Your 'other' wheels.

Dear Phillip;

Your van has a new home. I gave it to a family in Elk Grove who has a 21-year-old son with ataxia. I hope it gives Geoffrey the freedom it gave you all those years.

11 years.

For 11 years the spare key lived in the front hall so that anybody who came by could take you out in it. I would sometimes come home and find the van gone, and know that you were out somewhere with someone. Those were the days.

As I got it ready for it's new family I found so many memories of you. 3D glasses from movies. Parking stubs from hockey games. Receipts from coffee shops or restaurants. Programs from golf tournaments and fundraisers. Pages and pages of Google directions to the places you went. It was like a trip down memory lane. I know that sometimes your friends didn't drive the van carefully :) And sometimes they got lost. And at least once you drank too much and threw up in it! But it always managed to bring you home safely.

Seeing the driveway empty of it reminds me that the house is empty of you, and that is so hard. But I'm glad it is off having new adventures with a new ataxian. I hope it accumulates as many memories for him as it did for you.

I miss you, but I have to trust that you are so much freer than the van ever made you.

Love Mom

Right Here Waiting

Dear Phillip;

Did you have any idea what you were doing the day you asked me to download "Right Here Waiting"? It was just a few days before you got sick. I came home from work and the first thing you asked me was to go to iTunes and download this song you heard on the radio. It's the only song you ever asked me to download, and I don't know if you listened to it after that. But a couple weeks later, when I was going through your laptop looking for things for your service, I came across the file and played it. It was as if you left it there for me. I cried and cried. It was the music we used at the end of your service behind the slide show.

I play it all the time now. It always makes me cry but I need to hear it. I need to know you are there waiting for me, and that I'll be able to hug you and kiss you again.

Thank you for leaving me that gift.

I love you.