The Car

My parents raised me to be pretty independent, and I thank the Lord for that right now in my life. It has perhaps enabled me to live these last months with a little more confidence. However, in the area of car buying, I am a loser.  If it’s a pretty color and it’s clean, it’s a good deal to me. So, after recognizing this flaw almost immediately in our marriage, my one and only flaw I might add, Dan took the car buying portion of our marriage and made it his own. And he did it well. He would spend weeks searching and researching for “just the right car” and to date they are still running…two jeeps and a Camry all with mega miles.

However, the Camry, to which Kaylan fondly refers as the “Screaming Metal Death Trap”, has come to the end of its long productive life. Previously owned by her brother, she traded her even older Jeep with him to save gas during her driving bonanza back and forth from college. Almost as soon as he handed her the key the car began to disintegrate before her very eyes. The radio and interior lights died instantly, the handle on the passenger side snapped like a dry twig, forcing her to let her passengers out of the car from the outside. The driver window, once rolled down, took about 10 minutes to power up enough to roll up again , which presented an unwanted romantic opportunity for her at the Goo Goo car wash last week and the too-expensive-to-replace struts caused her car to bounce along the road like a pimped up Cadillac at an urban hip-hop convention. The steering wheel shook almost uncontrollably at a lofty speed of 45 mph and her lack of discernment with a concrete wheel stop in the parking lot of our local Publix left a huge hole in the muffler.  There was no doubt about when she entered our subdivision.

“Mom!” she whined! “I’m humiliated!! My friends won’t ride with me for fear of death!” It was a true statement and I didn’t blame them. But although her humiliation had no affect on me whatsoever, the glaring, disapproving looks of my neighbors did. Thus the new car! Thankfully, I had my father with us to protect me from myself.

There are so many aspects of grieving..some like shadowed tunnels leading through darkness to a light that seems so far away, all filled with levels of fear, lonliness, sadness….but from what I have read, all leading to a “new normal”. Every aspect of our lives will forever be filled with Dan but I didn’t realize how intertwined he was throughout almost every minute of my everyday life, how the small things then were only small because he took care of them. To buy a car for her without him yesterday was huge, and although somewhat painful, it provided a stepping stone to our “new normal”. Every step we take is a step of survival toward living again but without Dan, and although we wish it were not so, it is.

“We’re going to be ok, aren’t we mom?” she asked. “Yes”, I answered, and for the first time since Dan’s death, I felt that it could be true.

She began to cry as she drove away from the car lot….probably from the sheer joy of not having to drive the "beast" ever again but maybe because she, as I had, both just experienced God’s hand of mercy yet again.

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. (Psalms 71:20)

Joy Dilts