Driving down familiar roads, much like navigating life’s unpredictable journey, offers moments of reflection and unexpected clarity. My father’s journey through declining health became intertwined with the long drives to North Carolina’s coast, each mile a meditation on memory, music, and the bittersweet beauty of the ordinary. It’s in these spaces, both physical and emotional, that we often find ourselves searching for something to keep us going, something to “whip it” back into shape when life feels out of control. While my dad’s taste leaned towards the quieter side, and perhaps far from the new wave energy of a song like “Whip It,” the underlying need for rhythm, for a beat to move to, resonates across genres and generations.
My father, Carl Graff, a man of habit and quiet resilience, faced his declining health with a mix of stubbornness and humor. After a series of strokes, small slips of paper covered our coffee table, each bearing his signature in various inks – “Carl Graff,” “CARL GRAFF,” “carl graff”. He was, he explained, practicing for when he got his driver’s license back. We, his family, knew that chapter was closed, but his optimism, whether for himself or for us, was something we held onto. Strokes, the cruel aftermath of years of smoking and a heart struggling to keep pace, had reshaped his world. He’d quit smoking abruptly after a health scare in 2006, a moment of dark humor even the doctor appreciated. But the years of damage were done, leading to ministrokes and a slow retreat from the life he knew. Like many sons, I inherited aspects of my father – thankfully not the cigarettes, but certainly the ingrained desire to be behind the wheel, to chart a course.
The drive from Charlotte to Shallotte, North Carolina, became a recurring journey, a 200-mile stretch of mostly U.S. 74 that I’ve traversed countless times in recent years. These weren’t joyrides, but trips to see my parents, particularly as my father’s health declined further. One day, the sandwich squares and talk of building homes signaled a difficult transition. Hospice nurses gently advised it was time for round-the-clock care in a facility. His heart, working overtime at less than 20 percent capacity, was nearing its limit.
Familiar roads reveal their secrets over time. The crowded Route 1 exit in Rockingham became a place to avoid, while the Sun-Do station at Cabinet Shop Road in Robeson County became a reliable stop for calm and gas. You witness the subtle shifts in the landscape – a new Bojangles’ in Whiteville, a town perhaps unknown to many, yet notable for its MLB draft pick and multiple visits from Bill Clinton. Trivia, perhaps, but it fills the miles.
Marshville, a six-stoplight town, declares itself the HOME OF RANDY TRAVIS with a roadside sign featuring a microphone. My own childhood home, deep in the woods of southern Maryland, was worlds away from country music’s heartland. We embraced rural clichés – wood stoves, pickups, and the like – yet my father, a Democrat, actively disliked country music. He found the singers’ tales of drinking and lost love tiresome, having left his own drinking behind when we were young. And unlike the sentimental songs about fathers, he harbored no affection for his own abusive father, a pain he thankfully never inflicted on my brother and me.
He was an observant father, missing little. As a teenager, I foolishly thought I’d concealed my chewing tobacco habit, until a deer hunt revealed a pouch of SKOAL amidst the fallen leaves and deer blood. His quiet disappointment was a stronger reprimand than any punishment. Wallowing wasn’t tolerated, nor was it found on his car radio. His daily hour-long commute to captain a fishing boat was soundtracked by oldies or, increasingly, silence. “Just like to hear myself think,” he’d say, valuing introspection over melody as the years progressed.
My own musical tastes diverged, mirroring my mother’s love for rock & roll. By the 90s, grunge and alternative dominated my playlist. Then, a summer trip to Nashville with a friend exposed me to Randy Travis. Despite initial unfamiliarity, I discovered his significant impact. A New York Times Magazine profile from 1989 declared him “making country music hot again,” emphasizing his “threadbare theme, rural pride… Travis aims to stay in touch with country’s natural constituency—the common laborer, simple folk and family.” His lyrics, simple yet profound, resonated deeply.
Honest as a robin on a springtime windowsill, and longer than the song of a whip-poor-will.
These lines, from “Deeper Than the Holler,” resonated more powerfully than any English class lesson. I saw that robin, understood the quiet honesty it represented. The whip-poor-will’s song, often described as strange, was, in Travis’s words, long – a perfect capture of those summer nights stretching past bedtime. He illuminated familiar things in new ways, the very essence of what we seek from music. Perhaps, in its own way, a song like “Whip It,” with its insistent rhythm and somewhat cryptic lyrics, also pushes us to see things differently, to find motivation and movement even when things seem stagnant. While sonically different, both genres, country and new wave, offer unique ways to process and understand the world.
In 1997, a college scholarship interview took my father and me to North Carolina, a move that shaped my adult life. On that initial drive, I tentatively slipped a Randy Travis CD into the player, hoping for approval. His response, “Sounds like someone shit on the radio,” delivered with a smile, was classic Dad – blunt, humorous, and ultimately accepting.
Folklore paints robins as acquiring their red breasts while protecting baby Jesus. My father, a product of Catholic school discipline and a non-believer, would dismiss such tales with characteristic skepticism. He found joy in earthly things, like the absurd humor of being flipped off. His last seven years felt like a defiant gesture, a middle finger to whatever tried to claim him.
Randy Travis, living in Tennessee and a creator of gospel albums, might find solace in the robin myth. He too faced a near-fatal stroke in 2013, disappearing from public life until his 2016 Country Music Hall of Fame induction. That night, his rendition of “Amazing Grace,” the crowd joining in, was deeply moving. His voice, weakened yet resonant, choked through the words, “I once was lost” becoming a testament to perseverance. Like my father practicing his signature, Travis’s performance was a reassertion of self, a fight against erasure.
My own faith remains uncertain, and my taste in popular country music has waned, yet I recognize the power of small hopes, the quiet determination to keep going. I’ve witnessed it in my father. His aspirations diminished over time, from skydiving to simply sitting upright. Yet, the vow to leave the nursing home persisted, a vital spark.
Over Labor Day weekend, funeral plans were discussed. My father wished for his ashes scattered in the Chesapeake. The chaplain spoke of “transition.” Doctors had prepared us for his passing numerous times over the decade. Dreams of his recovery, of him walking and making sense again, often jolted me awake, leaving me to ponder his present state.
Returning to Charlotte in early September, I noticed the dogwoods in my yard ablaze with red berries, a feast for robins. Dozens hopped around each morning, a flurry of ordinary beauty. Sometimes, one would strike a window, a moment of disorientation amidst the day’s simple abundance.
It’s easy to overlook the commonplace – highways, routines, familiar birds, or genres of music. We often fixate on the extraordinary, the infuriating, neglecting the richness of ordinary life. The common becomes common because it adapts, endures. Clichés were once original insights. Country music, once deeply meaningful. Walking, once effortless. A common robin, in folklore, once saved Jesus.
As Hurricane Florence approached in September, I drove back to the coast. The assisted living facility, deemed safest, became our storm shelter. But as forecasts worsened, evacuation became necessary. One hundred and four residents waited for buses, scattered to facilities inland.
“Know why they’re moving you?” I asked my dad.
“Because I don’t like it here?” he guessed.
“No, there’s a hurricane coming.”
“Oh, really?” Despite the media frenzy, he was unaware. “First I’ve heard about it.”
Dressed in burgundy and mesh shorts, clothes in a trash bag, he pointed. “Look,” he said, “It’s Uncle George.”
Uncle George, his stepfather, had died in 1995. Now, in my father’s fading reality, he was present, joining a procession of deceased loved ones – his mother, brothers, a past girlfriend. “You can’t treat a boat right and have a girlfriend, too,” he’d explained about that long-ago breakup. Confined to a wheelchair, unable to move freely, the past was coming to him.
Placing my hand on his arm, I played along, “Well, hell, it is Uncle George. What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” my father replied.
Then, my gaze fell on a piece of masking tape on his bag: CARL GRAFF: MARSHVILLE. The Randy Travis Music Festival, scheduled for that weekend in Marshville, had just been canceled, mirroring my father’s disrupted journey.
At the Marshville facility, his roommate was Link, a quiet man in khakis and sweater vests on Sundays. Hurricane Florence spared my parents’ house, but nearby, devastation was widespread. Two weeks later, Dad returned to Shallotte, unaware of the storm he’d weathered.
Seven years of notes fill pages, a way to “saddle the sadness.” Shared quotes on social media are small acts of remembrance. If I inherit anything from my father, I hope it’s his wry amusement, his ability to find humor amidst life’s storms.
One quiet moment from the hurricane chaos lingers. Kenny and I visited at dinner. He ate his popcorn shrimp and tapioca pudding as flood news played on TV. Then, wiping his nose, he spoke, eyes filled with tears.
“I’m not getting up anymore,” he said, “I know that now.”
The clarity stunned us. He took our hands, asked for goodbye hugs. We held him close, offered to call nurses to move him to bed.
“No,” he said, “I’d rather stay here and hang out with you guys.”
