I took Buzz — my beloved, geriatric, palliative with a DNR, nearly-17-year-old Suzuki SX4 — for a drive today.
Buzz and I became best pals in July of 2013, when I bought him using my insurance settlement after I was struck by a car while crossing a street. He still runs, and is road-safe, but his exhaust system is hanging by a thread and it’s just a matter of time. One bump will spell the end of the line for us.
It’s hard to put into words how much this little (faded) red car means to me. In a purely practical sense, he’s my independence: a mobility aid, freedom to live when my body lets me, and freedom to go when and where I want, if I just need some salt air or to visit the crows at my favourite cemetery.
With Buzz, I don’t have to try to walk down my uneven, slippery driveway with my current balance issues in order to get to the bus stop four houses away, or to be picked up by a kind friend. I don’t have to try and make my (dys)abilities match up with Doug’s schedule, which is not only difficult, but stressful, and literally makes my chronic illnesses worse.
Buzz is my happy place, and he is the one place I have where I can control the space immediately around me, and how much stimuli my brain is taking in. His interior is consistent. Only I change it. The noise level is what I choose, based on how much I can take.
It’s impossible for a writer like me to not see the similarities between Buzz’s decline and my own. His passenger air bag sensor is on permanently, and he has lost his all-wheel drive ability now that the rear drive shaft has gone. His undercarriage was described by a mechanic in Massachusetts as “the rustiest car I’ve ever seen”, and his frame is rotting. God knows I’m crumbling too.
But we have made so many beautiful memories together, and nearly every important person in my life has met him.
Usually, a car is just a car.
But once in a lifetime, it’s Buzz.
