car, grief, letting go, memories, permission, Photograph by Ken Gehle, Photograph by Tamara Beachum
His car was worth $3. No really, count ‘em: one, two, three. That’s it. According to the blue book value the trade-in value was a whopping three bucks. But that 1989 Volvo station wagon was worth so much more than that to me. Ken and I met in the year that car was created, 1989. In 1991, we married and, planning ahead, bought a sensible vehicle that could serve as family car for us and company car for Ken’s photography business. Our other cars – five of them – came and went but “The Truck” as we called it was always there. It was our rock. It carried precious cargo in safety seats and everything else from photo gear to bails of pine straw. It was our workhorse. The Truck took us on adventures. The console became a scrapbook of sorts holding a smooth rock from one journey, an abandoned skate egg sack from an annual beach trip and a ticket stub from the tallest lighthouse in North America. Only Ken had climbed that lighthouse late one afternoon before the rain set in. The Truck was our safe harbor. When Ken was sick The Truck sat until it became sick too. A few months after he died I had it brought back to working condition for our daughter. Hearing the particular rev of its engine and the sound the tires made on our cobble driveway was a comfort. She was able to drive it into her senior year in high school but its age, twenty years now, was showing. Pieces started falling off. New noises and squeaks made their...
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