Today I saw my old Dodge Caravan go off on a flatbed tow truck, in all likelihood to be scrapped. It's 25 years old, hast 184,000 miles on it, and it won't start, even with a jump from a tow truck. Nobody wanted it, and I didn't need a second car and it was just taking up space. Off to the glue factory ....
But I'm crying over it. It's like I just had an old dog put to sleep that had been with me for 25 years; okay, he was old and sick and could barely walk, but still.... It was the car we bought when we had our second child and didn't have room enough in the old one for the safety contraptions for an infant and a toddler. It was the car we took on all our long trips. It was the car I took when we got divorced. It always started right up, and only failed when the computer was dying (the mechanics all swore the computer was fine, but when I finally replaced it against medical advice, it stopped quitting on me.) It was our old faithful horse. And now it's gone. I feel like I failed him.
I feel a little weird about it; I didn't cry this much when my parents died, 10 and 15 years ago. (Although I kind of feel like I did my grieving for them long before they actually died.) And I'm shedding real tears, like I haven't in years, maybe decades.
