I Did a Thing Today, It was Hard

I took the step today of donating Bride’s car to Southeast Community College for their auto body program.  Here is some more about the place and its auto body program auto body program.    

It is the 4^th vehicle donation we have made over the years.  Well, three we did together.  My   66 GMC pickup she donated, and I found out about that when I got home from work and she asked for my keys and title.  It was a program that was to train inner city kids as auto mechanics as a trade.  We did establish a new house rule after that, no donating vehicles without speaking to each other first.

That new rule led us to start to think more deliberately about what we each wanted long term.  That eventually led to documenting those wishes, and that led to thinking about way more than just talking about cars.  All of that eventually led to wills, power of attorneys, both medical and general, living wills, health care directives, as well as estate planning.  We both knew what the other one’s wishes were, both conversationally and legally. 

Having sorted out all that ahead of time has made this bit of my journey much easier, including donating her car.  That was not my decision, that was our decision and it aligns with our wishes.

I will say this, no matter what age you happen to be, do those things now!!  It’s even simpler now with online services.  Life is so fragile and we just don’t know when we are going to come home on some random day and find our loved one deceased.  TRUST me, you will have so many other things going on in your head and life that you will find it a blessing to not have to think or worry about any of those hard decisions.  Depending, it can also eliminate any issues or disagreements with family who may have other thoughts on their wishes. 

To be clear, that was not the case with Bride but I have seen that happen before.  DO. IT. NOW!!! If ya need, I’ll pay for the fee for one of those online services for ya and that is a good start.  

I cannot recall if I mentioned that she had a fender bender not long after the Title issues we had getting it registered here in Nebraska, story here Oregon DMV story.    She loved that car, it was small and was pretty peppy as she said.  That came from the V6 in it.  She felt safe in it and enjoyed being up higher than other folks.  I don’t remember what year it was but she wanted a back up camera and better Bluetooth.  She was pondering buying something newer, and the engineer in me simply said let’s put a new radio in it that has all that stuff.  She cracked me up when she asked, “you can do that”.   I told her between being a technologist, a car dude and pretty much all around handy guy I was pretty sure I could handle that. So did that, including a 10” screen for the camera and interface, she liked that size for the Google Maps.

It has been a great car, aside from brakes and batteries and tires and routine things like that the only repair I had to do was when the AC quit working.  I was expecting the worst but when my mechanic called I was relieved it just a bad O ring in the system, I told him to just go ahead and replace every single O ring in the system, which he did. It was cream puff, we bought it in 2013, it was a 2011.  It had 58k on it, it belonged to a sales dude who meticulously maintained it and most of that was highway miles.  Today it had just a bit over 100k.  So in the 13 years she had it she only put about 42k on it.  The dude at the school was amazed at the shape it was in as well.

When I got home and went in the garage, it felt so empty with the Escape not sitting there, that was harder than dropping it off.  That is something that I suspect will feel that way for a while.  I think when I am done writing this, I am going to go move the Galaxie 500 over to that spot.  It is the Girl Jalopy so maybe that will help me get past that empty spot.  That spot holds a story now, just not with a car in it.  

I will add this tag to the collection of tags I have from every car I have owned.