I Got Myself a New Car

Well, a second-hand one, of course.

The previous car was pretty old, and eventually needed repairs that would have cost too much to be worth it. I'm pleased with the replacement.

It was a few days after I got it that I suddenly realised: it was the first car I'd bought for me rather than for us. That caused a pang. Another link gone.

As if these external links really mattered; they're only symbolic of course. And yet....

Andrew was so pleased when we got the last car, in August 2011. I was already doing all the driving, but he was keen to have a drive of this car so I swapped seats one day, close to home, and let him drive it the rest of the way. He surrendered his licence soon afterwards, pleased to know we had a good car that would be easy for me to drive.

And it was a good car for me, a comfortable size to drive and to park. It was my favourite car ever — but when you buy an old car, it needs more and more work, and is wearing out all the time ... as it eventually did.

So I must look on the bright side. I was able to choose the latest car solely for my own specific needs. I don't have to worry about fitting a wheely walker into it, for instance. I was able to go even smaller, even easier to park. I'm told that smaller is more economical too. And it's not nearly so old, so I trust will last a lot longer.

The old (1984 Camry)                 The new (1995 Ford Festiva Trio)




Comments from LiveJournal, where this entry was cross-posted:

Date: 2014-06-19 07:03 pm (UTC)

From: metahara

I like the pretty blue color! Drive safe, have fun adventures in your "new" car!!

Date: 2014-06-21 07:36 am (UTC)

From: snakypoet 

Thank you. :)

Talking to the Dead

Alison Dubois — a famous clairvoyant and medium on whom an American TV show is based — has an advice column in a magazine I read.

A young woman whose brother had died asked if he could hear her and her Mum crying for him. Dubois said he would prefer them not to be upset. Better to speak of the joy he brought them. The deceased like to hear people remembering the funny or quirky things about who they were. 

But yes, he did hear them, and the more they talked to him out loud, the easier it would become for him to communicate with them.

Another woman said she was badly missing her late husband, afraid she hadn't told him enough how much she loved him. (I can relate to that one!) Dubois advised her, too, to talk to him out loud. 

The dead can hear our every word, she said. We can tell them every day that we love them. And she suggested, “Before you go to sleep, ask him to visit you in your dreams”.

I talk to Andrew out loud a lot. I know, from some things a psychic recently told me (a woman who never met him and barely knew me) that he does indeed hear me. Through her, he responded to things I had been privately saying and feeling. 

I did have a couple of dream visits from him soon after his death, and knew them to be real visits.  But it simply hadn’t occurred to me that I could invite him to visit more often.  

Well, that's easily rectified!

New Experience: Alone in My Head

My friend Shay was visiting. Her partner died a couple of months after Andrew did. It wasn't such a long relationship as ours, but every bit as close and loving. When I first asked, after our bereavements, what it was like for her, she said, "I've lost my best friend." 

Now, like me, she lives alone. Close friends ourselves for two decades, we are the people we can talk to about our parallel journeys. 

On this visit, she said how strange it felt, having no-one else inside her head. I knew exactly what she meant. Quite recently I was driving along in my car when I suddenly thought, "Here I am!" with a sense of being wholly myself, undivided, undiluted. A recognition … and the recognition that it was a new experience.

In the past, neither Shay nor I lived much alone. We had marriages, we raised families. Before that we were in our birth families with parents and siblings; then we were young women out in the world, sharing houses with others. 

"You know what I mean," she said. "How there's always someone else in your head, and you do things partly with them in mind?" Yes, I knew. I think it's probably the commonest human condition, and only in its absence does one discover it.

We agreed we both miss that past companionship, but we're savouring this new experience of self-containment, indeed self-discovery, and don't want to interrupt it too soon.

Odd moments of embarrassment or discord —

even they have become affectionate memories.