Sad endings and new beginnings.

It is a frosty October morning, and emotions are swirling in the air all around me,  like the autumn leaves tumbling around outside.  Almost a month has passed since the car accident that took our car, and shook up my old bones.  Thankfully, we are slowly but surely moving back towards normal, whatever "normal" is.  A new car was picked up last week, and physio for this old body will start this week.  So, we are making progress.

This might sound silly, but I was more than a tad upset when I was told that our old CRV could not be repaired.  In the past, we had always purchased  smaller, second hand cars, but when AC retired, we opted for a bigger new car, as we planned on doing a lot of traveling during our retirement, and we wanted a solid car, with lots of room for camping gear.

Our old car, Corrie the Corolla, served us well, but was a tad small for what we had planned for our future.  When it was time to take the plunge and replace her, we looked at a number of  RV's, and we both felt like the Honda CRV fit us best, and we liked the look of it too.  We were the first owners of this little gem, and we named our new family member Harriet the Chariot.  Yes, we name our cars....strange I know...but true. This was going to be the car to take us on lots of exciting adventures and we looked forward to what we would find at the end of each new road we traveled down inside her safe cocoon.

We planned on keeping her for 15 years at least, so we didn't miss a service appt and treated her with tender loving care.   After her 10th BD, AC had a run-in with a rowdy tree, so a bit of body work was called for, and normal things like brakes, muffler and some other suspension thing had to be replaced. But other than that, she didn't give us an ounce of trouble.  Not bad for a 10 year old car.  She still looked good, and gave us a comfy ride; well, as comfortable as these old bodies could be when backs and hips started to yell at us after a couple of hours in any car. 

She took us out West, down East, and all around Ontario along many a new road. It was so nice to see her waiting for us at the side of a new road, where we parked her, so we could ramble around in the woods to take some pictures or enjoy a picnic along the way.   I also felt safe when we walked towards her in a dark parking lot at night, and she winked her lights at us when we approached.  Yes, I do have a vivid imagination, and it does make life interesting and fun.

One of our favorite places to travel to was Riverwood.  Harriet carried us and all our winter snowshoeing gear, there many times.  She waited for us at the end of frosty winter walks, and soon warmed us up as soon as we got inside.  Even when she was parked outside overnight at the farm, in -41 conditions, she started like a charm the next morning.  Yes, she was a gem of a car.

So, when we got the news that she couldn't be fixed after keeping us safe in the accident, I was more than sad.  We drove to the car repair shop to gather up our belongings and prepare for the trip home without her for the first time in ten years.  When we drove into the parking lot, I almost burst into tears when I saw her parked all alone at the back of the parking lot at this strange place.  She had taken such good care of us during all of our adventures over the past 10 years, and now here she was all alone and we would have to leave her behind when we went home. Sigh!

We emptied out nooks and crannies inside the car, cleaned under seats, and other out-of-sight  out-of-mind areas, then piled all our belongings in the rental car.  Sad, sad, sad.  I was really struggling to hold back the tears, and when we finally drove away leaving Harriet in that strange place, the tears did start to flow. I think the trauma of the accident finally hit home at that point, and I was a teary mess.

Thankfully the pain meds for my back and neck pain have been decreased, and I am not an emotional mess over a car any more.  Onward and forward.  I do have lots of happy memories of vacations taken in Harriet, so I will dwell on those.  One especially memorable "Silly Camping" adventure we had with Daughter #2 shortly after we purchased Harriet comes to mind, so I'll write more about that later this week.   Stay tuned...