Modern Western

John Wayne Gillman was no stranger to hard work. Raised on a farm, he turned quickly to college in favor of “tromping around Southeast Asia with a rifle over his shoulder.” After law school, the long hours and stress of his practice in part led to a misdiagnosis of Celiac disease, the symptoms of which melted away when he made the transition to his second career as a photographer. But he worked hard even in the pursuit of beauty. Waiting for sunrise in the chill of winter next to a quiet creek in Yellowstone National Park. Lugging extra lenses on the long hike down Venezuela’s Pico Bolívar. Paddling mile after mile through the fjords of the Greenland ice cap.

He turned to sea kayaking after hanging up his basketball shoes, an after-hours sport with fellow lawyers and judges that resulted in more than one broken bone. Though he said he never mastered the self-rescue Eskimo roll in training, he went on to kayak in Chile, Mexico, Scandinavia, the Northwest Territories. When his wrists could no longer effectively manage the repetitive stress of the paddle, he sold the kayak and turned to road biking. On the bike, he logged thousands of miles until mom convinced him they should get a dog, and then dog walking became the top priority. (Rightfully so: Axl was a very good boy.)

He was not necessarily a man of many words or outward emotions, but he was far from devoid of them. I was aware that when he traveled, he experienced places and people where he felt especially alive. Learning a few words of multiple languages. Walking the outdoor markets and hitting late-night restaurants of Madrid. Scuba diving in Key West. Later in life, it was camping with my mom and their dog that filled all his cherished travel time, and he came to favor quiet evenings in Kodachrome Basin State Park, the Uinta Mountains, and the Oregon coast, even as he grumbled about hauling the trailer all those miles. (But they’d stopped offering hot towels on domestic flights years ago and that whole endeavor of flying ceased to be comfortable or fun.)

For someone so taciturn, he possessed deep-rooted emotion and love for those in his life and a love for life. Not everyone could see that part of him. Not everyone could adequately appreciate or comprehend his humor and tone. Those who did, remember him for his sense of humor, his sense of play, and his intellect. They knew he was a caring and compassionate person with a life-hardened exterior.

He was a bit of Renaissance man. Beyond his comprehension of the law and eye behind the camera, he was a gifted cook. He knew history and could wire the electrical on a house. He could fix just about anything and effortlessly grew a salsa garden. He could have been Eric Clapton were it not for the part where you get up in front of a bunch of people. But he could play the guitar and he had the voice. His largest audience was probably his family in the car on vacation road trips. He once shushed his child during a melodic eighties song that he liked so he could sing along in tune, without the discordance of a shrieking kid (me). He was the real John Wayne. He could call up a line from a movie decades old and mimic the intonation, laughing as he did.

In August of 2022, some of his hardest work began with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. He knew the odds and what was in front of him. He was not a man without scars. Those broken limbs. Hip surgery. Heart surgery. His abdomen bore the scar of a gallbladder removal from the dark ages of surgery when they had to pry back the flesh with blunt objects and stitch back up it with wire. But there was no easy fix for pancreatic cancer. He was in for a fight. And fight he did. Tapping his life-long work ethic and individual strength plus the support of his wife of fifty-one years, he fought, outwardly expressing very little discomfort or pain. About eighteen months later, after some twenty rounds of chemotherapy or radiation and then a second visit to the hospital, we were told there was nothing else to do but wait. Medicine had run out of tools. He rallied one final time for a farewell tour with his friends and family while he watched through his catalog of favorite westerns, war movies, and nature shows. After six weeks in home hospice, with his family by his side, he apologized for having bad news and announced something had changed inside and he knew he’d be gone before the week’s end. He thanked us for being there. Said that was all he needed. He loved us all. He felt badly for the burden his cancer put on his wife. He appreciated her for “putting up with” him all those years. He had comfort believing after it all he would slip into a coma, fall asleep, and die peacefully. The next day, he did. He was 73.

I don’t know most of the things he thought and felt at the end of his life and no doubt will think about that often. I knew he was sad and scared. He had asked, “what did I do to deserve this?”

Early in home hospice, we asked if he had a favorite western film. He thought about it for a while. He was still recovering some of his lucidity and memory after the hospital. He said, “I don’t know about favorite western, but favorite John Wayne western…The Shootist.”

The Shootist centers on aging gunfighter John Books, played by John Wayne, dying of cancer, who travels to Carson City in 1901 to prepare for death, staying at widow Bond Rogers' boarding house. Word spreads of Books' arrival, and figures from his past resurface, including friendly doctor E.W. Hostetler (Jimmy Stewart) and a gunfighting rival seeking a final duel. The Shootist takes place in 1901. At that time, Hostetler can really only diagnose John Wayne’s cancer, not treat it. His best offer is a bottle of laudanum to manage pain until it becomes unbearable. He follows with some advice to a brave man such as Books: “I would not die a death like I just described. Not if I had your courage.”

John Wayne’s character is forthright about his sense of death. Though he’d lived a life of “courage” as a gunfighter, in the end he’s just “a dying man scared of the dark” and states, “A man’s death is about the most private thing in his life.” Contrasting those messages are the arrangements Books makes to go out with a bang, setting things up to meet two of his rivals in a saloon for one last shootout. At times, it is a meditation on aging and regret. I had not seen The Shootist, and went home to watch it that night. I was left feeling confused if I should let my dad be or help him go out with a courage and dignity befitting his history and character.

We only managed one last look around the house in a wheelchair. If I could have placed him in a truck and driven to Big Bend National Park, I would have, but despite his love for travel, he also loved the comfort of home—the daily chores, taking care of the house, everyday productivity. One of the earliest internet passwords he set in the nineties was “Homebody," for he knew what the machine would do to us, but of course he became something of a homebody in time too. In that way, I hope he was where he wanted to be in the end. I hope that he had some measure of peace and comfort in those last moments confined to bed, even if in his mind he was down at the corral, or skimming the waves the sea, or standing on the deck with a torch, blackening the skins of poblanos and Aneheim peppers, working on the first step of his favorite two-day chili.