The Last Joy Ride

One afternoon at the nursing home where my Aunt Rita lived out her final season, two spirited staff members—both named Pat—pulled me aside. They wanted to help grant her dying wish. I told them it was impossible. “She wants clam chowder at the beach.”

Rita was eighty‑seven, bedbound, and slipping away like a tide that no longer returned. Our first joy ride together had been when I was ten, in her sun‑faded 1976 Plymouth Duster. Now our adventures took place in her clunky blue vinyl recliner, a throne with wheels that squeaked like it had stories of its own.

But Pat had mischief in her bones. She “borrowed” a deluxe geriatric chair from a sleeping resident, and suddenly we were loading Rita into the nursing home’s handicapped van as if we were smuggling hope out the back door. The other Pat climbed in with us, ready to deliver us to her fiancé’s restaurant on the harbor—home of the chowder Rita dreamed of.

It was a perfect plan until Pat’s voice cracked through the air: “Ladies… we have a problem.”

Her foot pumped the brake pedal. Nothing. She yanked the emergency brake, coaxing the van to a shuddering halt. This was no prank. This was a crossroads.

“Do we turn back? Or keep going and risk it?” We didn’t even need to answer. The road was ours.

So Pat rode that emergency brake across three towns, guiding us like a captain steering a ship with a broken rudder. We clung to each other, laughing, crying, singing—three women and one fading unstoppable miracle.

Chef Ralph met us at the harbor, ladling his famous chowder with a joke on his tongue. He spoon‑fed Rita as if feeding a queen. I didn’t know then that his Pat would one day help fill the hollow my aunt's absence would leave in me.

Rita’s smile stretched wide, her eyes bright as a child on Christmas morning. She got her wish. And in that wild, reckless ride, I found the courage to let her go—my aunt, my mentor, my favorite person in the world.

Somewhere between the laughter and the screeching brakes, I was offered a job. I had never worked in healthcare, but another adventure—another ride with no brakes—was waiting. I stayed long after Rita passed. I’ve been serving older adults ever since. When people ask how I found my calling, I tell them, “A bumpy journey brought me here.”

Thank you to each Pat, and to Ralph, for stitching this memory into the fabric of my soul. Aunt Rita, thank you for your unwavering love and the lessons you left tucked in my heart. I love you.

Till we meet again.

—Your Kris