CuteLittleJeep | Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning

Life is everchanging as we adapt to an everchanging World… along with everything that goes into that. It’s always moving… shifting… morphing into something familiar, but which doesn’t feel the same. Life is continually updating to The Present…. and we’re forced to exist in The Now. In my Widowhood, and I think we all go through something like this, there have been Moments when I’m walking up the driveway, or driving down to town, or strolling through the woods, or snowshoeing with Amanda, or simply sitting in the Kateri/Xander Chair where I find myself taking a look around and going, “Huh… so this is what My Life looks like right now… Who’d a thunk? Wouldn’t have guessed that This or That was gonna be a part of it..!”. Today, while driving my truck home after getting windshield wipers for the cute little Jeep Renegade… the one whose front wheel had fallen off… I had one of those Moments.

On this morning’s ToDo List was the final task pertaining to my mini-Midlife crisis after the previously mentioned wheel fell off my vehicle… and I bought a new(ish) truck. This morning, a friend of mine helped me replace the fender on the cute little Jeep, which had gotten a bit crumpled when my wheel tried to smash through it! And now, I am at a point in My Timeline which feels slightly different than the one I was at just about a month and a half ago.

I’ve thought a lot about Life over the last 6 weeks… a lot about My Life. There have been some significant emotional, psychological, and financial challenges that I needed to face, to figure out, to get past and overcome so that I could move… forward. After my wheel falling off and subsequently me freaking out and buying a new(ish) truck literally the next day… then getting snow tires/bed cover/ice scraper/jump pack/etc…. after making the decision to get rid of Kateri’s Tacoma along with deciding who would remove it… and then having it removed…!,.. after going through the steps I had planned out once the dust settled from the initial runaway wheel, I’m filing this experience away in the “Memories” and/or “Remember When?!” folders because my cute little Jeep’s driver’s side front fender is fixed!… and I even got to help…!.. a little.

Widower Notes n Thoughts:

My Life is filled with 49 years of wonderful experiences and memories along with more than a handful of uncomfortable ones… and few that I could’ve lived without. That’s just how Life goes. Nope, this isn’t how I expected it to go, but my story is still being written and every day that I’m awake I have an opportunity to adapt to the world outside my windows as I try to persuade The Future to be kind and go in the direction I would like it to. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t, but Perseverance will get me to tomorrow… where there’s another opportunity to try it again.
For years, I’ve had Dreams of Grandeur of becoming an auto mechanic. This experience only reinforced that dream!… hmmm.

My plan was to grab some Indian food from the house in WRJ… (it’s literally a house that sells take-out)… but when I was eating my salad for lunch in the driver’s seat this afternoon, I saw there were only twenty-five more miles until I hit 100,000 in the (my) Cute Little Jeep! Of course I Google Mapped it… (or used whatever app it is that shows me how to get from here to there)… and my phone told me that it was only twenty-FOUR miles to my house! So, needless to say, I decided against getting the super tasty Indian food to hopefully maybe make the memory of pulling into my driveway… of arriving Home… when those five numbers turned into six! And… well… it did!

I’m pretty good at attaching all sorts of significance… to all sorts of things. 100,000 is just a number. A car… even a Cute Little Jeep… is just a car. But we use numbers, such as 100,000, as milestones… they allow us to chunk up our lives. Kateri is attached to every memory, feeling, thought I have about my Jeep because it is the first brand new vehicle we ever bought! It was a big deal to us… we had just bought our first home and were somehow able to by a spanking new Jeep! Inch by inch… over the years… we kept working towards the life we wanted… towards our Hopes N Dreams. For people like us, with the life we lived, buying a car in which you don’t have to worry about the radiator blowing, or fuel pump leaving you stranded, or the window not rolling up when you accidentally hit the down button… and it’s 3 degrees out… is one of those moments in life where it makes you feel as though you’ve “arrived”… or “grown up”. It was a time in my life when “The Struggle” seemed to finally be dissipating. Fuck… life was good! WE HAD CHICKENS FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! (…sorry for using the Lord’s name in vain) Things were humming along!… until they weren’t anymore. So ya… I guess I can say that a car is just a car, but nothing is that simple. Seeing my odometer hit 100,000 miles is an opportunity for me to remember the memories I have with this vehicle during my life with Kateri… and in my life since. 100,000 miles is a lot of ground to cover… which would take a long time write down… so here’s just a few of those miles.

Widower Notes n Thoughts… about my Cute Little Jeep:

I’m really diggin’ that it turned 100,000 right when I got home. It’s just one of those cool coincidental things… that provides me with a pretty cool memory.
Driving the Jeep home from Burlington right after agreeing to pay for it over 7 years, we opened the sunroof on the interstate… just because we could. We noticed it didn’t shut the first time we tried and thought it just had to do with the wind. It still doesn’t shut sometimes… and I still haven’t done anything about it except awkwardly pull it shut… sometimes. If I have a friend in the car with me and it doesn’t shut… I sometimes ask them to help..!
We took the “Sky Roof” off in the parking lot of a laundry mat where we met up with our friend Keith to take him for a spin in it. When we hit the highway at 70 mph, we didn’t think the interior roof was gonna make it from the wind current bouncing it up and down! It survived… I guess Jeep had thought about that.
Beach trips with friends… and beach camping trips with friends. They were fun… and can be entertaining when your friend get snippy with the campers in the neighboring camp site. We also learned that it’s a tight fit in the Cute Little Jeep with four people… and beach supplies… for four people.
Studded snow tires. Kateri bought us our first set of studded snow tires a month before cancer. Where she bought them from, the people let her lay on a couch because she had such a bad headache… which turned out to be tumors in her brain. Those tires are on their last winter.
Satellite radio! And a decent stereo! We had a lot of fun with music… and were amazed by how many times Yah Mo B There kept coming up. Today, if I’m on certain stations… it still comes up… and I change the channel. Kateri and I would joke about how often if played. Now I just find it annoying.
For three days I drove across this country in it, sleeping at Rest Areas and eating out of a cooler during the election so that I could see my mom during a pandemic. I love that I had that experience with this vehicle.
Kateri made the monthly payments on our first new vehicle ever… but would rather drive her 2001 Toyota Tacoma (which is rusting away next to the Cute Little Jeep in the driveway) to work everyday on the farm. Her dream car was a Toyota with a wooden bed… she was pretty awesome… and hopefully one day the Yota will get there.
I remember helping her into the back seat, running inside to grab towels and another blanket (or something), coming back out to her having thrown up… and other stuff… because her colon had given out from either the cancer or immunotherapy. I helped her out of the back seat… got to the front door… stripped her clothes off and threw them in the snow covered back yard… cleaned her up… and called an ambulance.
Heated steering wheel… that’s all I should really need to say… they should be standard in every car…!
Again… I wish that there would be some sort of little celebration on the dash/screen/odometer thing when it hits 100,000 miles… it would just be fun.
I’ve had this Jeep for four years. Although Kateri experienced our brand new vehicle for just one of those years… I’m so glad that she (we) had that experience. From the “wheelin’ and dealin'” to the last time I drove her in it on the way to the emergency room… it provided us with the comfort of not worrying if we’ll get to our destination… even if we weren’t sure of where we were heading. A 100,000 miles is a lot of ground to cover. Ya, you can say it’s just a car, just a truck, just a whatever… or you can focus on what you’ve filled that vehicle with as the miles slowly pile up… whether it be physically or metaphorically. You can fit a lot of memories into 100,000 miles… and even though some of those memories are difficult for me to remember… they only make up a few of those miles. I’m fortunate… I have a lot of good memories of Kateri and this Cute Little Jeep, which will help me as I drive through the next 100,000 miles of life… making new memories… without her in the passenger seat.
I love that this is the one video I have of Kateri in our Cute Little Jeep. It’s just sooooo Kateri. This was New Year’s Day 2018… 16 days after they found the mass in her brain. She was at the very beginning of her four month and three day Dance with Cancer. (Sorry, but Youtube let me know that if you live in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or Syria… this video is blocked. You know… just wanting to keep all my followers in those countries informed!)

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Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning

Tag: CuteLittleJeep

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