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
That van was truely a pain in the butt to drive :)
ReplyDeleteBut Phil was always so patient with me as I bumped us both around in there trying to get his chair properly situated before each drive.
I'm glad I got to be a part of those memories in there :)
~Natalie
Hi Natalie;
ReplyDeleteYes, it WAS a pain in the butt to drive. And Phillip didn't just get bumped around getting in. He got bumped around with every left turn. I'll bet he kept his complaints to me :)
I'm glad you were part of those memories, too.
Thanks for posting on my blog. I didn't know anybody was reading it :)
XO
Valerie