Our Truck

I recently traded in my Toyota Tundra for a Toyota Highlander. Although I had been considering trading in the truck for something smaller and more fuel efficient for quite awhile, it seemed very drastic and sudden at the time. I found myself getting emotional while at the dealership, finalizing the paperwork. I kept thinking about Axl and getting rid of my truck felt like I was officially beginning this new chapter of my life- my life without my son.

We shared a lot of great memories in that vehicle. Axl loved cars and every type of vehicle so these memories are so bittersweet.  A few weeks after I got the Tundra, we took Axl & Layla on their first camping trip- just a short road trip to a wedding camp-out in Kentucky. It was an unseasonably cold weekend in May but we arrived and set up our tents. Axl & I slept in a tent in the back of the truck and Layla and Dave slept in a tent on the ground. We had dinner and enjoyed the live music and when it got late, the kids were snuggled into a wagon filled with blankets and we pulled them from campsite to campsite. We got up early in the morning, had donuts and fished in the lake. It was a great first road trip of many in my Tundra, other than waking up freezing cold in the early morning hours because Axl had wet the bed. Looking back, I wonder if he had a seizure in his sleep because he didn't start wetting the bed until his seizures started and this trip was about 4 months before his first seizure. Or at least, first known seizure. 

This was the vehicle that drove the kids to their two separate schools. After dropping Layla off, we'd arrive at Axl's school about 25 minutes too early. He'd usually climb into the front seat and we'd just hang out in the car and I'd play his favorite songs on request or we would work on his homework or practice reading. He was getting a little better every day with reading. He would chat constantly on the way to school. Oftentimes the topic was about his birthday party in Destin or what he wanted for Christmas. One morning, he went on and on about how he wanted to get a pet bird. He wanted a pet macaw and wasn't taking no for an answer. He liked to say, "you think?" on repeat until you would eventually say, "okay, Bud." So he was talking about the macaw he wanted and I had told him macaws couldn't survive in this kind of climate; they need to live in the tropics. Then, we were at a stoplight on North Bend Road and West Fork Road and I look over and a man gets out of his truck with a live macaw on his shoulder and walks into the gas station store. I couldn't believe it! It was like he had a premonition about seeing a macaw that morning.  I have never, before that day or ever since, seen a person in Cincinnati walking around with an exotic bird! 

Axl loved his pet parrot and all kinds of birds.

We usually drove I-75 to I-74 to get to and from his school but sometimes we would take the hilly Race Road to avoid traffic. He would always, on any type of hill, squeal "Weeeee!!" like a cartoon character on an amusement park ride. It cracked me up every time. 

Some mornings, we'd have an early-morning neurology appointment at Children's. It was in that truck that Axl had a grand mal seizure as we pulled into the parking garage at Children's one morning. I parked the car and climbed into the spacious back seat to hold him and helplessly rub his back, waiting for the seizure to subside so we could go into his appointment. He was still in the postictal stage so I carried him out of the garage and into the hospital and up to the 7th floor to meet his neurologist so we didn't have to miss his appointment and reschedule. 

The kids got dressed for summer camp one day and both put on the same shirt... their race shirts from the Epilepsy 5k 💜

So I guess it's more than just the memories that we shared in that truck that I'm leaving behind. I feel like it's a symbolic closing of the door on the best chapter of my life- the life in which my son was alive. Like a lot of people, I have gone through life with a different vehicle for each chapter of my life. When I graduated college and got my first "real job", I felt I needed a more reliable car to make the 30-minute commute to work every day so I upgraded to an Acura CL. Then, after I got married, became a stepmom and was pregnant with Axl, I bought a mini van which could comfortably seat my growing family.  The mini van served me well. It had plenty of space for two babies in car seats, for my three older stepchildren, my husband and my dog. After seven years with the mini van, I upgraded to the Tundra. My step kids were in high school and college and so I no longer needed room for them. I had also transitioned from a job at the convention center to a job with my family's catering business. The truck was better equipped to load and transport catering equipment than the mini van and had plenty of space for road trips with the kids and dogs and all of our stuff.

So now I'm usually in the car by myself or I'm driving just one kid. There's no longer a need for large back seat that seats both kids comfortably with all their stuffed animals and enough room in between them so that they can hardly reach each other to fight. This is why getting rid of my truck made sense. But it still feels like I'm accepting this new chapter of my life as a mom of one child and I'm leaving behind the life in which my son was alive.

Last spring, Axl had started referring to the truck as "our truck."  He would constantly ask, "Where did you park our truck?"  Or, "let's go get in our truck."  And if I ever referred to it as "my car", he would correct me- "you mean, you and me's car?"  

After we buried Axl and it was time for me to go back to work, my car (our car) instinctively started driving up I-75 and it wasn't until I was merging onto I-74 that I realized I was going the wrong way.

The night when I traded the truck in and went home with a different vehicle, I felt emotional because I was leaving that part of my life behind. I was starting a new life with a different vehicle that would never transport my beautiful Axl and would never take my kids on a road trip and it was hard. But now I know that the Tundra will always be "our truck" for Axl and me.