Goodbye to the Monster Jeep

In the fall of 2010, on October 5, we bought this Jeep.  We bought it because we were due with Baby T in February, and we didn't want to risk being up on the mountain, and me going into labor, with only a Chevy Aveo to get us to the hospital in a snowstorm.

I would lose Baby T exactly a week later.  I was already feeling sick and fighting off the infection that would eventually send me into early labor.  We got the Jeep from a guy up above Palmdale, out in the desert.  We drove up together, and I spent the hour or so while Jonathan checked it out talking to the kids of the guy who owned it.  My belly was already showing, and they asked me questions about being pregnant.

We drove home, and stopped at Charlie Brown Farms on the 138, a farm stand tourist attraction on the east side of Palmdale, halfway to Hesperia.  Jonathan got dinner - they have a giant menu with everything you could ever want, and more.  I wasn't feeling great - was tired from the long day, and also cold and shivery - and I just got a hot cocoa.

The next day, we went out to check out the Jeep, and we both climbed into the cavernous back, where we talked about how much fun it would be to go camping with our kid the following year.  A week later I was in the hospital in shock, having delivered Baby T the night before.   And as of this evening, the Jeep belongs to a nice couple from Yucaipa who are going to use it as the wife's primary car.  I hope they're prepared to spend a lot on gas.  It gets like 7mpg.  But it will go over a snow berm 3 feet high.  It did that five months after we had bought it, in March 2011, when I miscarried the Mustard Seed Baby during a snowstorm, and had to go to the hospital.  They'd plowed the road, but the berm was high, so Jonathan drove over it while I stood on the street and waited, not wanting to get jostled around.

I got an email the other week from a girl who had lost her baby in May, and found my blog.  She wanted to thank me for writing about Baby T, and tell me how it gave her comfort.  I wrote back to her and told her what she could expect from the future.  Four years later, after years of infertility, it still hurts, but you just get used to it.  It hurts every day, and not just because I miss my boy, who would be almost 4 now, but because the last time I was truly and innocently happy was that day when we sat in the backseat of the Jeep and planned our future camping trips.

Now, I'm cautiously happy.  Always on guard for the next surprise.  Because the worst part of the Baby T loss was just how sudden it was, and how much of a surprise it was.  Looking back on it, we felt so stupid for thinking that later losses couldn't happen to us.  We felt so naive and silly for just skipping along being happy when the greatest heartache of our lives was waiting for us, just around the bend.  Now I take a cocktail of anti-anxiety drugs for when things get really bad, and I get so afraid that something awful is going to happen to Hannah that I can't concentrate on anything and need to lay down and take deep breaths and bury my head under a pillow, hiding from the world (yep, my meds are professionally monitored - don't worry, I'm not self-medicating).  I miss that person I was on October 6th 2010, sitting in the back of the Jeep reading a book while Jonathan washed the windows outside.

I'm glad to be rid of the Jeep because of the memories I have associated with it.  After the loss, Jonathan drove it as his main car for a while, and neither one of us wanted to be without the other for very long, so I went along to his AA meetings, and waited in the truck reading a book.  It meant that there was an extra half hour of driving time that I wouldn't have to be alone.  I spent many hours in the Jeep that fall outside the Presbyterian church, wrapped in a blanket so I wouldn't have to run it for heat, reading ebooks on my phone, waiting for Jonathan, and being heartbroken.

So farewell Jeep.  I kind of hate you, and I kind of love you at the same time.  But either way, I'm glad to be rid of you.  Time to clear out the old.  Lots of clearing of the old going on lately.  It's emotional, but necessary.  We're getting ready for the new, and it's exciting.