Death in the Desert, 50 Feet From Home

My father died in the desert. Actually, he died just at that point, 50 feet from his house, where the coarse, hot Nevada plains meet the man-made oasis called Las Vegas.

To the coroner, and to many who heard the details but who did not know the man, this was simply a case of an old man walking too far and too fast through the rugged, sparsely populated, sun-beaten outskirts of town.

He’d lived in the area quite a while. He knew, or should have known, better than to chance a three-mile hike from the car stalled out in the desert. His wife was waiting in the car. She had counseled that tight money or not, it was better and safer for them to get to the pay phone up the road and call for assistance. He rejected this. He was determined to walk back to the house, and to his other car. He’d return for her shortly.

These facts are true, but limited, for my dad died of something quite different than bullheadedness. He had pulled 71 healthy, hearty years out of a will to pack each with adventure, respect for the common-sense approach, a rejoicing in nature and a loyalty to his family. He was unusually stubborn, but usually right.

A dabbler, a tinkerer, a sometimes writer, a sometimes inventor, and a serious naturalist, the last three decades of his life had been devoted to the reading, experimenting and practicing of health-conscious habits. When health food consumers were called faddists, he qualified. When the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s saw an ever-increasing awareness of the effects that diet and life style played on the span and quality of a person’s years, he seemed to be ahead of the popularizers. Always into the new and also into the old, as interested in long-lost remedies as the most recent speculations, he was fit and energetic, anxious to find out what was on the other side of the hill, and ready to climb it to learn the answer.

His Body Waited

But now the guy who lay in the desert, dead, quite hidden from the nearby house, was my father--the health foods, the supplements, the well-toned muscles, neutralized by hot sun. His wife had gotten to a phone, called a cab, and exhausted the roads and her pocket money directing the driver up and down each possible route looking for him. All the while, his body waited for her across the road from the house.

Yes, he miscalculated. He probably underestimated the length of the walk. And he forgot that the relatively mild morning temperature would give way to a focused, diligent sunshine long before he could reach the protective shade of home.

It could easily be argued that determined old men, double-timing it through the desert on hot September mornings, are apt to overtax their hearts. The thought must have crossed dad’s mind that morning once he’d gone far enough to know he’d let himself in for a more arduous trip than he had anticipated. We’ve all had such realizations--perhaps in the desert, in a car, or an airplane, or on a ski slope--moments when we became aware of the commitments we’d just made, of the control we’d so willingly relinquished to destiny. Somewhere out there in the back lands, along the dusty roads, or cutting through the hostile Nevada boondocks, five miles from the nearest casino, halfway between his waiting wife and his waiting home, my father discovered his situation.

And yet, I add up the details and I reject the textbook total reached by others. I think the man died of something noble and cherished, not of obstinacy or disregard for the obvious. He died because he held fast to a particular set of beliefs, the ones that defined his uniqueness and his special earthly niche.

He was never an old man, not sickly, not diminished, not worn out or locked in. His spirit had that ageless quality, one that gave him good reason to believe he could handle the walk. Such thoughts had never failed him before--and even at the end, they only missed their mark by 50 feet.