Butte Montana. In a coffee shop at 10 pm, wondering which one of these sweat-pant clad, plaid-jacketed weirdos will be the gun-totting variety.

There’s stretch of road in Nevada, highway 50, which has been given the nickname “the loneliest road in America”. Maybe I-15 N hadn't been built yet. Imagine the opening sequence to the Shining, the lone car toiling up a snaking asphalt vein, driving to the heart of some unseen and remote evil. Now re-shoot that sequence, but paint the lens with white out before you roll camera. Now you're in Montana.

I'm travelling here to see my grandmother, whose kidneys ceased to operate today. And to see my dad, and maybe help him somehow, though I don't know how. I don’t know what to do or say, and to be honest, I’m scared to see him. A little scared. The weakness of overwhelming emotion, despair, just weakness itself, those things that make us all tragically human and fallible; they aren’t supposed to exist in my father. It’s outside my definition of him, and to have that threatened is scary.

And then there’s myself. And what to say or do by the hospital bed. The awkwardness of tragedy.

Have you ever watched someone die? Everything is outside your control, and you wind up in some Sarte-ian hell, staring at people you know and love, but are suddenly, simultaneously, removed from and bound to.

But really these things are not how I'm describing them. Really I know I’m doing the right thing, that I love my family and will be there for them. I love mamasan and will be there for her, too. Really I know that emotion is not a weakness.

Just sometimes the thoughts of these things to come are difficult to deal with as you drive towards them on an empty whitewashed road.