Dad had been ill for many years with heart trouble, and there was no way of knowing when the end would come. I had gambled he might outlive my walk, just as he had so many of his doctors.

In the final weeks leading up to my departure from home, I had spent every evening with Dad in his bedroom, watching the television news programs. Afterward, we'd spend a long time discussing the woes the newscasters had shared with us that day. Though I never allowed it to show, those few precious hours we had together meant more to me than any others. And, by the way Dad would stall me from rushing back off to my typewriter or maps, I realized that he, too, feared we would never see each other again.

One day last September, in a little town in Turkey, a small group of excited telephone linesmen braved a fierce rainstorm to secretly present me with a free, though probably illegal, telephone call to home. While lightning crackled and a cold northerly blew, the bravest of the group scrambled up a pole in a back alley and somehow connected their ancient field phone to a mess of wires overhead. After dialing and re-dialing for what seemed like an eternity, he finally got a distant ringing tone. A loud, happy shout went up from our soaked bodies.

Concentrating so hard that I forgot all about the rain water dribbling down my mustache, I silently prayed that through some miracle our fragile connection might hold. The ringing stopped. From another world far away came a teeny voice, like that of a child.

"Hello?" It was Dad.

"Hello?" he repeated.

"It's Steven," I screamed above the thunder and wind.

"Hello?"

I shouted my name again. But it was no use. For some reason he couldn't hear me.

Then, something happened that will haunt me to my own deathbed: There was another very weak "Hello?", a long pause, and then ...crying. So soft, and yet so clear over all those months of distance.

"Steve?" the trembling voice asked. "Steve? Is that you, son?"

Then ... he was gone: our fragile connection blown away by the howling wind.

It would be our very last contact on this world.

He had cried only once before that I could remember. It was on the cool April morning that I began the Worldwalk. Though he was so weak he had been confined to his bedroom for over a year, he somehow found the strength to greet me standing when I entered his bedroom to say goodbye. We stood before each other, unable to speak and barely able to look at each other, when suddenly he reached for me, as if he wanted more than anything to hug me.

I had had to grab him to steady him. He sagged into my arms weeping like a boy of 6, not a man of over 60.

"Please promise me one thing. Promise me you'll place a rose on my grave when you come home," he said.

I promised, hoping that such a scene would not come to pass.

No one who watched me leave home that morning knew of the horrible pain and sadness gripping my insides. All they saw was a confident and smiling young adventurer-to-be. No one knew the truth...no one, that is, except for the gaunt little man behind the crying eyes I noticed peering down at me from an upstairs bedroom as I was walking away.

Steven