June 4, 2010 in Emotional Healing by empoweringwellness

Epitaph for Mimosa – By My Friend Marlene Druhan-Donato

Have you ever had a car you loved? If you are like me, it is always a bittersweet day when you have to let your beloved “friend” go. There may be a new car in your garage to take its place, but memories of the good times you spent with your old car linger. I know that it is just a “thing,” but we do tend to personalize our cars. We give them names, we talk to them, coax them to life, and ask them to protect us as we drive home on a stormy night.

I have never read a better epitaph for a car (or even a better epitaph) than the this one written written by my dear friend Marlene Druhan-Donato. And so, I share this with you today in the hopes that it will bring back memories of your favorite old car.

Epitaph for Mimosa – by Marlene Druhan-Donato

She was the color of pink champagne and mimosa blossoms, so the name stuck. With her faded interior, broken door handles, and temperamental gas gauge, it was a frilly name for a tough broad of a car. Her previous owner had obviously tried to stuff God-knows-what into her back seat, so her ripped ceiling looked like a leopard got trapped in there over night. But I didn’t care. She put up with my flaws, too, and carried me through the toughest four years of my life. She cost me more to fix her through the years than it cost to buy her, but I figured that most great loves are high-maintenance.

Today she gets shipped off to charity, probably only for her few remaining good parts. She’s a hunk of outdated metal, but she has more on me than any human possibly could. She’s the only one who knows about those chocolate cookie binges and pints of ice cream with nothing but peanut butter and a broken heart to my name. She’s the only one who knows about my lost weekends with a lover parked in a vacant school lot and the time I made a left-hand turn at a red light after midnight. She’s the only one who remembers that I had moved 5 times in two years and how long it took me to find home again. She’s the only one who has heard me sing off-key to Def Leopard blasting “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or Andre Boccelli’s Ave Maria. Together, we chased ravens picnicking on my leftover lunch on the driver’s seat, prayed to get home on snowy nights, and shouted with glee when we made it to our friend Tamie’s dirt road in Virginia . We both ignored people who called her a starving artist’s car or hinted that she needed a bath. We were proud to be together, and even prouder that we both survived the highway outta Hell.

Lady Mimosa: 1998-2010, on to the Great Car Lot in the Sky where she will meet up with her friends Hildy and Dirty Gurdy and all other cars that go to Heaven.