Freedom Is Spelled C-A-R....

I found myself thinking today about what an acquaintance said to me recently about her mother, who was getting up in years, and realizing that she was having problems driving, this lady's mother knew that it was time to stop driving her car. She then gave her car away to a close, family member, who was much younger than she. My immediate response to this story was my saying, “How could your mother give up her ‘FREEDOM’?”

As an American living in rural California, where public transit is just now beginning to become a more common, daytime sight, freedom to me is being able to get into my private vehicle, and drive to wherever I wish to at any time of the day or evening with no restriction.
I know that my immediate response to the story I heard about the lady's mother, who gave her car away came from my experience with my late father-in-law, who lived well past his ninety fifth birthday but had to give up ‘his freedom’ ten years before his passing.

My father-in-law was able to maintain his ability to drive, ‘his freedom’, well into his late eighties when he began to develop an age related condition that affected his central vision.
My father-in-law's villain that took away his freedom was a disease called macula degeneration, which was likely caused from working outside all of his life. My father-in-law was a dairy rancher, and he wore eyeglasses to correct his vision that didn’t have U.V. protection built into the glasses because knowledge about what bright, unfiltered sunlight can do to our eyes is a more recent discovery. In years past we didn’t know that unfiltered sunlight, viewed on a daily basis could harm a part of our internal eyes called the macula, which when harmed causes loss of central vision. This villain, this lurking enemy of freedom strikes us when we least expect it, when we are well into our final years.

I will never forget how sad my father-in-law was when he realized that his days of freedom were over, he had lost his ability to drive his own car to wherever he wanted to go, whenever he wanted to travel.
I will never forget how we all suffered along with him as he struggled with his discovery.

Freedom to roam where we wish to in our cars, when we wish to, is as American a concept as Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken is. When the time comes, it is as difficult for us to give up our freedom to drive our own cars, as it is to give up breathing.

Enjoy; be happy, enjoy your American freedoms; enjoy life.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra