My father is in his deathbed in his apartment in the Atria in La Jolla, California. It’s not his bed, and it’s not is his room. The bed is a rental, and it’s in the guest room. It’s a standard hospital bed with the adjustable metal railings. The top adjusts up and down, the foot adjusts up and down, and there’s pieces of walnut-colored, laminated fiberboard at the foot and head. It’s about 40 inches high and at that moment, the tubes are braided through the side rails.
My father is going to die in a rented deathbed in the guest room.
The Atria is one of those aggregation camps. The Atria, for itself, is designated as independent living. The aggregation camps in America are designated as independent living and assisted living. There are many aggregation facilities that provide transitional options. You can go in as an independent, and then transition to assisted prior to dying in a rented hospital-style bed in your guest room. That part is called, Hospice.
Hospice. That’s the state of affairs in La Jolla at the moment.
In point of fact, the Atria used to be called, the Patrician when my Dad and Phyllis moved in. If it was called something before that, I don’t know what it was. The Atria is at the corner of Nobel Drive and Cargill Avenue. So, we’re about two miles from the ocean to the west, across the street from the University Towne Center which is actually now rebranded as the Westfield UTC. University Towne Center was already a huge open-air mall when my father moved there, but since then it seems like they’ve spent about a billion dollars biggering. You can no longer see every store in one jaunt.
Nobel Drive and Cargill Avenue is about three-quarters of a mile from the 5. The 5 is California-speak for Interstate Highway #5. The 5. That’s if you go west on Nobel Drive.
If you go South on Cargill Avenue you snake around a little bit and wind up on the 52. The 52 is California-speak for state route 52. The 52 runs east-west and terminates to the west at the water-front of downtown La Jolla. West, the 52 runs past Sports Area Boulevard where the Gold’s Gym and the In/Out burger is, past the exit to Sea World, past the Road Runner Sports and REI stores, past the 163 where the Bikram yoga studio is, all the way past Santo Road to Santee.
Maybe it’s better if I start at the beginning.
It’s 1994 and Rose, Judy, Ruby Nan and I are living in Gunnison, Colorado.
I’m in the kitchen of a two-bedroom faculty apartment on the Western State College campus. I’m making lunch for Rose. Judy and Ruby are in the nappy nappy. Unbeknownst to me at this moment, I’m chopping vegetables and boiling hot goats. Hot goats is how Rose pronounces, hot dogs. This is probably why Rose is a vegetarian now. Or whatever you call vegetarians that eat fish too.
The white Sony push-button analog phone mounted on the kitchen wall rings. I go over to it, lift the handset and say, “Hello…”
“Matthew, it’s your father.”
My father always begins phone calls by identifying himself; as if there’s no way I would recognize his voice after only three decades of being his son. But me recognizing his voice has nothing to do with whether or not I know who he is. My father always begins phone calls by identifying himself because, that’s just what you do. You begin phone calls by identifying yourself.
“Matthew, it’s your father.”
If you are familiar with the line, “Luke, I am your father.” This is why that line strikes a chord for so many people.
“Matthew, it’s your father.”
“Yes, father…”
That’s when he tells me he is retiring, or to be more accurate, he’s officially retired, he’s moving to California and he wants me to fly to Chicago to help him drive his Nissan out west.
•••
joe suburbs is the post modern sub urban hyper rural anti hero, and vertiginous surrealist 
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