Grieving for your first car

You'll remember how old it was when you got it, you'll remember the first scrape you put on it. You'll remember the first time you sat in the driver's seat, and the first time you paid your money on its insurance.And then one day it'll be time to say goodbye to it, whether it's your fault or not.It's like losing a family member, even down to making the final arrangements.

Here in England, when my first car was totalled when I came out of a junction and collided with another driver, I was sitting on the roadside alone, waiting for the tow company to pick it up.

A van stopped by and the driver offered to buy my car off me for stock car racing. The initial feeling is like someone's asked if they can buy your dead sister's kidneys an hour after she's died. That is why I said no.

However for people who know how expensive the death of the first car is, it's tempting to say yes, it's cathartic to be able to get rid of the car as soon as you can, because otherwise you look at it and feel like crying even more, especially if you blame yourself in any way.

Knee-jerk responses like that shouldn't be given in to. There is so much procedure involved...notifying the DVLA that the car's being destroyed, sorting out paperwork, dealing with the insurance company, claiming back leftover tax from the tax disc. You need to keep the car a little longer, hard as it is.

Right now I find it hard to look out of the window, because then I see it in the driveway, its hood crumpled. I remember freshly exactly how the bumper's been torn off, the headlight smashed, the battery split and the radiator crushed. Every time you bring yourself to look at it, it will hurt a little less. Stripping it of as much as you can, will hurt too. But if you don't do it, a stranger will, that is how they make up for the costs of collecting the car for you, if you find a scrapyard willing to collect, like harvesting organs from a corpse.

In this case, the choice for her send-off will be the fire station. Tomorrow I'll be going down there to ask them if they could use her for training recruits about car fires. Every way to destroy a totalled car is awful. The only consolation will be that her death will mean someone gets the knowledge they need when saving someone else's life. That suits my Nissan. She kept me alive through my first year and a half of driving. She saved my life and even when ripped apart, even when the battery was dripping fluid, she managed

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