To Drive Or Not to Drive

If you are getting old and know it and thinking to move yourself to an independent living/assisted care home, you are faced with more questions than you faced when planning your fancy wedding.

For instance, to drive or not to drive. In other words, to take your car to the retirement home or not. This is one of a multitudes of issues that seems to be simple and purely practical but is not.

I assumed, at first, that my trusty Toyota would be with me wherever I went. I even said to my son and daughter-in-law, “When I move to Virginia (if I move to Virginia), we are going on a road trip, the three of us. We will pack my car and mosey eastward, stopping wherever we feel like it. I want to see the country one more time.”

That was before Covid-19 rearranged our lives.

I had been driving for seventy years. A traveling family needs more than one driver, at least. I was married to a man who got sleepy after lunch, wherever he was. He also got sleepy at dusk, blaming it on the changing light. So I drove while he slept. But he was the better driver and we both knew it. He understood the car and treated it kindly; he never permitted a distraction to take his mind off the road. He also had a GPS and a contour map of the world in his head. He knew six ways to anywhere.

For many years he had a badly damaged heart that kept going only with the help of a defibrillator. Still, he was the default driver, until one day we went out to the carport to go to the nearest small city, half an hour away, and he said, “Would you like to drive?” So I got behind the wheel. He lived two more years, but he never drove again.

Since then, of course, I have driven just because I needed to. In most of America, a car is more essential than a house. I went to church, the grocery, the post office, doctor’s offices. I went to the next big town to visit family. Once I drove alone all the way to my daughter’s house in the San Fernando Valley, exactly 410 miles from my door to hers. I went monthly to Sacramento to a club meeting, coming home at ten p.m.  The only thing I really hated about that was forgetting to turn the porch light on when I left in full daylight, then fumbling with my keys in the dark when I got home.

But. . . which of these things would I need to do, living in a retirement home? Church maybe. And probably even that would be available in the facility. Nothing else on my list, except that I would have a daughter fifteen minutes away, but surely she would come and get me for visits and bring me back. I would eat in the dining room, so why would I need the grocery? There would be a salon in the building, haircuts always available. The home would provide some transportation, too, for medical appointments and group shopping.

Also I needed to think of the cost of owning a car.  First I had to get it across the country. That cost might equal the market value of the vehicle. Then, since I was going to another state, there would be the hassle of new licensing and registration in addition to insurance and gas. There was the fact that my vehicle was as old in car years as I was in human years. Like me it looked a little damaged by experience but kept going and didn’t complain much. An oil change once in a while, new tires every few years, a trip to the car wash in spring made it happy.  The paint kept peeling off the rear bumper after that old guy in a pickup and I in my Avalon backed into one another in the parking lot at the bank. Neither of us thought it was worth reporting to our insurance company. I didn’t know then that once the paint was damaged it would keep peeling off.

After one goes to the retirement home, I realized, there are not many ways to be frugal. The basic cost of living will not vary month to month. There is no way to skimp by lowering the thermostat or eliminating ice cream from the menu. All the necessities and a few luxuries are built into the budget. But unless I really needed it, a car would be a luxury. Even worse, it could be a problem.

I was 90 years old. How much longer would the relevant DMV let me drive? I already had several friends with cars in the driveway and no license to drive. Some of them had been responsible for accidents. Others could no longer see or hear. I had read statistics and accepted the truth that the elderly are the worst drivers on the road. That bothered me, I admit.

And wasn’t this move about simplifying my life?

So I decided. No car!

And then I thought again.  I remembered how, in that first year after Wayne died, I would sometimes get in the car and drive. Just drive. Down one country road or another, not caring where I was. Looking at the world. Tangled, secretive forests. The green hills of spring. Old barns and horses looking over the fence. Flowering oleander by the road. An apple orchard white with promise, and vineyards marching in perfect columns over a slope. If I had needed to explain where I was going and why, I could not have said. But eventually I would get courage and go back to the empty house.

Considering the significance of this, I knew that there in Virginia where I was going, there would be vivid autumns and glorious springs brightening the streets and the Blue Ridge Parkway beckoning. I could get in the car and wander. If I had a car, I could “smell the breeze” as the Lebanese say, when they are out driving with no place to go.

But then there was Covid and it was winter threatening snow, and I needed to find my new place and go. In the end I flew alone and let my grandson drive the car and bring it to me.

For weeks it sat in the parking lot, visible from my bedroom window. I went down a couple of times and ran it for a few minutes, encouraging it not to die, and then one day when I really needed to go somewhere, it wouldn’t start. So, after some inconvenience to me and to the nice couple who put down their lunch sandwiches to help an old lady with a problem, I bought a new battery and took the car to the shop for a check-up. It turned out that the rear brake pads were shot, but the real surprise was that somebody at a company I won’t name here had put the rear tires on wrong. They were directional tires, mounted facing the wrong way.

Whoever knew that tires cared which way they were mounted on a car? I’m sure nobody ever mentioned this in my presence.

OK, I admit that getting the car legal and a new license for myself was a lot of hassle. Just getting an appointment at the DMV was suspenseful and time consuming. But in the process I also got the Real I.D., registered to vote, and learned a lot about how to get from here to the DMV (by making a couple of mistakes) and where the gas stations are.

Meanwhile Charlie, my neighbor on the hall, gave me lifts at crucial times and advice when needed. He is a retired lawyer. (It is very good in a new place to have a friend who knows the law.) Also, it was Charlie who told me I did the right thing bringing the car. He knows old people who keep a car, with all its documents and their licenses up to date, though they never really drive. They take care of the car, go out and run it for fifteen minutes. They might even, occasionally, take it for a spin around the block. That’s all.

They rationalize.

“There could be an emergency.”

“If something happens, and I need to get somewhere in a hurry I can.”

They admit, “I just feel better if it is sitting there.”

A woman I often talk with in the dining room gets a little mad when the subject of cars comes up, because her doctor said she shouldn’t drive, though she feels capable, and her daughter sold the car. I am careful not to mention in her presence that I have been to the grocery for necessities like chocolate bars and Cheezits. I found Miracle Ear, too, and got my hearing aids serviced. Recently I drove in the rain from here to my daughter’s house, learning the way there and back, so I can do it if I need to. Just knowing that I can makes me feel good.

Some Sundays Charlie and I pick up Bertha on the way to church in the park. She showed me where her car is parked. “I put it there,” she told me, “the day I almost ran in the ditch, because I have neuropathy in my legs, and I couldn’t get my foot on the brake. That scared me, and I thought it was a sign that I should stop driving.”

I think that was wise of Bertha. But Bertha is 96. I have been 92 for only a few days, and I don’t have neuropathy in my legs. When Charlie disappeared for the weekend, as he does now and then, my Toyota and I picked up Bertha at her door and we went to church. Next week I have an appointment with a doctor. I will take myself to her office, just like any able-bodied grown-up.

I recognize that this is about freedom, about making my world a little bigger. Having the car expands my horizons geographically, broadens my experience, increases my options, gives me a little more control over the day. I am still me, a legal driver, without a ticket for sixty years, with places to go and wheels.

One day I will lose it all.  Already I realize that I should not have this car unless I am smart and brave like Bertha.