You’ve heard the horror stories. A loved one passes, leaving behind a snarled mess of unknown wishes. Families arguing and brawling over what is left, all while trying to grieve. So many times you hear a particular item getting sold off, held for ransom, or simply disposed of, without a thought to the devastation it would cause the one intended to have it.
It happened to me….
While still in high school, my Dad (a motor-head in every sense) got his hands on a 1953 F-100. Through some wheeling, dealing, and trading he brought home this “Fine Machine”, his nickname for a pile of dirty and greasy steel. It had no engine. Not to worry, he had been rebuilding a very large motor to plop under the hood. My Dad tried to teach me everything he knew about cars, had me in the garage as often as he could, telling me what does what, and just being a dad. I attempted to retain it, as much as I could, but we’re talking teenage girl brain, even so, he tried. He told me once, I was about 17, that he wanted to drive me to graduation in the Fine Machine once he finished the restoration. I figured he had better get a move on, I would graduate in a year. Boy, what a year it was.
Allow me to elaborate…
My former stepmother is a monster, stepmonster. I bet you have one, or know of one too. They really do exist. During high school she rifled through my belongings every day trying desperately to find evidence of any misdeed (I had a few, I was a teen!). She beat me around, said hateful things, had my father arrested for threatening to shoot himself to be free of her, and she threw me out. I watched from my best friend’s car as my stepmonster hauled my belongings out the front door in the middle of the night. I’ll never forget her enormous rear-end, each hefty cheek bobbing up and down in the moonlight as she thundered down the porch steps to my car. It was two in the morning and my friend had just driven over, unable to sleep. It was the anniversary of her own mother’s passing, just two years before, and she was a wreck. My stepmonster had to have seen us, we weren’t even trying to be sneaky or hide. You get the idea, my stepmonster was crazy.
I slept in my car that night, in our driveway. I had nowhere to go. My father found me, tapped the window, and before he could ask what the heck I was doing out there at six in the morning (in below freezing weather), he saw the black garbage bags stuffed all around me. His eyes welled up, and I said “it’s okay Dad, I’ll just go”.
So I went. I only saw my Dad twice more before graduation. I stopped by on prom night, he was in the garage working on his Fine Machine…she stayed in the house. I came by again the night I graduated, I was wondering if he would come. He was in the garage again…she was in the house. His eyes misty as he looked at me about to start my own life, then looked toward the house, and I said “it’s okay Dad, I’ll just go”.
So I left. I left so thoroughly, I ended up in another country. I got married and soon after my husband and I traveled back home to visit. I pushed all the hatred and hurt down as far as I could and made peace with my stepmonster. I wanted to see my Dad, but I had to get through her first. I played her game, did as she asked, feigning congeniality to the best of my ability. It was a good visit, everyone got along, and my Dad really liked my husband.
A couple of years later, when I became pregnant, I immediately called my Dad. I was just twenty-two, but my husband had a great career, and we had planned our daughter. I expected my Dad’s joy to overflow through the phone, but he only replied “that’s good”, as if I had told him the weather. I didn’t understand, it seemed like he didn’t care…my heart broke. Then happenstance ended me back home at seven months pregnant, and I understood why he seemed so indifferent. He was dying. The Fine Machine, barely touched in four years, sat under an ugly plastic tarp in the driveway.
When our daughter was just over a year old, we moved back, to another state. We tried to go see my Dad, but didn’t make it. We were halfway there when we lost him.
When we arrived, my stepmonster had already sent him for cremation. She asked if I wanted anything. I said “his pickup”, and much to my surprise, she replied “take it”. She continued her ruse, up until the day we planned to leave, and then recanted, saying “I’d like to hang onto it for a while“. I wanted to scream, I wanted to choke her, I wanted that pickup! It was the only thing left that embodied his soul! She could not keep it! She hated that pickup and she hated me! I didn’t say a word. We couldn’t afford to trailer it further than my grandmother’s house anyway, and certainly not four states away.
Then…nothing…
My stepmonster returned no calls, never emailed, never wrote. Until one year later, almost to the day, she called and said “I got remarried, and sold your Dad’s pickup”. I nearly fainted. I had been spending the past year grieving, confused, and crying. At the time I didn’t understand loss, and had no idea how to handle it, so I just kept sobbing. When she dropped that on me, the best I could manage was “can you send his family photo albums?” (Albums put together by his mother, my grandmother, before she passed). She said she’d think about it.
Then the floor fell under me. I frantically spent the next year trying to find the pickup, while quickly losing my marbles. I called everyone, I tried free legal help, we couldn’t afford a lawyer! I rang the local registration office, then the state’s, I tried everything I could think of! The internet wasn’t as informative back then, very little was online. Google wasn’t yet an option, but I couldn’t stop! My husband even called my stepmonster once and asked who she sold the pickup to. She said she didn’t know, so he asked for the albums again. To which she replied “I’ll send them if and when I fucking feel like it!” My husband replied in kind and slammed the phone down.
We never heard from her again, and I had to see a shrink. I needed help digging myself out from under the miserable depression of losing my Dad…and for the sake of my daughter, my husband, and myself, I quit looking for the pickup.
Thirteen years passed. Then one day my husband and I sat daydreaming of winning the lottery (one of those times when the lottery got so high, everyone was daydreaming about winning). He asked, “What would you do with the money?” Of course the first answer that flew out, “Find my Dad’s pickup!” then I said, “you know what? It’s been years since I tried.” So, I went to my computer, and googled the identification number. The very first hit was a two-year old page with a copy of a “sold” eBay listing, complete with photos. It was the Fine Machine!
I immediately contacted the eBay user, explained who I was, and asked if he would sell. This very fine gentleman replied the very same day! He told me that he’d had it for a couple of years, and was just about to part it out to build a ’54 with his son! It was perfect timing, and the gentleman, so touched by my story, offered as much restoration as I could afford!
So, thirteen years after losing my Dad, we finally brought his Fine Machine home!
Meanwhile, my stepmonster lost the house, moved to a scummy shack out in the middle of nowhere, and spends her days doing drugs…..
But that’s just fine with me, I have the pickup.
