test results. In all honesty, the results are not good. You are seriously ill. Your cancer is inoperable. And it isn’t responding to chemotherapy. There isn’t anything more we can do to change things for the better. I think you have a limited amount of time left. So you may want to get all your things in order.

How much time? I asked. Can you give me a ballpark figure?

Our conversation didn’t seem to be real. I felt like he was talking to another person, a stranger who just happened to inhabit my miserable body. I knew I was going to die. But I hadn’t been able to fully accept that fact. Death still seemed to be an ugly abstraction that was a long way off. But I was wrong. Death was knocking on my door.

I think you have somewhere between two, possibly three months, he said. Eventually you’ll become so sick that you’ll need hospice care. We can help arrange that when the time is right.

I appreciate that, I said. My voice sounded weak and hollow. In fact, I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me.

I’m sorry the outcome is so grim, he said. Of course, I’ll make sure that you have a good supply of medications to ease your pain.

Then we stood up and shook hands. A few moments later I was walking down a corridor that led out of the building.

My mind was filled with despair. I was oblivious to my surroundings. I was anxious and uncertain. People passed by me like so many insubstantial ghosts.  Nothing seemed to be real. I was living in an entirely different world. It was filled with the certainty of death. There was no hope. There was no escape. There was nothing I could do. Death was beyond my control. And, as I thought things over, I began to realize that this had always been the case. Death has its own irregular time schedule. It’s like a city bus that we know is on the way, but we can’t say exactly when it’s going to arrive. And when it does finally arrive, we are surprised and frightened, and we resist climbing aboard for the ride into…what? Is there life after death? All I know for sure is that death is the ultimate tyrant. It forces us to let go of all the material things in this world, including people, places, wealth, and myriad objects. Death strips us naked as we pass from something…into nothing?     

While I was driving home from the doctor’s clinic, I began to wonder about the time I had left. How was I going to use it? Three to four months, as strange as it sounds, gave me a thin ray of hope. I still had some life left to live. As black as the future seemed, I could still make some choices. I could still make some plans. I could still be free for a while. In fact, being terminally ill offered me the greatest freedom of my life. I could do anything. If I was dying, what difference would it make? No one could punish me. I didn’t have enough time left for punishment. If I did something illegal they’d put me in jail. And before they could try me in front of a jury I’d end up in the hospital. And if I don’t do anything illegal I’ll eventually end up in the same place. So, in terms of freedom, what’s the difference? I’m beyond being punished. And that makes me a free man…although I have no desire to break the law.

Then I asked myself a critical question: what do you really want to do with the time you have left? And the more I thought about it, the more I realize that I wanted to take a last, one way trip to some place I’ve never been before. I wanted to experience a last bit of adventure before the lights went out. And, naturally, I immediately began to think about the freedom of the open road. Taking a long trip would be a good way to say goodbye to the world. But I didn’t know where I wanted to go. It had to be somewhere specific. I didn’t want to drive off with no destination in mind. I needed a goal, a place to arrive. Otherwise, the trip would turn into confusion. It would make no sense. I’d turn into a lost soul wandering around in the midst of the daily chaos. I wanted to go someplace that was entirely unique.

When I was young, as crazy as things were, I always believed that everything made sense, and that my life had meaning. And, because I had so much time left to live, that my existence was permanent. Now I realize that I was deluding myself. Nothing is permanent. In the end, we are all on a one way trip into oblivion. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted to lose myself to the motion of the highway. Freedom, I thought, means losing yourself to something that you really enjoy doing. So, I wanted to become just another man in a car going from point A, to point B. I wanted to forget myself, and the fact that I’m dying of an incurable disease. I wanted to live in the moment, with no concern for the future. I wasn’t looking for pity, or sympathy. I was looking for a trip that would tease my curiosity. When I sat and pondered the meaning of my existence, I was never able to come to any conclusion, neither for myself, nor for life in general. Everything comes and goes. And in the end what can we say about it? Is there a point to it? Our lives pass like a short story that begins and ends with nerve wracking uncertainty. There’s nothing that persists through time. As a result I have come to believe that everything is more transient illusion than actual substance. Perhaps this kind of thinking is a product of my old age and sickness. Cancer has certainly made me question the basic nature of life on this planet.

After several days of thinking things over, I finally decided to take a trip to the Grand Canyon. I wanted to see and experience that great chasm, that sprawling labyrinth of sandstone cliffs carved out by the Colorado River over hundreds of millions of years. Just thinking about that canyon induced a feeling of time and space that was unbounded. It just felt right. I realize this sounds irrational. But this is the way my mind was working. I wanted to sit on the edge of the canyon and stare into the depth of its emptiness. Its eons of past time trivialize the span of a single human life. Its void is so immense that it dwarfs all of human history. Who are we by comparison? What do all of our hopes and dreams amount to? In the long run the entire history of humankind may end up being a small layer of plastic sandwiched between two layers of sandstone. Ultimately, what I was really looking for was a good place to die. I thought the Grand Canyon would make a wonderful grave.

In the week that followed my diagnosis I went shopping for everything I’d need for the trip. First of all, I traded in my car for a small RV. I’d need a comfortable place to stay. I hated motels. They were expensive, and they always left me feeling alone and homeless. Then I bought a nice sleeping bag. It was more functional than sheets and blankets. I could fold it up at the beginning of every day. I also bought a lantern, and some dishes, as well as some aluminum pots and pans to cook with. In addition, I stocked up on my medications. The doctor had written an unlimited prescription for Oxycodone. It’s a powerful opiate painkiller. Then I went grocery shopping. I bought a lot of canned goods. My new RV had no refrigerator that I could use to keep meat and vegetables fresh. It had a simple ice box.

With my health slowly deteriorating, I knew I would probably be forced to drive just a few hours every day. During that time I would have to avoid taking Oxycodone because it was so relaxing. If I could make about three hundred miles a day, that would be enough. I was in no hurry to reach the canyon. I wanted to take my time and enjoy the trip as much as possible.

Money wasn’t an issue for me. I worked as a statistician doing quality control for a large corporation for over thirty years. I put some of my income in an index fund. The return on my investment, plus my regular savings and social security, as well as a pension, left me in good shape financially. But, to be honest, my work was incredibly boring. I was tasked with defining how often defects occurred in our companies’ products. Good numbers reflected well made products. And numbers, good or bad, were important to the people who ran the corporation. My job was very rational. I think it’s impossible to become passionate about numbers. My personal feelings didn’t matter. Only the numbers were important.

From time to time I would think about the life I lived before I went to work as a statistician. When I was a teenager I was very rebellious. I was in and out of trouble. But eventually, over a period of several years, I realized that things had to change. Otherwise, I was going to wind up in prison. In the end, I decided to put my talent for being a tough guy to work for the country. I joined the Marine Corps. Two years later I wound up in Vietnam fighting to keep myself and my buddies alive. It was the worst time of my life. After my discharge, I managed to sneak into college. The VA paid my tuition. I studied economics and statistics. My new knowledge gave me a different perspective. I was seduced by the mental tyranny of mathematical reason. Numbers always made sense. That was important to me. And economic necessity overruled and tamed my rebellious nature. But after decades of working as a bean counter, with the end of my life rapidly approaching, I decided to take a last one way trip.  Maybe it was my way of flipping my middle finger at destiny.

And so, early one morning, just after sunrise, I climbed behind the wheel of my RV, fastened my seat belt, cranked the engine, and then headed out for the long drive to the canyon. I was on my way. There was no turning back. It was late spring and the flowers were beginning to bloom. The hardwood trees were beginning to grow new leaves. The earth was renewing itself for another season of growth. The pain in my head and neck wasn’t too bad. In fact, except for a mild feeling of vertigo once in a while, I felt normal. My newfound freedom filled my mind with quiet elation.

Everything I owned was left behind in my condo. This included my big TV set, my computer, my stereo, my work table, my library, and most of my clothes. I had no use for these things. Everything I needed was packed into the back of my RV. I was saying goodbye to the life I had known for many years. I also decided to avoid saying goodbye to a small group of friends. If I’d paid them a last visit they would have felt sorry for me. I didn’t want that. I wanted to simply disappear,