It took me to the moon and beyond!

Today I said goodbye to a good friend.  Just to be up front, no one died so this naturally doesn’t rise anywhere close to that level of sadness. But I did say goodbye to something that has been a part of my life for the last 21 years. My 2001 Honda Odyssey van has gone to the big car lot in the sky. I sadly confess that it took me more than two years to finally scrap the old vehicle, but today was the day, and it was just as hard as I thought it would be.

It was towed from the curb outside my house and left in a sad scrap metal facility populated by similarly old cars and other objects that had outlived their usefulness. I’ll remember this moment as much as I remember the moment we signed the papers to take ownership of a pristine new vehicle that would serve our family of four. That family would grow to five and then to six, and oh the memories we made.

Road trips to South Padre Island. Football games and band trips. Tennis matches all across north Texas. School drop offs and pickups. Dropping off kids at camp and college. Holidays to family homes. Some of my happiest moments in life were driving that van glancing to my right to check on my wife and checking the rear-view mirror to see what the four kids were up to. In many respects, our family grew up in that van and all those happy memories came racing back to my heart and mind faster than that van ever went.

In all, the van travelled nearly a quarter of a million miles, approximately the distance to the moon. But in reality it took me to the stars where dreams of love and family come true.