You won't approve

 Well, dad, we sold the house.  I know home ownership was your dying wish, but Christ, it's weird out here these days.  Working in the social services I was wary of a tsunami of coming evictions and a real-estate price crash... well, and the fact that we both hated owning a home.  We bought an RV.  A big one.  Bigger than that.  40 ft.  It has a warranty.  See, were moving up in the world.  Bums with a warranty.  We have a few more weeks in the house in Frankfort KY then we're hitting the road.  The first stop is going to South Dakota to get residency there.  Desiree's income tax will go way down once we get residency there.  I know it sounds insane but there are thousands of people who live full time in RVs who get their South Dakota residency before hitting the road.  Yes, Rockaway is on the itinerary.  As you know, your ex-wife's ashes were spread there recently.  I was going to spread yours near by so you can continue your dysfunction for millennia. 

I had been working as a case manager in Frankfort at a drug rehab facility.  Or at least I thought it was a drug rehab facility.  I met with old ladies and trouble shot problems in their lives.  Their number one problem often was the requirement to see me, which could be an uncomfortable process.  Often first meetings began with, "Where are you from, anyway."  It's not that the Oregon accent is so strong, it's more than the Kentucky accent is strong and a kind of social tool.  Kentuckians exaggerate their accents to show where they are from and to set the tone for the impending conversation.  The Oregonian accent (pre-Ted Talks and Instagram) is similar to the tone of a teenager complaining they are bored.  Thus communication during case management was odd.  

Quickly it became apparent the 'Drug Rehabilitation Facility"  was just us giving out pills and billing Medicare.  I know you are sick of my pessimistic view of things, but I honestly came to love the old ladies at the clinic and the opportunity to con pills for resale was making them ignore their own addictions.  And no, there was no forum there to actually discuss the well being of the patients.  We sometimes had a 'treatment team' meeting but those were mostly the clinic owner handing out nonsensical memos and discussing his naive business ideas.  I tried, dad I did.  I tried to not make it about me, not make the whole situation and excuse for a martyred exit.  But the rate of death in Kentucky from opiate overdose is so fucking high.  I can't help but taste the spit of the lady from the shelter in Covington I did CPR on after Christmas.  Kentucky might be fine with this death everywhere, but I have problems with it.  I wish to Christ I had other skills.  Any way, I put notice in, it got disgustingly hostile between me and the boss and my patients came in high as fuck or not at all.  I say all of this  because I think you would have had a skeptical take on Frankfort.  It has the unsettling cleanliness of a town trying to cover it's secrets.  Maybe I'll write another shitty book about Kentucky pill mills.  Maybe not.

Desiree is good, we talk about you on Sundays.  She still has frightening cooperate conference calls and moods like the tides.  She's amidst a quarterly attempt at quitting drinking.  I am not.  It's Mike's birthday.  He still haunts Chinatown, pestered for cigarettes on his two block commute to work.  He must be alive, they still ask him for cigarettes...

 

We get the RV in a week.  The house and animals are all packed.  A few quick questions; are you still technically bald when you are dead?  When you died, did you just wake up downtown Portland, smoking a cigarette... and was the only noticeable difference between being alive and dead in Portland being that no one asks you for a cigarette anymore?  I'll write again when the RV gets here.  

Love you