No More Driving

Mom will tell you that she has never been great about directions. For 62 years, Dad was the primary driver, with Mom's Honda Civic mostly short-hopping from home to church, the grocery store, and her favorite department store. During mid-life, when they bought their cabin, she would sometimes drive solo for the hour it took to be in the woods and relaxing on their front porch near the lake. But that was about it.

Location was important when we moved to our current house. Although it wasn't in her customary 10-minute radius from her condo, we chose a spot nearby some landmarks from her teen years. I thought that would work, even for someone not known for her directional proficiency. I was wrong.

The pull of habit caused Mom to drive PAST about 4 grocery stores on our new side of town to shop at her old familiar one. She deplored the expressway and the traffic-filled bypass, so she took the back roads to get there. Then one day she called me. She was lost, confused, and tearful. She didn't know how to get home.

This was only the first of several calls. On one occasion she decided to continue on the road she was on, thinking she would find a familiar landmark. But after a few minutes of seeing nothing familiar, she pulled into a car dealership and found a friendly salesperson to help her. Another time she was driving to a family gathering at my Dad's brother's house (in another section of town) and missed her turn onto his street. She had no idea how to correct her mistake, so she called my uncle's house. She had no idea where she was, but her description of the objects viewable out her car window helped a cousin find her and lead her back to the family gathering.

She retired from driving a few months later, after several more scary lost situations. At first I passed it off as her difficulty getting acclimated to our new location. But it became clear that her ability to navigate was getting worse. Moreover, because of it she was growing nervous whenever she sat behind the wheel. I'm grateful that she made the "no more driving" decision for herself, and her doctor commended her for that.  At the same time, life has never been the same for her - or for me - since she turned over her car keys.