Love & '95 Dodge Neons

Last Saturday I finally met Bob Smith at the car repair shop where he works as service manager. His parents were related through marriage to my stepdad, and I'd had a couple of delightful conversations with his mother when she was still alive. I'd never met any of their children, though.

As a surprise gift my dad had decided to see if it was worth fixing my son's old car. It has almost 230,000 miles on it, so we certainly weren't sure. But he decided to invest some money and see if we could keep my son's wheels on the road a little longer. So my stepdad called Bob.

I stood there at the service counter with my son while Bob, a man close to my age in his 50s, dressed in dark blue overalls, busied himself with our paper work. I waited while he looked over the invoice and explained everything that had been fixed on the '95 Dodge Neon. There was a slight pause before he started to ring up the total, and I decided to speak into that pause.

"I just want you to know," I said, "that I liked your mother so much." Bob's business countenance disappeared, and in a split second his face registered pure joy. "She was so wonderful," he said. "As time goes on there aren't that many people who remember Mom, and it's so nice to hear someone say something about her."

My father died when I was 17 and occasionally through the years I've had people stop and tell me a story about him. I know from experience how wonderful that can be, especially when someone's been gone a long time. I knew before I went to get my son's car that I would mention this lovely lady to her son if the opportunity presented itself, and I'm so glad it did. I know my words to him were a gift, and the gift to me was seeing the love that flooded this man's face as soon as I spoke of his beloved mother.