Total loss

A car is just a car until it isn't

I wanted to spend the morning writing. I had a day off with no plans till afternoon, and I’m kind of in a show hole when it comes to streaming. I’m feeling good about the amount of reading I’m doing. Writing has taken a back seat this fall, and the words are piling up in my brain. I need to get them out.

But it didn’t work out that way. Things are seldom working out as I have planned these days. Maybe that’s a sign that I should plan less or let go, but maybe it’s also just the way of things right now.

Instead of writing, I drove across town to the body shop where our car was parked. The day before it had been deemed a total loss from the accident two weeks prior, and we had to remove the license plate and clean out anything of ours that was left.

It was the first time I’d seen the car in person since the accident, and it was far more devastating than the pictures portrayed. I gasped when I saw it, then tried to convince myself that what I was seeing wasn’t our vehicle.

But it was.

I squatted behind the car and turned the screwdriver to release the screws holding the license plate. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. I know a car is just a thing, but she became part of our family. We chose her for the post-mini-van season of life, and she served us well. We weren’t done with her yet. She had more years left. Her loss was premature and unexpected.

Maybe that’s why I feel so sad.

I turned in the keys, signed the release, and got back in our other vehicle. I burst into tears as I drove away and wailed at the universe about the unfairness of it all.

Someone else’s mistake has upended our life, and this is the risk of being alive with other humans. But I don’t have to like it.

I am sad, and I am angry.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Anger is not an emotion I’m comfortable with nor one I can always express. But it’s the only one that fits this situation right now, and I want to feel the anger.

Usually, I am the type of person who can reframe a situation and find the good. Or have hope that things will turn out well. While the finality of the loss is still fresh, hope is the last thing I want. I’ll get there. But for now, I just to need to be present with my feelings of anger and sadness.

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I wonder how many times in my life I have said the phrase “It’s not a total loss.” Such a casual dismissal of whatever minor hardship I was facing. I could not have imagined what a total loss would feel like.

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Not all losses are the same. My friends who ran for school board this year lost, but the journey feels like a win. They stepped up and stepped out, and they earned more votes than Democratic school board candidates in our district have in recent memory. This loss feels like just a stepping stone. Less of a “loss” and more of a “not yet.”

Photo by Tassilo Gröper on Unsplash

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I’m not there yet with the car situation. We’ll be shopping sooner than we wanted to. The insurance money likely won’t fully cover a replacement vehicle. I already carry burdensome fears about our finances and how we’re going to pay our bills as costs of everything rise.

Maybe I will come to accept what has happened, or maybe I will carry the anger for a while. I cannot yet say.

All I know is that the car being a total loss has placed me on the verge of totally losing hope that things will get better.

Even as I write that, I know that total loss is not the end of anything. As one of my favorite songs says, “Before you can rise from the ashes, you’ve gotta burn, baby, burn.”

Photo by Edward Kucherenko on Unsplash

That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt in the meantime.