Hospice, For The Car

So after a lot of angst I have made the decision to put my 225,000 mile car into hospice. I'm told that's like 92 years if the car was a person. It was a good run, until this last time it stopped running - and wouldn't start. Bob Fitzgerald has been the car's primary caretaker for its 27 years, my mechanical doctor, but after the car spiked a fever and started leaking fluids uncontrollably last week, he said "it's time," which like an ER doc trying to save a life, was hard for Bob. He'd always find a way to get it moving. "Oh brother," he'd say, "I knew you when you were young, now look atchya." He was talking about the engine of course. I think. He knew the car better than I did and he cared for it like my bride and I have for our own kids, with love and lots of swearing...The thing about electing hospice is it feels like I'm giving up, but 5 trips to Bob the last 3 months like someone with Parkinson's falling down in a cycle of trips to the hospital is no way to live. There's only so much Bob can do now. He's no David Ortiz 9th inning at Fenway Park miracle worker. The systems are breaking down, the car dehydrated like a lady who's had one too many falls after the dementia stops her eating. A lot of us put off things like palliative and hospice because I suspect we're afraid of losing what we know, a piece of us - of dying - the unknown. It was almost my own mortality I was watching as Bob tried to start it one last time. That car is attached to so much of my life. The imprint of the dog still lines the front seat. It held my cuppa coffee most mornings this summer driving the kid to work...it drives like I move: slow, clumsy, sometimes tripping. I was driving it on the way home after I covered Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Swampscott Mass April 6th 2000, and after asking Jack Nicklaus in July that same year if he flubbed that chipshot on 16 at the Senior Open (which he did but didn’t admit to) interview notes from my stenopad strewn on the dashboard, the engine racing just like my heart....I'll be lost without the car and wonder if it could have been different, could I have eased its painful end earlier? 78% of 22,050 adults we polled say they don't want to do hospice, like ever, though that's less than the 89% who said that a decade ago when I asked. And nearly 90% don't understand even what palliative care is, much less it’s purpose. I'm not sure our healthcare system has really understood it either, at least not until recently. I know I didn't know - I wish I had gotten my car palliative care - let Bob keep trying his miracle work, but as soon as he said the engine had more carbon buildup than an old heart with a pound of plaque, I should have started symptom relief. Maybe I'd have more time with it. Maybe the car wouldn't shake and hiss like a train is coming through it. Our cars do act a lot like us when you think about it, they spin and spiral, they act up, struggle to get going in the morning and light up when they see you at night. Sort of like my kids. This is probably why I'll keep the old cab in the driveway at least for a little bit as it winds down. I may just do my own version of hospice though - turn on its lights and turn the key, let it putter and buck down the road one last time, windows down, wipers on, and the radio dial turned to FM 104.7, because well that's the only station it still plays.