The clock always ran slow. 

Every few months I would have to add a few minutes to make up for it. That’s the one main complaint I had against the 2007 Pontiac Vibe that came into my life almost five years ago. Before that it, the Vibe was my mom’s car. The last memory I have of her in that car was her in the passenger seat, stoic, quiet, while my aunt Jean drove to Island Hospital in Anacortes for what would be her terminal diagnosis of an unbelievably aggressive abdominal cancer. While that drive is seared in my brain, it’s not the memory I like to remember with her in the car. That went back a few years before that, when she first bought the Vibe as a replacement for her Saturn. And what a replacement it was! Make no mistake, my mom loved her Saturn, but by the end a couple of the motor mounts had given up and the car shook like a P-51 Mustang even at idle. A litany of other problems finally forced her to the dealership with Jill and Lenny and she got a great deal on the Vibe. I wasn’t there, but I suspect the color – lively and bright “Wave Blue Effect” – as much as anything sealed the deal. It shined even in the dark of the garage when she and I got into it. I don’t remember where we went – out to dinner, I suspect – but I remember her smile as she backed out of the driveway, shifted into drive and started down the road.

Before she died, she indicated she wanted her beloved Vibe to go to the one in the family with the oldest car. At the time my 2002 Corolla was soldiering on with almost 300,000 miles on the odometer, so the 2007 Vibe came as an upgrade. 

And, though the Vibe came into my life under sad circumstances, it shepherded me through tumultuous times. While it served as a physical reminder of someone vital to me who was gone, the Vibe arrived just as I started my divorce proceedings and helped in my move from the home I’d lived longer than any point in my life – 12 years along the Russian River. It served as a make-shift lumber rack more than once, but most memorably carrying the lumber I used for the bed I still sleep in – it’s astonishing how that beast would swallow 8-foot sections of wood and still allow me to close the back window. It never got as cold for the Vibe as it was when my mom drove it in Washington, but on more than a couple bartending gigs that topped 110 degrees the Vibe never faltered. 

I did my best to honor my mom in the car. I always had a pack of Altoids in the glove box. I made sure Jimmy Buffett’s Greatest Hits CD was always in the center console, never far from the radio. Jean told me of the adventures she and my mom had in the vibe, driving the scenic route up to Washington when my mom moved north. I wanted to honor her by adventuring in the Vibe, and that started the first Mother’s Day after she died when I took Highway 1 down the coast to Pescadero where the Vibe and I stopped in at Duarte’s tavern for a slice of pie that my mom loved. Sojourns to visit friends in San Luis Obispo, running out to Reno for the balloon races and a summer drive around Lake Tahoe, camping in Big Basin, midnight drives up Coleman Valley road to watch a meteor shower, an evening picnic on top of a parking garage in Berkeley watching  the sun set over the bay, and countless trips to wineries and vineyards, the Vibe never failed to be a boon companion and I always knew I had an unseen copilot. For the first few years I had the Vibe, if the sun warmed the steering wheel just right it would release the scent of the hand lotion my mom always used for her perpetually paper-dry hands. I’d often put my iPhone on shuffle and more than a few times the sequence of songs seemed to be far less than random. 

There was some deferred maintenance to attend to, but with the busy summer I was able to start to catch up on the needs of the car as it worked its way beyond 200,000 miles. 

And then on Christmas eve, heading out of Guerneville like I have a million times, the rain dislodged part of the hillside adjacent to River Road, and a trail of debris fell into the road, championed by a rock the size of small filing cabinet. 

I swerved. 

It wasn’t enough. 

The rock slammed into the front of the car, exploding against the driver’s side wheel and severing the control arms to that side. The car bounced up with the impact before slamming down to the pavement. Metal against asphalt shrieked as I used to right wheel to help steer-skid to the too-narrow shoulder. 

The clock read 5:42. It was 5:45. 

My insurance company has written the car off, explaining in clear, cold arithmetic how the necessary repairs exceed the resale value of the car, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

I collected everything from inside the car including the Altoids and the Jimmy Buffett CD. I let the tears run unabated as I tried to pack up so many minutes, so many miles into the plastic bags I brought for the task. They’ll go in whatever I get next, certainly, but… it won’t be the same.

And maybe I have a better appreciation now for that slow-running digital clock. I want to go back to that first drive with my mom and slow it down – make the minutes longer, add moments, bend time so that my mom were still here, so that I could still see her smile, so that her car – her last car – would still be intact. Take the time when those amber digits lingered just a few fractions of a second longer each minute and add them together and live there where they were both still with me…

But I can’t. She’s gone. Yesterday I signed the form consigning the 2007 Pontiac Vibe to an ignominious end I’m not even going to justify to write. It’s gone.

And another piece – one of the last, tangible, physical reminders – I have of my mom is gone, too.

Postscript. 
I went through my phone looking for pictures for this post and found surprisingly few. However, so many more pictures of adventures and trips and gigs I looked at the pictures and immediate thought, “I remember the drive there!” Even the pictures without the Vibe in it came about because of the car. Do me a favor if you would: if your car means more to you than just a car – and there’s nothing wrong with that, don’t get me wrong! But I know some of you have cars that mean as much to you as the Vibe did to me. Go out and take a picture of your car (or truck!). Just do it. And then hug your vehicle. Or, if you’re worried what the neighbors will thing, just pat it and say thanks.