In 1974, Donna was twenty-three years old, a mother and a widow. She didn’t take time to mourn, she just kept moving. Her lawyer in Macon had tried to inspire her with all the possibilities life could offer: greener pastures, a broader horizon, a larger world waiting for her. None of it came into focus until he mentioned traveling to Europe. The seed of the idea had stayed with her and taken root.

The day we left St. Louis, Donna wore an outfit she had carefully chosen for the occasion. It seemed important to look like the woman she wanted to be. She wore a forest-green felt hat with a wide floppy brim, snakeskin pumps, and a vintage dress from the 1940s. She was so thin you could see her hip bones clearly through the fabric. She carried a sweater with a plush fox fur collar that had belonged to her grandmother, Zeff. Tommie Jean gave her an art deco ring with a tiny emerald set in the center of two silver waves speckled with diamonds. She presented the ring to Donna in a quiet moment over dinner the night before we left, and told her daughter she was living the kind of adventurous life she herself had always dreamed of. Donna was surprised by how supportive her mother was of her plan, which wasn’t much of a plan at all, just a place: Paris.

In the airport, I was trailing slightly behind my mom, tugging on my droopy purple tights and occasionally dropping my bulky princess coat with the fur collar and cuffs. Before long I was whining loudly, begging to be carried. I was five, and far too tall to be toted, but my mom hiked me up on her hip and gave a little groan every time my feet in their dirty white Buster Browns hit her in the thigh as she walked.

Once in Paris, we stayed in a pension de famille, or boarding house, on the rue d’Alsace, across the street from the Jardin du Luxembourg, where my mom took me to puppet shows and carousel rides. She wrote letters to Linda Oakley about taking French classes and walking through museums. Linda wanted to come and join us.

It rained almost every day that autumn. At first it was very beautiful and romantic, the darkened cobblestones, the rippling surface of the Seine, but Donna was starving for sunshine on her skin. We hit the road with a touring band called Gong, in hopes of seeing a little of the countryside. Giorgio Gomelsky, the esteemed rock promoter, was one of Donna’s contacts in Paris, and he had arranged for her to travel with the band, thinking it would be fun for us to be out with people. When the grim weather did not subside, Donna told Linda plans were changing. “Meet me in Casablanca!” she wrote, and Linda and Brittany did just that.

We traveled all over Morocco together in the White Elephant, a Volkswagen van. We stayed in North Africa for ten months, until Brittany and I had to start first grade. Our mothers were fearless, driving through the desert, listening to Om Kalsoum on a tape deck, smoking hash, taking pictures, and shopping in the Medinas. They found they only needed one crucial phrase to explain their situation, to answer the only question everyone asked, “Where is your husband?” They learned to say, “Mon mari est mort.”

·   ·   ·

I am back in Daytona now, driving Granny’s bright red Cadillac over the Silver Beach drawbridge. The V-8 engine has a badass growl that I will miss when I return to my silent Volvo. I’m headed toward the ocean.

Small wooden houses sit half eaten by the wet salty air and it feels like home to me, like Jacksonville in the seventies. The air and the light here are gentle and infused with the sea. I imagine my father as a teen looking at the blue-green water, the Intracoastal Waterway flowing below the curving concrete bridge; he’s riding his first motorcycle, buzzing up over the water until he can see the ocean ahead of him.

I park the car in Granny’s garage and notice the cool, dusty smell of it. In the corner is the Radio Flyer wagon Granny had painted a sparkly blue at my whim. I walk through into the kitchen and watch Granny quietly crocheting in her chair before she notices me standing there. She is very methodical and careful with herself now. She neatly folds and stacks her newspaper while she reads it, then recycles it as soon as she’s done. She works through two crossword puzzles a day and says she feels no need to succeed at them, just enjoys the attempt. She radiates a relaxed wisdom, telling stories punctuated by her own laughter. When I am settled in across from her on the couch, she recounts a conversation she once had with a young woman at a rock concert. Jerry was sitting alone in the crowd, waiting for Gregg to play. A girl in the row ahead of her kept turning around to stare. She finally leaned over the back of her seat and shouted in Granny’s face, “I know you’re somebody! I can tell. Who are you?”

“Of course I’m somebody,” Jerry replied. “Aren’t you?” She has told me this quip many times and it always makes both of us laugh.

She says she doesn’t worry about anything now. Sure, she has her concerns, but she knows how destructive it is to “chew on a thing.” She makes it seem like a simple choice, and what else would it be? She says she can’t change “a feather of it.” I never want to forget the way she talks. I try to pay close attention to her rhythms and her sayings, and I take notes before I go to bed. We fall into easy silence. I mimic her stillness until it becomes my own. I link my breaths to hers, steadily in and out, and I am calmed. I find a spaciousness within myself, a peaceful kingdom to dwell within, like meditating. So many things she casually expresses to me feel like life lessons, sought by all, taught by Buddhists and therapists. She naturally knows how to live in the moment. She appreciates sitting and breathing and being. The loud blast of air from the air conditioner mutes her high voice. She looks good, fit and strong. I can’t believe she is ninety-five years old. She is so sweet to me. Holding her, saying good night, I feel connected to her. I always have been. I am so glad we have a week to spend together.

A little bronze statue that Ellen Hopkins, Duane’s friend from Jacksonville, made of my father stands under a glass bell on the top of Granny’s bookshelf. In the shape of him, the curve of his back, his hands in his pocket, the slight tilt of his head, you can see that Ellen loved him and memorized him. The statue looks like a smaller version of the Three Musketeers sculptures hanging just above him, the figures I have been looking at all my life and he looked at all of his. I don’t know if Duane ever found this kind of simple peace. I don’t know if he was ever satisfied or knew what he was worth to us, and to everyone who ever listened to him play. I will always wonder what age and experience would have brought him, and what the songs played into his old age would have sounded like. Most of all, I wonder what kind of a father he would have been.

Suddenly, Granny looks up from her crocheting—another pair of slippers for Gregory—and asks me if she has ever told me about the night Duane died. She was home alone when she got the call, in this very room. She was in such deep shock when she hung up the phone, she had to sit down. The nearest chair was pulled up to the dining table, so she gathered up her knees close to her body and sat there for a while. Then she heard Duane’s unmistakable approach.

“I was sitting with my knees up and my head down at that table there, and I heard his boots on the driveway. I could always tell my boys by the sound of their walk as soon as they hit that driveway. Duane popped through the door and said, ‘Mama, you’re crying.’ I said, ‘They told me you were dead.’ He said ‘Look at me. Now, who would have told you a thing like that?’ I know he was telling me that his spirit is here and always will be, and I wasn’t the least bit afraid. He came to comfort me. When it’s happening, and they’re here, you know it’s them. Without a doubt.”

Jerry stayed with Jo Jane and her husband, Penn, and daughter Eden after Duane’s death. She grieved deeply with the numbing aid of whisky. It took her many years to return to herself, but once she did, she got sober and seemed truly healed. I have always wondered how she found the strength to weather so many losses, but I see she keeps them close and it helps her.

She says Duane came that night to tell her he was not dead and would never be. Whatever work he was here to do was still undone. I will put the Allman Brothers Band on my headphones and sleep in my father’s bedroom tonight, breathing the same air as his mother in the room down the hall. I will imagine him sitting up late in the living room playing along, his boot heel tapping out Jaimoe’s eccentric patterns, smiling in the dark. Let this house flip back and forth through layers of time so we can share this roof tonight.

“Duane is still here around us in spirit, because he’s not finished with what he came to do,” Granny says. “Maybe he’s here to protect you, or maybe he’s here to inspire Gregg to write more music, or we don’t know what it is. He’s inspiring people in the world, all over the world.” She stands up and hugs me tightly before going to bed. I press my cheek against hers and try to memorize its softness and warmth. “I love you and I always have,” she says.

“I love you, too, Granny.”

I fall deeply asleep and have an incredible dream.

I am standing at the foot of a staircase with my father and I am really looking at him. His eyes look tired, his left eye slightly off center, drifting. He is delicate somehow, or refined, like he took great care in dressing. His buttoned dress shirt is very white and pressed; his black pants break over his boots and barely graze the floor. He is warm and solid and his shoulders are relaxed and even. We stand between the closed front door and the empty stairs and talk. I tell him I am in love with a young man, and I ask if it is ever possible to know if someone is truthful. I notice his hair is cut the same way as mine, softly framing his face. He says it’s nothing he doesn’t understand, this situation I am in … young love and its games. He doesn’t say anything more, not dismissive exactly, but strong. His presence and the way he is looking at me draw my confusion out of me and I relax. I feel how well he knows me.

Then, we walk through the door and into the night. It has rained and the city street is slick and shining with bright red blurs from reflected taillights. I look down and see a sturdy black guitar case balanced at the handle, resting naturally in my father’s hand. I hadn’t noticed it before. He says it’s his good guitar and he needs to lock it in the trunk of his car and points up the street. I wait for him, watching as he walks up the block to a white car. He unlocks the trunk and lays his case inside.

A yellow taxi is idling right in front of me, beyond the parked cars at the curb, and it seems it is waiting for us. The driver gets impatient, rolls down the window, and whistles loudly after Duane. Under his breath, he calls my father a lowlife.

We slide quickly into the slippery vinyl seat of the cab, closely tucked together. It suddenly feels that a spell has been broken and the formal mood we were in is gone. Sitting close, we are very happy, laughing in the middle of a funny conversation. His eyes are shining and looking right into mine. His cheeks are high and rosy, his red whiskers like curtains pulled back from a stage, revealing the main show—his crooked and beautiful smile. He says he is so happy to be looking at me. We hug and I feel the raindrops warming on his back, the cloth soft and damp under my palms. I grip him so tightly, I start to cry.

“I can’t live without you. I won’t,” I say.

He tells me again how good it is to be here with me right now, and tips my chin up to look into my eyes. He says if it had been the way it was before—if he was dead and we were apart—it would be impossible for both of us.

I see then that we are saying goodbye. Panic starts to fill me like static rising to the surface of my skin. I feel my back against the bed and hear my pulse quicken. My face is wet and my heart is desperate. I push my feet against the covers and raise myself up until I am leaning against the bedroom wall, awake now. I have wrapped both arms around myself while sleeping, gripping my own ribs tightly, an echo of his arms around me, but they are only my hands, and he is gone.

A bit of wisdom comes into my mind, like a song breaking through static on a radio, and I know it came from him:

Do what you love and own who you are.

Time is precious and death is real.

So is Art: It defies them both.