Bittersweet

Last year carried a fair amount of stress and I guess I’m just now allowing myself to process it all. It’s why I was away from the blog for so long.

A trip to China with work in June was amazing, but required a lot of planning on my part. And I held onto my quilt show responsibilities of laying out the show and securing folks to hang quilts even though I would be out of the country during the show.

In July my ’94 Camry wagon received bad news and it was a matter of time before it blew a gasket – literally. So the search for a new vehicle was on for the first time in twenty years.

Then in September Daddy fell out of bed. And everything else stopped for a month - except the car search, which was insane to think I could handle all at the same time. And a week and a half after going into the hospital, Daddy had a stroke. And a week and a half later he was gone.

But I had to keep the ball rolling on the car thing since I knew those trips back and forth to Memphis had only shortened the time left on the Camry.

Every night I exhausted myself trolling Autotrader, cars.com, craigslist, eBay, and local dealerships online. All in all I test drove eleven cars. And then I found it. And then it was Thanksgiving. And the sister’s Jeep was in need of too much work, so the next week, she was here buying a new vehicle herself.

And then it was Christmas. And the aunt and the sister and the sister’s dog came for about a week and we just made things as easy as we could because we were all so tired.

And then I needed to sell the Camry. I had worn the buyer’s hat for so long, it was hard to look at the car any other way. But after two posts on craigslist, someone who understood the car’s shortcomings bought it and I was relieved to not have the burden of it and to get it off my insurance.

But what I didn’t expect was the hole it left not seeing it at the end of the driveway. It had been Daddy’s car before I got it. And now it was gone. And he was really gone. And the emptiness was a little more real.

We are so thankful that his was a quiet and peaceful passing. He didn’t have to suffer in a debilitated state that he would have hated and that would have been so painful for us to watch. He turned 86 while he was in the hospital. His life had been full.

I miss so many things about him - his smile and his sense of humor and his hugs are just a few.

He would really like my new car.