Travel Companions: On Leaving, Lager, & Loss (Dean Brightman, Issue 13)

An aunt’s memorial. Complicated families. Reconnecting over beer.

Words & photos by Dean Brightman.

The following article by Dean Brightman was originally published in August 2026 in Issue 13 of Final Gravity, our print beer zine telling personal, human-centered stories about beer. You can order the print issue here, or subscribe here.

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In the days leading up to the trip, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

My father and I were traveling to Washington state. My mother, who died a couple of years ago, grew up there. Her older sister had recently passed, and we were attending her memorial.

I’d figured I’d be going solo. When I mentioned it to Dad, he surprised me by wanting to come. His history with Mom’s side of the family was… complicated.

Nearly all of her family members were college-educated church-goers. Dad, by contrast, scrambled to graduate high school, then enlisted in the Army.

As newlyweds, they’d planned to settle in the Bay Area, where Dad grew up. My grandfather, in an effort to keep his daughter closer to home, had tried to bribe him to stay in Washington by paying for his first year of college. Dad turned him down.

His brother-in-law once told him he detested California and would never set foot there. He kept his word; they never visited. We made the 900-mile drive north every other summer instead.

Dad hated those trips. He felt judged, less-than, that as far as Mom’s family was concerned, she had married well beneath herself.

His resentment grew until he finally said no more. He was done. If Mom wanted to see them, she could go by herself.

That was more than 40 years ago. This trip for my aunt’s memorial would be our first time back. I asked Dad why he wanted to return after all these decades.

Mom’s final years were difficult. As she slowly faded away, Dad reconnected with her sisters to keep them informed. They wound up bringing him great comfort during those dark days, and he felt he owed this trip to them. Plus, he was 82, and thought this might be the last chance he ever got to see them.

I was happy, but a little terrified. We would be traveling companions for four days, and we hadn’t spent this much time together since perhaps that last trip 40 years ago. How was this going to go?

My father and I have never really been very close. He was the Bad Cop to Mom’s Good Cop, so I naturally gravitated toward her when I was growing up. Our relationship has mellowed over time, but even so, we have little in common.

Except for beer.

I still remember my earliest tastes as a kid. He’d have me grab him a beer out of the fridge (Olympia, appropriately enough), and let me crack it open and take a sip or two as I delivered it.

Although he’s still a Coors Light guy, we’ve attended many festivals together, and I have gotten him to appreciate a good craft lager. To this day, we meet up for lunch at a local brewery now and then.

So off we went to the Pacific Northwest.

Seeing everyone again was wonderful, and my aunt’s memorial was beautiful and very moving. We had some time to kill before a family dinner later that evening, so my dad and I ducked into a local taproom to catch our breath over some beers.

The memorial hit us both harder than we expected. Even so long after Mom’s death, I never really felt I had mourned her properly. Seeing her childhood photos and how they were affecting Dad, it struck me that I was finally saying goodbye to her as well as my aunt. I’m not very spiritual, but I found myself hoping she could see us in that church, near where she was raised, surrounded by her family after all this time.

We toured family landmarks the following day—the house where we stayed on our visits (with its playground of a basement and the magical Olympic National Forest in their backyard), my grandfather’s old grocery store (now a tool-rental shop, unfortunately closed that day), and my aunt’s former Hallmark store, now an aging antique shop. 

As we shared pizza and beer for dinner that night, I found myself suddenly grateful for this extra time with Dad, revisiting my family’s origin story. My parents had wandered these streets as a young couple in love nearly 60 years ago. They returned with their children time and again as they grew up.

And after such a long time away, we were back one last time to say our farewells. I was thankful Dad was able to share it with me. And I’d like to think Mom was, too.

Dean Brightman (he/him) is a freelance writer and unapologetic cat guy based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been published in Beer Connoisseur and Local News Matters, among others. More samples of his work can be found at deanowrites.com and go-on-without-me.ghost.io.