To Ruby

The end I didn't want

We are gathered here today, in this space and time, to remember and say goodbye to Ruby. She was the second car I’d driven in my life, my bright red Golf. While many may think it’s silly to say goodbye to a car, a machine with a key, Ruby was more than just a car to go from point A to point B. Ruby was a connector, a travel companion, a protector, a friend. Ruby was a part of me.

When we first met, the teenage and college years were behind me now, as was my first car that I had lovingly (and with a foolishness only for the youth) driven into the ground. Ruby was the car I bought myself, marching into a car dealership solo, with a handful of knowledge and a determination to walk out with a new, bigger car that could handle being an adult.

Ruby has been there throughout so much of my Adult life. Figuring out my career, my life, what was really important to me. Keeping me connected to friends and family, helping me just do the normal everyday with an ease and freedom that I didn’t take for granted. She was so much more than a car. She was my friend.

While her mileage meter was well below what it should’ve been for an almost twelve year old car, we experienced so much of California together. Lots of true LA traffic, where going 8 miles takes an hour and a half before finding parking, several road trips up and down the coast, to the desert, and to the forest. We attended book release parties and surprise 40th birthday dinners in San Diego, my 30th birthday celebration in Julian, our dear friends’ wedding in the Valley, as well as so many concerts and trips to state parks.

Ruby had been with me for all but one Los Angeles move (a true feat if you’ve lived in Los Angeles), her hatchback accommodating bookshelves, boxes, desks, bikes and so many more things that would always leave people impressed by just how much she could fit. She did three true LA moves, schlepping boxes within a 2 mile radius, and then did one last non-LA move, from the west side to the east side.

She carried us for miles as we visited our friends over the hill during the pandemic, spending our time across their backyard at a distance, still celebrating birthdays, happy announcements and even our own vow exchange in that very backyard. After two reschedules and a pandemic, she brought us to our wedding and our mini-moon up the coast.

Most important of all, she kept us safe and took us to every doctor’s appointment while I was pregnant (and nauseous for half of it), and brought our baby home from the hospital after they were born and after major surgery months later.

As we’ve both aged, I’ve known that our time was going to come to an end, but this ending wasn’t the one I had hoped for. Her end came on the last day of January, when she protected me and my baby from an oncoming car. Two airbags deployed, a flat tire and smashed front was not what I had hoped for in her ending. Watching her being driven away in a bright green flatbed, I was heartbroken to see her that way, the memory of taking a picture of her in a parking lot near my apartment after I had just driven her home for the first time and how perfect, shiny and new she was flashing across my mind.

The ending I had hoped for her was much more gentle. A heartfelt goodbye at a car dealership, where she, fully intact, would have another life for another few more years. Where my goodbye would’ve included a family picture with me, my baby who wouldn’t be a baby, and my husband that we could look back on and say, “Do you remember Ruby? She took you home from the hospital when you were just a baby.”

Instead, we said our final goodbye in the back of a tow yard, crammed in with other cars that had seen way better days too. Under a hawkish tow yard employee’s eye, I quickly cleaned her out, stuffing receipts from those state parks and printed digital concert tickets and my husband’s hospital badge from my baby’s surgery into a tote bag. I deftly unloaded all of the toddler gear: the car seat, car mirror and seat protector, stroller, finding a cheerio or two in the seat still, and packed it into the stroller.

When all was packed and done, I rested my hand on her one last time, and whispered, “Good bye, I love you, I’m sorry.” I wanted more time, more adventures, more sing-a-longs (to Paramore and Sesame Street), more memories, more “We drive in Ruby today?”

Our ending wasn’t what I wanted, but the journey has been filled with so much life. Big, small, rich, loud, hard, delightful, wonderful, scary, memorable life. I am forever grateful for our almost twelve years together. For the places we traveled, for the memories created on the way and for the memories created when we reached our destination. For being held through so many iterations of myself, from the plucky twenty-something with a lot to prove all the way to the still becoming, way too resilient momma.

Thank you.

I miss you.

I love you.

I will never forget you, my Ruby. My friend.

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