I Won’t Tell Your Secret
Grant crashed our motorhome on the drive home from the dealership within 3 hours of buying it. Oh shit… That’s the secret, I just told it. The one I promised him I wouldn’t tell. Well… that was when you were alive Grant. I kept that promise. I never told anyone while you were alive. I didn’t because you were important to me. How you felt was even more important to me. Telling your secret would have hurt you. I never wanted to do that.
Right now, it’s not the secret I need to share, it’s the story. And in all honesty Grant, no one cares that you crashed the motorhome. It’s your own vanity that wants to keep your perfect image of yourself. That ideology died right along with you. Even in the manner of your death, you weren’t perfect.
Your manner of death is a monumental culmination of the truth of that. A tragic truth of hard facts. You’d hate that I said that right now. I’m not even trying to hurt you or be mean, or break a promise. I promised that I wouldn’t tell, that was a promise to you and you’re gone. It goes right along with all the promises you made me. The one I’m about to tell, it's another one of those promises lost, so it all goes together. It’s the hard truth. It hurts, not just me. You too. I know it. I’m sorry too.
We bought our motorhome in Vegas. We found exactly what we wanted, a class A with bunk beds for the kids. So a little couple’s trip to Vegas to pick it up and a caravan home was the plan. We love road tripping together. I love driving with you, sitting next to you, holding your hand, nothing to do but sit, talk and enjoy each other's company. You’re so comfortable at the wheel. You can drive anything and had the licenses to prove it, motorcycles, busses, commercial trucks, and of course, airplanes.
Your driver’s licenses and the diversity in them were a source of pride. They were another showcase of your extraordinary ability to do and be more than the average, in this case, driver. You also had many more hours on the road than most people with the exception of professional drivers. With all this ability, naturally, you’d be the driver of the motorhome. I could trust you to drive this big thing. One day I’d learn but for now, I’d let you take the wheel.
The look of pride and excitement on your face as we drove that motorhome off the lot, now that was priceless. Our whole marriage I’d wanted to buy a motorhome and take it camping on the weekends with you. This was the beginning of that dream fulfilled. We bought it in December 2018 with all the kids in tow, 7 months before your death.
On the way back from Vegas, we headed to the snow filled roads of Salt Lake, on a night when there was a snow storm. We decided to stay the night in St. George and let the storm pass and the roads clear. With our new prize we thought, we can stay anywhere! Where do people stay on a trip just for a night? Well… Walmart parking lot came to mind. We needed to buy a pack n play for the baby anyway.
The baby was with us on this drive. I had wanted to keep the baby on this trip as a kindness to our sitter. The other boys had to be driven back home in another car prior. I felt 3 boys and a baby would be too much for the driver taking the kids home. I kept the baby. He was 18 months old. I didn’t like to be away from him over night anyway. Walmart it was. Some ghetto camping in style!
I was following you in the car we drove in to get to Vegas. As we entered the Walmart parking lot, I called you to say I planned to run into the store to get the baby bed while you parked the motorhome in the back. I assumed you’d just pull into a long open space, easy peasy. You didn’t need me to park, you’re the master driver so it didn’t even cross my mind anything could happen. Kind of like the night you died…
A little foreshadow of another lie I believed. The one about your abilities being extraordinary, and you being infallible, not capable of anything but near perfection. That Walmart night would prove you are just as fallible as all of us. You are also prone to mistakes and accidents. If only I could have taken that as a life lesson then.
As you parked, for some reason I’ll never understand, you pulled in and felt the need to back up and go through to get to the spot you wanted. I saw multiple places you could have simply pulled into, so I have no idea why you complicated this process. I’m not the expert large vehicle driver, you are. Then there are the differences in logic between men and women here too, another story for another day.
As you pulled in, then backed up, there was this little VW beetle in the only spot at the back of the parking lot that could be in your path. You thought it was clear of the motorhome, continued to back up and smashed the back of it into that little car, ripping the beautiful new back panel away from the finish. Oh.. That was sad to look at.
You didn’t call me or text, you just waited for me to return. I drove up to see you talking with someone. I saw that something looked wrong with the back of the motorhome. No way had I thought. There’s no way that’s damage, my eyes are playing tricks on me. It was dark by now.
I walked to the back of the motorhome, leaving the baby in the car, just to see. Sure enough, the whole panel was ripped from the side! “Grant! I shouted. What happened? Are you ok? Is anyone hurt?” You turned to me, from talking to the owner of the car. No, no one is hurt, except maybe my pride.
We finished the insurance exchange and settled into the motorhome with the baby’s new bed and the new finish on the back. You looked at me and asked, “Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want anyone to know.” I laughed and said, “Don’t worry hunny, everyone makes mistakes. This makes me feel better because it’s a reminder to me that you are human and make mistakes sometimes,” I said with a smirk.
He liked the backhanded compliment as it showed him my confidence in his ability. The inside joke we now had that I used to remind him sometimes that us “humans” can’t always keep up with his superhuman ability. It reminded him to give me some grace sometimes. I mentioned to him, really, it’s just a thing. A little time and money and it can be repaired, no big deal. But oh… your ego, that was nearly irreparable that night.
The next morning, after a good night’s sleep and our first night “camping,” we went into Walmart to get some breakfast and some duct tape. We had to tape the back of the motorhome back together for the rest of the drive home. As we walked, I joked with you how in 40 years, when we’re old and we pass this Walmart, (then I switched to an old granny voice), I’ll say, “Hey hunny, remember that brand new motorhome we just bought... And you crashed it here in this parking lot… remember how young we were then! Ha that was a funny story!”
I switched to my normal voice and said, “It’ll just be a funny story then. We’ll just laugh about it and we probably won’t even have the motorhome anymore, just the memories we made with it. “Yeah,” you smiled, “That’s what this is for, the memories we’ll make here. This is just the first of many.”
We both smiled, went into the Walmart and found duct tape that matched the color of paint exactly. The duct tape looked so good, a perfect color match, you could hardly see the damage. I almost thought we didn’t need to repair it. Grant would make sure you’d never be able to tell what happened though. It was fixed a week later. No trace of any truth to that story.
Now I’m left with the memories we made. One of the few in that motorhome as we only used it a few times before you were gone. Those are treasured memories now, that part of what I said is true. The part I said in that old granny voice, that’s the one that will never be. WE will never go back there. I can go back there and remember, but we will not grow old together. We will not reminisce about the days when we were young. We will not joke about the day you crashed our brand new motorhome.
I’ll grow old, God willing, and I’ll remember you’re gone. That’s the bitter part of the memory and the dream that died in the memory. A promise I thought I had, gone. You will never grow old. You’re immortal now, just as I always thought you were.
So I told your secret, I let go of that promise. You crashed the motorhome. I also let go of the promise you made that we’d grow old together. That’s what time does, it changes everything. Time reminds you that where you are now, what you have now, who you are now, will not always be. Don’t ever believe it will. If you do, you’re believing a lie.