The Priority List by David Menasche

Author:David Menasche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

18

On Friday, November 2, right on schedule, I strapped on my backpack, grabbed my red-tipped cane, kissed Paula goodbye, and headed out. My plan had been to catch the no. 42 bus to the Metrorail and board a train for Tallahassee, where a group of my students were giving me a send-off party. But I was deeply grateful when my childhood friend Hilary Gerber, who was on her way to Tallahassee to visit friends, offered to drive me instead. Hilary had been my girlfriend in high school and we’d stayed in touch over the years. She is also a doctor, and as well as being my chauffeur for a day, she tended to my infected broken arm. Tossing my stuff into the back of Hilary’s blue Mazda, I glanced one last time at the sign I’d painted and draped over the front porch railing. The words of Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night . . . Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

That was the plan. I knew the odds were that I’d die on the road from my illness. The doctors had told me that without treatment my chances of a tomorrow were slim at best, but I wasn’t going to go gently.

“So how does it feel to be on the road?” Hilary asked once we were.

“Excited but anxious,” I said. “There are still a lot of loose ends. But there’s this feeling of ‘Finally!’ There was so much anticipation, so much planning and thought. Until this moment, I could only imagine how it would be. Now I can actually start putting things in my memory bank.”

The drive from Miami to Tallahassee is around five hundred miles of mostly wide-open highway. As we headed north on the turnpike, I felt a kind of energy I hadn’t felt in a very long time. Even if I didn’t make it to my first stop, at least I had left. I hadn’t given in to the cancer.

Hilary had to do all the driving, so at about the halfway point, near Orlando, we decided to stop for something to eat. On a whim, I posted on Facebook: “Hey everybody! I’m in Orlando at a place called Belle Isle Bayou. Meet me there!” We reserved a table for five, just in case. Within a couple of hours, our party had grown so large that we took up the entire restaurant. Looking around at the faces of former students now attending the nearby University of Central Florida, as well as friends from my youth who’d also shown up, I felt like a very lucky man, and I said as much in another post later that night: “So far the trip has been incredible!” To which one of my former students replied, “what is this trip about? r u trying to raise cancer awareness or sumthing? and how r u driving if ur blind and by urself?” I responded, “Nick, I’m worse at driving than you are at spelling. I’ll be taking trains, buses, and catching rides.

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