Randy's Truck

Randy's brother and nephew flew in to Chattanooga on Thursday to pick up Randy's pickup truck, trailer and ATV to take back home with them. I drove the truck to the airport to get them, just to drive it one last time. As I did, a rush of memories came at me. The first time I went to Minot he picked me up in the truck. I remember he remote started it because it was December (who visits North Dakota in the middle of December? That would be me.) and turned on the seat heaters for me. When he had his hernia surgery, I took him to and from the hospital in the truck, and that's the first time he said "Darlin' you look good drivin my truck" (and yes, that was before surgery, so no pain killers were involved).  I would watch him leave on Sundays to drive down to Bismarck for session when we were in Minot, and look for it to come back on Friday afternoons. Those sorts of things.

We got back to the house and the trailer was hooked up to the truck. I can't remember the last time Randy started the ATV, probably late spring before the cancer returned, so I wasn't expecting it to start. It surprised us all and started, and was loaded up in the trailer. The memories hit me when the trailer doors closed. I had never driven an ATV until Randy taught me to drive his - and it was so much fun. At first he drove and I held on, riding behind him, and then when he thought I had the hang of it, we switched. We would ride it on the dirt roads in North Dakota, take it camping with us so we could ride around and then when we moved it to Tennessee, we rode it around here. 

People say that the truck and ATV are just things. That's true, but they are Randy's things. I didn't think that seeing them drive away would hit me like it did - it's like a gut punch. I ugly cried once they pulled out of the driveway. I cried again when I got up Friday morning and his truck wasn't there, and it never will be again.

Everything here has a memory attached to it. They are not "things" or "possessions" to me. They are pieces of Randy that are left behind.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

365 Days

Image
How has it been a year already? Actually it will 1 year at exactly 6:56 pm eastern today. At times the days have gone by very slowly, almost as if time stood still, and there are days that have sped by - and here we are at August 13. Some days I swear I can smell your lotion or hear your footsteps, but it's all in my memories now.  I've learned a lot about myself and others in the past year. Here are a few highlights:  Everyone grieves in their own way, and there is no time table on grief. You think you're doing great and then you're in Aldi seeing the 5-hour energy dupes that you used to buy in bulk and you're sobbing. Have a very detailed will. You don't think that people will give a $hit about that ashtray you made in 3rd grade? Yeah, after you're gone, someone will. Put. Everything. In. The. Will. (Trust me on this one folks). I am a hell of a lot stronger than I thought. Randy asked me to take care of him until the end and beyond, and I did. I went to h...
Read more

Grief is Weird

Image
I'm a glass half full kind of person...to the point that it never enters my mind that someone will actually die. I always have hope. I did that with my Dad. He's been gone 11 years - I still haven't deleted his cell phone number from my contacts - in fact it's still in my favorites list. One year ago today Randy and I left Mayo in Rochester, MN to drive home to Tennessee. He had just finished 5 weeks of radiation and chemo for esophageal cancer. At his last radiation treatment he told me he was not going to ring the bell - in his mind he wasn't finished. The nurse even came out and asked me if he was sure and I said yes, he was sure. When he got through surgery and to the 1 year mark, he would go back and ring the bell. We left full of hope - after all, the doctors told him that after treatment and his upcoming surgery he would have 40 years to live. We left Rochester at zero dark thirty, planning to be home before the Tennessee-Florida game that evening. Of course ...
Read more

Randy is the Greatest

Image
When Randy and I first met, I was living in Atlanta and he was in Minot, ND, but we met at his home in TN. We would text, talk on the phone and FaceTime when we were 1600 miles apart. The first time that we FaceTimed, he had a sign behind him that said "Randy is the Greatest!" It was placed so that he wasn't blocking the sign at all - perfect placement. The sign never came down and was still there when I moved into the house in Minot. I haven't come across it yet, but I'm fairly certain it's packed with our things from ND. Randy and I talked and texted a lot, even when we were in the same place. Probably a very good thing that texting became unlimited (remember when we had a limit and had to pay for the extras?) Then one day the person that you texted all the time isn't there anymore.  You pick up your phone to text or call and then realize that he's not going to respond or pick up, and as time goes by, you have to scroll further and further down in te...
Read more