Drive over the Bay Bridge, eastbound, meaning out of San Francisco. The second half of the bridge is all new construction, white and clean and nothing special, except for those killer views of the water. But look to the right and you can see the skeletal remains of the former Bay Bridge, the one I knew so well, the one that used to be strong, but is being disassembled. Ripped down.

Watch it as you leave the city, and think about how much it carried. All those people, all those stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re safer on the new bridge, but doesn’t it make you a little sad to see something so important coming apart? Look closely, while you can. It’s a ghost town. It’s an entry in a history book.

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At the beginning of 2005, I moved from Berkeley to San Francisco. I worked in the East Bay, which meant a daily commute over the Bay Bridge. Getting to work was easy, a reverse route that took me past rows of frustrated drivers, making their way slowly into the city, while I breezed along, blasting music and sipping coffee.

After work, I got in my car to go home, and that was the best part of the day. Getting on the bridge, realizing I lived in this amazing city, watching the buildings appear in front of me. Coit Tower, Alcatraz, the triangle-topped Transamerica Pyramid, Sutro Tower. The Bay, just rippling along, catching whatever light bounced off the city.

That was the month I met Rob. Once we started our long-distance relationship, New York to San Francisco, we talked on the phone every evening. Also some mornings, and sometimes at night. So now my commutes were an ear plug and his voice and the city before me. “I saw you driving on the bridge going home from work,” a coworker said one day. “You had the biggest smile on your face, but you were the only one in the car!”

“I was on the phone!” I protested, slightly embarrassed. But I couldn’t deny that it was a really happy time in my life. I moved to New York to be with Rob, and in some kind of loyalty play to the SF bridges, my brain refused to learn the names of the bridges and tunnels spanning the water between Manhattan and the rest of the world. I knew the Brooklyn Bridge, and that was it. For 4 years.

We returned to San Francisco, and in 2011, when my ALS symptoms began, I would occasionally spend a day working in my company’s Berkeley office. But something strange had developed. In addition to the random falling that I’ve described, I became terrified of driving over the bridge. It was a classic panic attack, sudden tunnel vision, rapid heart beat, shallow breath. A 4-mile freak out that once caused me to bite my lip so hard, it bled.

I don’t like being afraid of things, so instead of staying away from the bridge, I did practice drives. I would tell myself that I just had to go halfway, to Treasure Island, and then turn around. I would try to distract myself with music. I would bring Scarlett, and talk to her. I would try to remember how much I had once loved driving on the bridge. Over and back, over and back. Never quite comfortable, but refusing to give in.

One day, we were halfway over and I realized I wasn’t scared. “Yay!” I yelled, and Scarlett repeated me, throwing her chubby arms in the air. Our short-lived victory. Then the driving stopped, and the bridge was just a bridge again, connecting two places, with me always in the passenger seat.

And that’s where I was last Sunday, as we left the city, heading towards Lake Tahoe. I looked to my right, and saw the bridge, cut off at the knees. A shell. Then I looked behind me, and saw a 5-year-old child in the backseat. “How did this happen?” I asked Rob.

“How did what happen?” he asked. And I cried as I tried to explain that I was driving over the bridge one evening and I blinked, and now I’m here, with a family, with a wheelchair, with a very questionable future. And to my right were the remains of the road that once carried me, over and back, while I smiled at the city.

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