Twenty Three Years

This is a post to memorialize the end of the third longest relationship of my entire life.  No person, place or thing except my house (23 years and counting) and my Mother (35 years) has been a direct part of my life longer than my 2003 Sunfire.

I rolled her off the lot with all of 8 kilometres on her odometer and this past Monday, she gasped her last.

Her last bit of self propelled momentum was able to glide me safely off the highway and into a truck inspection station, her engine blown and beyond reasonable repair.  She blew a seal and lost all her oil and never turned on her oil light to warn me until it was far too late.

She kept me safe through blizzards and torrential rain, carted my ass to work, to interviews and drive-thrus, drove the Cabot Trail, got me too and from baseball games and 10,000 other little errands over her 23 years of faithful service.

She was my first car.  I am not ashamed to say, there have been tears this last week.  Even now as I write her epitaph.  A car is just a car, until it's part of your life and you have to say goodbye.

The car wrecker offered my a paltry sum for her.  I was heartbroken and have decided that I will donate her body to science, quite literally.  There's a service called Car Heaven that will take her and any money made from her recycling will be donated to "Let's Talk About Science", a foundation that promotes science and science based activities across Canada.  In the end she goes to the same place, but with more dignity than if I took pizza and beer money from a scrap dealer.

To say I'll miss her is such an understatement I cannot express.  Sadly, life in a small town requires a car and I must move on.  The next vehicle is waiting in the wings.

 

As close to a friend as I have.

I am not a car guy and didn't maintain or baby her the way I now realize she deserved.  I don't have the skill nor the passion for it that might have extended her already long life even longer, to my great shame.  Still, she put up with my neglect and gave back more than I could have expected.  

I will miss her like a severed limb, at least for a while and any time I see one of these still rolling, I'll smile and I will remember.  

Thank you, with all my heart.  Your functions will be taken over by another, but you will never be replaced. 

Addendum.

I realized that while I will always need A car, she will forever be THE car.  

 

 

A final...sit.  In MY car.

Goodbye, dear friend.