An Ode to Our Grand Dame

We finally decided to let her go.

13 years. ken and i have been together for ten, and when i first met him she was already in his life.
back then she was just fresh out of adolescence, still shiny and new.

no one knew us as well as she did. our entire love story literally unfolded within the space that was her, and she was part unwilling witness to all of our petty lovers' squabbles, teary confessions and romantic expressions of love.
she helped mark every milestone of our time together - from friends to lovers, lovers to husband and wife, wife to expectant mother.

i always thought i would have the chance to introduce JJ to her, to let her have the glory of carrying the fruit that came from all those years of silent observation.

it wasn't always smooth sailing though. we've taken turns at hurting her; she suffered her worst injuries ever under my hand when i dragged the entire left side of her body across a concrete wall when i was still inexperienced.

mounting injuries and years of relentless wind and rain slowly robbed her of her beauty. she became battered, chipped, dented and rusted.
her back window didn't work and we always had to pull up the glass by hand.
the speedometer and gauges stopped working and the air conditioning gave up.
rust created holes in her carriage, and rain found its way into the interior.
the melodies stopped floating out from her radio and speakers.

but she never once complained. she never begged to be fixed and she bore all of her scars like a proud horse out of battle.
and when life handed her lemons, she made them into the best lemonade. like the time when she was made an innocent victim of a collision while she was waiting for us to finish our shopping at a downtown mall. (we ended up making an unexpected windfall from the insurance claim.)

it was a sunny day when they came to pick her up for good. we took pictures, talked about the glory days and cleaned the past out of her.
we told the man who came for her to be gentle when the time came to lower the axe.

and we stared and stared until the truck that carried her away from us went out of sight.

she was my first car and i loved her so.

farewell my dame, you've had a good run.