“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear” wrote C. S. Lewis in his opening line of “A Grief Observed”. These words reverberated in my head as I sat in my living room clutching my heart, wondering why I felt so afraid. After all, it was my day off and all I had done so far was clean out my car. It seemed like an innocuous task, and I usually find cleaning to be a calming activity. Not that day, however. I thought about the process I had just experienced and was now supposedly done with. My car is over 14-years-old and I’m getting it ready to be traded in for a new car that has been on order since January (yes, the slowdown in the auto industry is real.) I am so familiar with that sensation of fear, and felt it last year when I first started test-driving cars. I was doing it alone – a first for me, as when I bought this car, I did so with my late husband Mike. Although last year I asked friends to come with me, they told me I didn’t need them, mistakenly thinking I just needed advice, and they willingly gave it; it was only a widowed friend who understood that it was old grief, and came with me, helping me move forward simply by her presence.
And so, the car-cleaning process. First, I emptied the glove compartment and console, finding the manual and odds and ends that I might have needed along my various journeys. Then I moved to the back and reached into the pocket behind the front passenger seat. I felt an unfamiliar object, which turned out to be a glasses case. Puzzled, I opened it to find my late husband Mike’s eyeglasses. I held them for a moment and then put them on. My vision blurred and I put them down, reaching further into the pocket, and pulled out an old leaflet on Cancer Care. One deep breath, and I tossed that cancer leaflet into the recycle pile. But I didn’t know what to do with the glasses. As I sat there holding them, I thought of some of the places that this car had taken me during the last 14 years. I remembered the day we bought the car together, and then celebrating with dinner that evening, a nod to our major purchase. That car took me on the journey to help move my daughter into college; it took Mike to five months of chemo treatments back and forth; it stayed parked in the hospital garage for the last week of his life, and took me to his funeral a mere 17 months after that celebratory dinner, and then to years of subsequent cemetery visits.
In addition to going to and from work, this car took me to my first joyous trip to Esalen and all the ones following, listening to music and stories and poetry from its sound system. I’ve lost count of airport trips it took me to and picked me up from on my frequent travels. The car took me to my daughter’s wedding after numerous drives along the California coast from South to North and back to see her; it took me to my son’s wedding two years later. This car was my transport to see grandchildren and also to be present at one grandchild’s birth.
This car has been such an extension of me that I even wrote a pre-High Holy Day article for my synagogue bulletin last summer comparing it to my body and soul, with its dings and dents, and how I care for its engine, mentioning that I often dream about warning lights in my car which tell me to pay attention to what’s going on in my body and my life. It is more than a car. It is a vehicle.
I reached for Mike’s glasses one more time. I remembered taking them with me to Portland twelve years ago to have a spiritual coach hold them while she gave me a reading, and from that meeting stemmed a relationship with her that I treasure and ultimately brought about the publication of my first book. The sensation of fear dissipated. I must have put the glasses in the car sometime after Portland. But now that the car is on its last wheels so to speak, I must replace it. I realize that my fear is the grief of letting go of the energy and memories it holds.
The new car has been built and is waiting to be unloaded in the dock. Daily, I wait for the dealership to call and tell me to come get it. When the dealership calls, I will create a goodbye ritual as well as have a celebratory dinner afterwards. In the meantime, every journey I take in my 14-year-old car feels like a farewell, a letting go bit by bit, that liminal space of no longer and not yet, tempered with gratitude for having this car in the first place. It is more than a car. It is a vehicle.
I hope that there will be new roads to drive that will transform me, and that the new car will become as familiar and trustworthy as the old. I might even put Mike’s glasses somewhere in the new car. C. S. Lewis continues, “I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” I am no stranger to grief, and I know that it does feel very much like fear. I also know that very often, fear and excitement come from the same place. In my case, I keep on driving.