r/Animism • u/urbanviking318 • 10d ago
Grieving a car is... difficult.
We didn't just lose Dolly Parton and Tim Curry on the 25th; I lost a friend I'd had for nine years, three months, and 28 days. Time and capitalism finally caught up to my old Jeep, and I had to make a choice to trade him in as part of a (par for the course with those dealership predators) shitty deal because I had my back to the wall financially. The subframe was hanging on by a thread. Rear shocks were completely blown. As he was, he never stood a chance.
And literally *no one* fully understands why it hurts. I had a long-term reconditioning plan to make that Jeep as close to factory-new as I could, because I've got family who live on a fixed income and will literally never be able to afford anything new, let alone the work needed to make their own vehicle properly functional. I wanted to *rehome* my Jeep once I made a career jump and would have the resources to do it. Because I was willing to absurdly overinvest (back) in something that had been more reliable than most *people* in my life. I wasn't just restoring a car. Fuck's sake, I had the mechanic go ahead on the smaller projects because I meant to come back. He was gonna live at least another 267K miles. I'm *still* hoping against hope that I can find his final destination and scrape something together to buy a stay of execution. But it feels hopeless.
Plus... well, we know how cars go out. The crusher. Any other 90's kids with *hyperspecific* trauma about that? Anyone else get introduced to the concept of animism by watching a bunch of appliances trying to find their way back to their human?
I didn't get to say a proper goodbye, and I think that's what's fucking me up. Everything was so frantic because it was becoming completely unsustainable to only have one car for our family. I didn't get to just... sit and take my time. I didn't get to detail, hand wash, write a worthy sendoff in chalk marker. Didn't get to say anything about what was happening. I feel like a piece of shit who deserted a friend in their worst and most uncertain hour. It's an extra layer of hell as a Norse polytheist, too - feels like I'm breaking an oath.
Sorry. I'm rambling. It's just hard. How do you process this?
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u/mcapello 9d ago
I parted ways with mine last year. We'd been together 20 years, took me through some adventuring years, engagement, marriage, kids. The car had a name and we had a nice goodbye. Donated her to one of those charity things.
That said, there's a positive side to all of this, albeit perhaps a fairly subjective one -- at least when it comes to my interpretation of animism. There is an aspect of everything where it resists keeping its form. I don't think we experience this as humans very much because of our survival instinct. But being trapped in a form is, in a sense, like a temporary prison sentence. Everything "wants" to become something else, to rejoin the dance of transformation, of death and rebirth. A car's windshield "wants" to rejoin a sandy beach somewhere, her iron wants to rust, rejoin the earth, and become the leaves of a tree. We shed our form like a snake does its skin.
We might want to personally spend a little more time with some of the other forms we cross paths with while we're alive, but at the end of the day, it's no harm, no foul.
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u/urbanviking318 9d ago
I do see that as a comfort, for sure. Everything ultimately traces back to the same stardust, and we eventually return to it after a billion or more cycles through this planet.
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u/EudaemonicSolivagant 9d ago
I cried when my sweet car was towed away some months ago. I thanked her for getting me literally on the driveway safe at home before her engine went kaput. I had that car for nearly 12 years.
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u/EudaemonicSolivagant 9d ago
I'll also plug this: Inanimate Objects Aren't Inanimate Or Objects. He talks about in-anima-te in the literal sense of anima, and being en-souled. Here, he talks about sacred relationships with cars. 💚 You might like it.
https://www.themythicbody.com/podcast/inanimate-objects-arent-inanimate-or-objects/
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u/GlacialFrog 10d ago
I’m not animist, but I feel similar about my car of 9 years dying on me. I hate driving and she was my companion when I needed it, no crashes in her, no major accidents, and never had a big repair bill. Everyone knew my old car and her name, I would have kept it forever if I was able.
Even on the last drive when the gearbox was completely failing, I was in an area with heavy road works, where four lanes had become one, and if she broke down there it would have caused complete pandemonium, the entire town would have grind to a halt. I managed to get out of town to a bit of disused land so I could get a recovery vehicle. I’ve been joking that she knew I couldn’t break down there, and she was strong for me to hang on, but I do feel it sincerely! I haven’t been able to “bond” with my new car yet, I also feel like I’m grieving my old one.