It’s official. There’s no Drama Queen who has ever Drama Queened more than me.
Bitchin’ to my long-suffering fiancé for months has finally paid off. I’ve been asking him to please get my dad’s 2002 Ford truck title transferred from my name to his, and he’s finally done it. Absolutely nothing has changed, save for a name on a piece of paper. If I press my face against my writing room window, I can still watch Daddy’s truck pull in every night, with its old headlights shining through the cracks in our wobbly fence.
The truck’s chipped and faded black color is the same paint job it came with over 20 years ago. Dad added the newer fixings, jumbo all-terrain tires and an Iron Cross bumper, a few years before his death, after he bought a plot of land in Alabama. Dad planned to convert it into a shooting range once he retired. He filmed several videos from inside his truck, panning around his newly purchased land for over ten minutes, talking about all his ideas. He didn’t keep any of the promises he made to himself that day. Recently, we sold that deserted land, and while I have never stepped one pinky toe on it, I couldn’t help but to feel its loss.
Dad’s truck still needs a lot of work, but I can’t bear the thought of Brody changing anything about it, so he hasn’t, for my sake. He fixes any mechanical issues that might prevent it from running, of course, but cosmetic repairs like scratch marks are currently off limits. That “rule” extends to the two tiny T.V. screens that Dad had custom-built1 into the headrests for me and my little sister to watch movies and play video games on road trips, neither of which have worked in over a decade. (The screens themselves are missing.) Instead of being annoyed by his inability to customize his work truck, Brody mentions things like trying to make the TVs work for me once again. He’s loveable that way.
Everything about the truck is unchanged, except for that paper with Brody’s name on it. Yet it feels like I am suddenly missing a limb. Is this how my sister felt when I begged her for Dad’s computer with nothing meaningful of his to offer her in return, beyond a silly hat he hardly ever wore? There was so little to divide amongst us, and the information within it was crucial for my book. Still, did that entitle me to take one of her only visual reminders of Dad, even if it was just a plain MacBook? Except for occasionally using it to research his past doings, it remains untouched, a sterile preservation of a sad ending to a man’s life. My sister would’ve used it on the daily. I assuaged my guilt by helping her buy a replacement, but what if she had attached the same meaning to his computer that Dad’s truck holds for me?
First, my sister has to give up Dad’s computer, then we both sell his vacant land that serves no purpose to us, and now I have given my dad’s truck to another man. I know Dad is gone now, and he has no use for these material things, but it still feels like I’m giving him away, piece by piece.
- I remember how excited Dad was to show us these TVs. He was proud of owning the latest technology, so I researched the history of televisions in cars and discovered this fascinating article. Its author states, “It was not until 1998, with the Oldsmobile Silhouette Premiere mini-van that televisions make a comeback.” (Earlier in the post, he mentions Ford released “Autovision” to a limited market for testing in 1965, which was the first car-optimized television set in the world.) ↩︎
Sources:
Hyden, Stephen. “History Hits: First In-Car Video Entertainment.” The Speed Trap, 23 Oct. 2017, thespeedtrap.net/2017/10/23/history-hits-first-in-car-video-entertainment.
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Kinsey – I adore your writing. Thank you for sharing these thoughts on your dad. It is heartfelt and moving and beautifully written.
Ms. Darlene, thank you for your persitence in leaving such thoughtful comments on my posts. For some reason, this was marked as spam, so I didn’t notice it until the bot decided to brag to me today about how much work it was doing blocking all my “spam” – <3
Thank you, Kinsey – for your beautiful writing about your dad. It is meaningful and heartfelt – and I appreciate it so much. As someone who has a close family member, who struggles with alcoholism, I am grateful to read this memoir.
🖤 I likewise appreciate your words of encouragement. I wish there was something I could write that would take away your loved one’s struggles, but it comforts me to know it gives you some measure of peace while reading my words.