More Heaven Than He Could Ever Want: My Father’s Final October, Captured By Google Street View

Credit: Google Street View

That’s my dad.

Right there on the front porch. He’s thin, but he’s in good health. He’s beaten colon cancer, and he tells me often that he feels great. “If I felt any better,” he says when we talk over the phone, “I wouldn’t think I’m me.”

I’m not entirely sure what this means, but he sounds happy when he says it.

His little corner of the world looks good in this picture. He’s been living here since the late eighties, when my parents split up. It’s a duplex, and after he tired of paying rent he gathered some money together and bought the whole building. He takes pride in the place, and it shows. The yard looks good. The birdbath is welcoming to winged friends. The pumpkins are out. So, too, are the mums.

It’s October, 2012. A car with a funny looking camera on top drives past. When it does, Google captures my dad’s last October.

Webb Durham, III, “Chip” to this friends, and “Pops” to me and my kids, dies less than a year later. This is one of the last pictures that I have of my father alive.

And how it makes me smile, because there he is.

There he is talking with his neighbor. He doesn’t enjoy crowds; he prefers instead the company of a few close friends. I know for him that front porch conversation at home on a beautiful fall day is more heaven than he can ever want.

There he is, happy.

And here I am, feeling very much the same.