🔹 Part 7– The Slow Goodbye
By November, Diesel didn’t rise for sunrise anymore.
He still opened his eyes when I spoke, still wagged his tail when I shuffled into the room.
But walking? Climbing? Barking? Those belonged to another season.
Now he lay curled by the hearth, wrapped in his Montana blanket, dreaming of highways we’d already driven.
I carried him outside when the air was warm enough.
Built a little platform from old pallets so he could see past the fence without lifting his head.
We’d sit for hours, side by side—me in the rocker, him on his perch—watching the road like a movie that never changed but still held meaning.
I started reading out loud to him.
Truck stop stories from a notebook I kept in the cab.
Names of places: Tucumcari. Cheyenne. Biloxi.
Tales of flat tires in desert heat, runaway coffee mugs in Idaho curves, and that time we ate a $3 steak in Nebraska and neither of us felt right for two days.
He blinked slow and steady. Listened with the same focus he once gave to CB chatter.
Somewhere in those memories, he was still running.
Melissa came by again, this time with the boys.
They were shy at first, seeing Diesel so still.
But kids are wise in ways we forget. They laid beside him, talked about their school, their cartoons, their dog named Max.
Later, Melissa helped me frame the photo of that last ride in Mack’s rig.
Diesel’s nose in the wind, my hand on the dash, both of us leaning forward like we still had somewhere to go.
I hung it above the fireplace.
Below it, on the mantel, I placed his old red bandana, folded neat.
And next to it, the keychain I’d carried for thirty years—a tiny silver wheel that had seen more gas stations than most men see sunrises.
One evening, as the sky turned the color of faded denim, I sat beside Diesel and whispered,
“You can go when you’re ready.”
He looked at me. Just looked.
No fear. No pain. Just a stillness so deep it felt holy.
Then he closed his eyes and rested his chin on the blanket.
That night, I left the back door open.
Let the wind come through the screen, soft and cold, carrying the scent of pine and diesel and dusk.
He didn’t leave that night.
But I think he started packing.
🔹 Part 8– The Last Morning
It happened on a Tuesday.
No thunder. No drama. Just quiet.
The kind of morning where even the birds seem to whisper.
I found him like always—curled tight under the window, his Montana blanket tucked around him.
Only this time, he didn’t lift his head. Didn’t thump his tail.
His body was still warm, but his chest no longer rose.
I sat beside him for a long while.
Didn’t cry at first. Just watched the light crawl across the floor and rest on his fur.
Ran my hand down the bridge of his nose. That scar above his brow still there from Amarillo, 2011.
He looked peaceful. Like he’d made his decision in the night.
I wrapped him gently, the way I used to after baths at truck stop hoses.
Cradled him in my arms and carried him outside, past the porch, past the pallet platform, all the way to the patch beneath the old oak tree.
The spot where he used to chase squirrels. The place that caught the last light of the day.
Melissa had helped me build the box weeks ago.
We never spoke of it directly, just measured wood in silence and nodded when it was done.
Now it sat ready, lined with the shirt I wore on our last haul, and a photo of the two of us tucked beside his side.
I lowered him in slow. Like precious freight.
Covered him with soil one scoop at a time.
Talked to him the whole while. Told him about the first night he rode shotgun.
Told him how the world felt too big back then, until I looked over and saw him sitting proud, like it belonged to us.
When I finished, I placed his bandana on the grave.
Sat back in the rocker and stared westward, where the sun was just beginning to rise.
For the first time in years, the world felt still—and not in a painful way.
Just… quiet. Whole. Like a book gently closed.
That afternoon, I dug out an old piece of cedar, sanded it down, and carved the words slowly, with care:
DIESEL
2009–2023
“He rode every mile with me.”
I staked it into the earth, firm and straight.
Then I stood there until the light began to fade, remembering every town, every thunderstorm, every stretch of road where we were simply Ray and Diesel, two shadows on a ribbon of highway.
That night, I didn’t close the blinds.
Let the stars shine in.
And for the first time since I left the road, I slept without dreaming.
