This is the kind of day, as a parent, you don’t look forward to. But, as with any less than pleasant parental duty, you expect it and handle it as best you can. While it’s not the same as loosing a relative or friend, it’s still never easy, especially for a child, to say, Goodbye, to a beloved “family member”.

This week, we had to say farewell to our 1997 Mercury Sable Station Wagon. Just a couple of days old, our youngest daughter came home from the hospital in that car. I thought our middle child had as well. But, I was reminded that, in fact, the wagon had died and needed to be towed, just after the mad rush to get my labouring wife to the hospital. At least it got us there and that’s what counts.

In that vehicle over the past ten years, (we bought it used), there were many family trips, meals, arguments, sicknesses, movies, games, songs, sleeps, and strange smells to be enjoyed and remembered fondly.

It’s true that many families wouldn’t hesitate to sink another $1,500 a month into keeping an old dog alive for a little longer. The time had come, however, for the sake of safety and for the sake of saving, to surrender this trusted, loyal, and adored companion to the highest for-sale-by-owner bidder on Craigslist.

Having not received a single online offer, and only pennies from the dealership on a trade-in, we decided to do what we should have done in the first place. In a modest, age-appropriate ceremony, devised for the benefit of our kids' lasting memory of this special part of our lives, in our backyard beside our garden, we buried that ’97 station wagon.

P.S. we actually donated the car to a city high school for the edification of the student body.

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See Adam live on stage Friday at The Markham Theatre