“I think this trip will change your life.”

It was 2007, and I was going to South Africa. It was my first time leaving North America, and Dad told me his prediction for my trip.

While it seemed a bit melodramatic, I believed him. My dad was often right. He ended up being right about this one.

My two-week trip in the summer of 2007 ended up launching the beginning of my exploration of the world, both for fun and for mission. Seventeen years later, I’m still traveling. That trip, indeed, changed my life.

People often ask if we traveled the globe as a family when my brother and I were children. Other than trips just over the border of Canada and Mexico, my brother and I never left the United States until we were both over the age of 18. But each summer we did take trips to new places in the US, covering almost all the corners of our huge land. I can only assume this form of travel—the one of traveling to new places each day, every year, instead of relying on the familiar—is what emboldened my brother and I to expand our horizons and travel the world for the decades to come.

As the years went on and I covered countries and continents, Dad was always my biggest supporter and the most eager to hear all the stories. He loved bragging about where I had gone and what I was doing, retelling stories I had emailed him. Email was the main way we stayed in touch as I traveled to new places. It was the easiest way to bring him along, as he was traveling less and less each year.

In October 2016, we traveled to China as a family to visit my brother who was living there. From the beginning of the trip, it was obvious that Dad was struggling with the travel. He ended up getting quite sick while we were there, but even before the illness, the travel was hard on him. He seemed often confused. After a struggle to make the climb up to the Great Wall of China, Mom and I watched the winding wall fade into the hills. Gaining a small amount of privacy with our backs turned, she said, “I think this is the last trip he is going to take.”

She was right.

In September 2017, Mom and I went to the island country Barbados for a Caribbean getaway. We were well aware that something was wrong with Dad. Before leaving, we told him countless times about our trip: where we were going, when we were going, for how long we were staying. He never could quite remember.

He would try to hide that he couldn’t remember, but it was too obvious. While we were in Barbados, we called him to tell him about what we had done that day.

“Now, the place where you are right now,” he started to ask, “Did you travel there by car or by plane?”

He was trying desperately to piece together where we were without us knowing. But we knew. Mom told him we arrived by plane, as though it were obviously a valid question.

After hanging up the phone, she said to me, “I think this is the last trip I’m going to take before he passes.”

We both knew it.

A week after we returned home, Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

It wasn’t shocking to us. We had been watching his memory slip away for years. It was uncommon yet well-known words that were some of the first to go. Later, it was directions to places in town that weren’t frequently visited but also well-known. Then, short-term details slipped his mind: each time I traveled, he was never quite sure where I was. His question about Barbados was obvious not only because it was absurd that we might drive to a Caribbean island, but also because he had been using his roundabout methodology for some years to try to locate me on the map.

The last email I received from Dad was him asking if we needed to be picked up from the airport on our trip home from Australia. I declined the offer; he was already forgetting how to drive to places he used to commonly visit.

A few weeks after we returned from Australia, Dad was in the hospital. He was then moved to a nursing home. Dad never returned home.

Not long after he moved to the nursing home, I stopped recounting my trips to him. Occasionally I would share photos with him while he was in the nursing home, which was merely an exercise in spending time together and remembering the humanity in a person who exists in body but not in mind. Sometimes it seemed he could sense I had been traveling, even though he did not know where, why, or for how long. After returning from trips and not visiting for a few weeks, he would sometimes cry, like he was so happy to see me again. I never understood how a man who couldn’t remember what happened 15 minutes ago could somehow be aware he had missed me.

After 3 and a half years in the nursing home, Dad died from Alzheimer’s.

Death is a long goodbye of “last times.” The last family trip to China. The last trip solo with Mom before he needed too much care. The last airport pickup. The last email. The last story told. The last photo shared.  Some of the lasts are known when they happen, filling them with bittersweet notes of anticipation of the coming grief over this last time. Others lasts are unknown at the time, mundane moments that we sometimes wish we had spent more time packaging into our memory to open up and stave off the grief in a future lonely moment.

Now, there are no more goodbyes. All the goodbyes I could say to my dad before embarking on the next plane have long been folded away into the past. But that doesn’t mean he is forgotten. I will always find something on each of my travels that will make me smile and say, “I wish I could tell Dad about this.” Sometimes, at the end of the day, when I’m reflecting on what I’ve taken in, I see an image in my mind. I see my fingers typing rapidly on the keyboard as I build up a story of that day’s events. I see my dad’s email address in the “To:” line. I see him opening the email, thousands of miles away, enjoying the story I’ve sent, ready to share it with the next person who will listen to him.

I don’t just miss Dad; I miss that I’m missing out on these moments that could have been.

If life is a journey, then it comes as no surprise that all journeys come to an end. We are born; our journey starts. We embark on our travels; some bring us close to home, while others bring us far from it. Our journeys cross paths and depart. We have guides, which we may or may not follow. Sometimes we lose the way. Sometimes we are on the right track. Parts of our journeys change our lives. Other parts are forgettable.

Sometimes, like my dad, we start to forget where had even traveled at all.

Eventually, all journeys come to an end. Maybe they end earlier than we want them to. Maybe we’re satisfied with the way we spent our journey. Maybe we regret certain paths we shouldn’t have traveled down, or maybe there are others we wished we did. Maybe we enjoyed the scenery. Maybe we knew it was time to say goodbye to certain places, and maybe others we didn’t realize were our last time.

Maybe, like me, we’re wishing we could have journeyed a little longer with someone.