On June 6, we lost my mother. The last really coherent thing she said to me was, “I love you guys”. The second-to-last thing was, “I need you”. The third-to-last thing was, “how will we get to the Cape?”

My great grandparents built a house in East Falmouth on Cape Cod around a hundred years ago. It was never supposed to last this long; it’s rickety and dusty, definitely falling apart, but it’s ours. In the meantime, developers have cut down much of the surrounding woods and replaced them with million dollar homes. They’re frustrated by our presence, and have described us as “arrogantly shabby”. Screw you, millionaires: we wear that description as a badge of pride.

The house was my mother’s favorite place in the world. It’s mine, too. Despite dialysis, feeding tubes, medicines, and a hundred other considerations, we’d spent a lot of time figuring out how to get her there one last time. I bought first class tickets so she could lie down comfortably on the flight; we figured out cars and dialysis logistics.

And then we lost her before we could get there.

When the three of us got back to my parents’ house, it was one of the first decisions we made. If Ma hadn’t had her medical issues, she would have loved to drive to Cape Cod from California. So we decided to do just that, with her ashes (and the proper permits) in tow.

We acquired a hybrid van (a 2021 Toyota Sienna), which runs about 600 miles on a tank of gas. There was talk of postponing the trip, but based on a desire to get to another family memorial, we set off in the evening two Fridays ago. We headed north to Seattle, via Portland, to avoid the worst of the summer heat. And then we headed east.

We saw a lot of America: around 4050 miles of cities, towns, countryside, and unadulterated wilderness. We learned never to eat Mexican food in Fargo, North Dakota, and that the Indian food in Philadelphia is spectacular. We were blown away by the beauty of Glacier National Park and the segregated poverty of much of the country. Throughout it all, we learned that beauty, humanity, and the progressive values of equality and shared lived experiences exist everywhere, albeit in pockets. There were Trump signs in deep Democrat country; there were radical coffee shops run by brave, non-binary progressives in the most staunchly conservative townships. As we went, I documented much of it on Instagram.

Images: Montana; a mural in Bismarck, ND; George Floyd Square in Minneapolis.

My sister planned much of the trip based around what she thought we’d all be most interested in; we made special efforts to visit Black-owned establishments and diverse neighborhoods. It’s what my mother would have been most interested in, too.

Our routine every night was the same: bring in our bags, and then bring in Ma. She stayed with us in our hotel rooms. We all spoke to her. In some way, she’s still with us. In another, there’s a hole in our lives, and a sadness that we all feel profoundly.

More than anything, it was a time for us to be together and heal. I shared a hotel room with my dad almost every night, and we would talk late into the night about what we’d seen and what we were feeling. It was necessary healing that will be long and ongoing.

We traveled across America once before, as the four of us, when I’d just graduated high school. Back then, we used paper AAA maps and picked up discount booklets for local motels from diners. Where we stayed was always hit and miss.

In contrast, this road trip was powered by technology in ways that were new for us. Our car is a hybrid, yes, but it also has traffic-aware cruise control that works a lot like a Tesla: the car slows down as the cars around it do, and follows the curves of the freeway. We used Apple CarPlay and Android Auto extensively to navigate, and made plans on a custom Google Map. I used Foursquare to find places to eat; Hannah used Yelp and Google Maps, often using gay-friendly and Black-owned filters. I booked our places to stay through apps, including the FairHotel app to look for socially responsible hotels with unionized workforces.

As I write this, we’re barreling down the freeway on the very last leg of the trip. Soon we’ll come to a stop, and the beginning of a new chapter. I don’t know what the future holds, what it looks like, or even what it’ll feel like. But I’m grateful to be a part of this family, and to have had this time. All of these things - these values, these experiences, these people - are an inexorable part of who I am. We’re an interconnected part of each other. And I’m glad we were all here.