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Death of a loved one

By Rick Ryckeley
Contributing Writer

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to deal with the death of a loved one. It’s only natural. Normal people don’t like talking about such things, but then again I’ve never been accused of being normal. Death waits for no man, always coming when you least expect it, and when it does a whole list of things must be done. And if you ask The Wife, she’ll tell you: I just love making lists.

Arrangements have to be made, tons of legal papers must be signed, a thousand and one questions have to be answered, and all the while you’re mourning a great loss to the family. You never can replace the loved one. If asked, most would say they’d spend a million dollars just to have the loved one back. The Wife and I aren’t like most people; we didn’t want our loved one back, and we replaced it quite easily for much less than a million bucks.

In our case, we paid a little less than $25,000.

Yes, dear reader, we’re in mourning because our beloved Mercedes died an ugly death just last month and we had to buy a new car. There were many questions that had to be answered before we could make our new purchase. Which dealership do you use? What model do you get? How much do you pay? And the most important question of all for The Wife: What color should we buy? All good questions that were easily answered by looking back at the main reason we dumped our beloved. It stayed broke all the time.

Our tale of woe starts at the beginning of this past summer. In a short span of time we had the following troubles with our beloved. First, The Wife got stopped by a nice man in a blue uniform who informed her that she had a brake light out and gave her a little yellow piece of paper as a reminder to get it fixed. How thoughtful. She took our car to the repair place and left it for the first of many repairs. How expensive could it be to replace a $2 bulb? Seems the burnt-out bulb burned the tail light housing, and that would also have to be replaced for $159. The repairman said that parts for Mercedes were really expensive. He wasn’t kidding; our next repair got much more expensive.

The air conditioning went out at the beginning of the summer. I told The Wife we’d get it fixed when it got hot and that she should just drive around with the windows down. That’s when we discovered that the back window would go down, but not back up. A simple fix, right? Wrong. Cost to get the back window to roll back up? $425. A month later, the temperature was hot, and so was The Wife. We took our beloved in to fix the air conditioning. “Not too bad,” the repairman said cheerfully, “it’s only $825. Could’ve been a lot worse.” Yeah, it could’ve been his car.

I commented that for that price, he could have jumped on an airplane, flown to Germany, bought the part and flown back, which would be the only way to justify such a high cost. The Wife poked me in the ribs and told me to be nice; we might need him in the future. But wait, the summer wasn’t over yet, and neither were our repair bills. The Wife was right; we still need our nice repairman.

Next up: the dreaded check engine light. You know the one: the only light on your dash that, if illuminated, can keep you from getting an emission sticker which means you can’t get a tag - which meant we had to get it fixed. This time it was an easy fix; it was just a sensor. How expensive could a little bitty sensor be? Dad told me years ago if I didn’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question. One itty-bitty sensor was only $250, but at least our check engine light went off. The summer was almost gone, and so was my patience with German ingenuity. I told The Wife if the car broke again we would buy a new one. Dad also said to be careful what you say; two days later, the check engine light came back on. Come to find out our car had 40 sensors. Two down, 38 to go.

It was easy to choose what car to buy; you can’t go wrong if you buy the number-one selling car in America for the last seven years. That would be a Ford Taurus, built right here in Georgia, and it’s built “Ford tough” which means it ain’t gonna break. Boy, were we wrong. After only three weeks, The Wife stalled out in an intersection and had to get towed back to the dealership. Mind you, they were very nice, gave her a free car to drive while they worked on the car, which turned out to have a bad fuel pump. The cost to get it fixed: Nothing. But we’re not through with stuff breaking.

Last week I fell out of bed and hurt my shoulder. Okay, now that all of you are finished laughing, it really hurts. I have to go for an MRI next week with possible shoulder surgery soon to follow for a torn rotator cuff. Yes, I fell out of bed and tore my rotator cuff. When I told The Wife about it, she said, “Don’t get too comfortable. The Mercedes kept breaking so we got rid of it, and it was a younger model with a whole lot less mileage than you. This could be your third surgery in less than five years to fix something because you keep breaking.”

Hate to say it but she made a good point; just hope she doesn’t try to trade me in for a younger model.

[Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.]