She was from Helena. She hadn’t yet started to show the extra miles on her, holding her age well. Glenn gasped when her saw her for the first time, at dusk, in the parking lot of the High Country Independent Press. At that moment, I knew he had to have her, as he ran his hands lovingly down her slope of her frame. That blue boxy frame that reminded him of his beloved baby blue Honda Accord.

The Accord was hardly as sexy as the sleek Honda Prelude he used as a company car at The Gilroy Dispatch when we lived in California. I had requested him to ask for that car. His beloved Accord had done right by him for years, never giving him the slightest bit of trouble.

When finally it was time to trade her in for a more practical mini-van to accommodate our growing family, he glanced once more in the rear-view mirror – grieving - at the car that carried our just-married family - including three cats and six kittens - from Miami, Fla., to Gilroy, Calif.

In that car, we laughed our way across new country we would see together as a couple, my mispronunciation of Dubuque, Iowa; lying to hotel clerks about having just one cat, Bimini, with her adorable kittens, while sneaking in the very drugged Sidney and Frieda. How the kittens became weaned while driving across Kansas, the pained look he would get as one of them would claw up and down his perfectly preserved seats in their blue lambs-wool seat covers.

Oh, how he loved that boxy blue Honda Accord. It was a characteristic about Glenn that always endeared me to him. Perhaps it was because no matter how I looked in the morning, bleary-eyed after a 23-hour work day, he still looked at me with love and loyalty in his eyes. I may have changed from a sleek Prelude to a boxy Accord over the nearly 11 years we were married, but he always saw in me the girl I was when we married, even when I couldn’t see her anymore. When I close my eyes, it’s that look from him I try to summon, not those last terrible seconds when the plaintive tone of the flatline told me what I already knew – that Glenn was gone.

But this is three years earlier, in 1992, after the drive-train broke on the 1986 Dodge minivan that carried us from Gilroy to Belgrade, Montana. It was time to find another vehicle that was better suited for snow and ice than the rear-wheeled drive minivan that seemed to have a GPS system for finding ditches.

We had scoured the papers looking for a car, but neither of us had the time to go from lot-to-lot looking. Until I saw a car within our price range. But it was in Helena. We called, just to see, and perhaps it was the economy at the time, or maybe the sales rep was down in numbers or wanted a trip to Bozeman, but she agreed to drive the car there. But if we liked it, we had to buy it. We assured her if the car was as advertised, and drove well, that would be the case.

When Glenn walked out of the office and saw that baby-blue 1990 Toyota Corolla sitting in the parking lot, his eyes lit up. “She looks like my old Honda Accord,” he said with wonderment. The Corolla was a slight step-down from the Accord. It was like comparing the elegance of Grace Kelly to a quite pretty Kim Novak. The car was lacking some of the luxury of Glenn’s old Accord, but she had a lot of zip to her. She was nimble on the curves and readily responsive on the road. Just two years old, the Corolla had nearly 45,000 miles but little body damage. We paid the $6,376 for her on the spot, which included the stunning $1,699 we got for the undriveable minivan.

The first thing Glenn did was find blue lambs-wool seat covers.

At some point we acquired a Toyota Tercel stationwagon stick-shift that became Glenn’s car due to hauling of the newspapers each early Thursday morning to six post offices, a 60-mile-plus round trip. And so the Corolla became my vehicle.

While driving the Corolla, my nickname became Devon Ann-dretti. I drove to newspaper meetings in Great Falls, hugging the curves on mountain passes. I could make the 2-hour trip to Billings in 90 minutes. Cameron and I spent hours listening to 70s music, singing the words to America Pie and Piano Man, while driving to bowling tournaments all across the state.

It was the car I was pulled over most often in by the Montana Highway Patrol. Of course back then, it was a $5 “waste of a natural resource” ticket. I once quipped to an officer if I could buy a package of $25. The car could accelerate without me even realizing it, but stopped quickly when gophers would stop and stand in the middle of the road.

When car phones started to become popular, I found yet another way I could work during long drives to and from meetings. I bought a Motorola car phone and had it installed in the dashboard and an antenna off the back window. I replaced the old radio and put in a CD/radio player. Due to Montana’s straight roads, I could drive while talking on the phone, eating Wendy’s chili and driving with my knees.

It was in the back-seat of that car, just four months after Glenn died, that I drove my beloved Golden retriever Brandy to Ft. Collins, Colo., for cancer surgery, the longest trip I had ever taken by myself. It was in the back seat of that same car two weeks later that I took her to the vet, concerned about pain from her cancer treatment. He gave her medication, but wasn’t hopeful.

I went back to the office, under pressure to finish the paper. Brandy was too ill to get out of the car, but I checked on her about every 15 minutes. She greeted me each time, weakly thumping her tail. At the 10:45 p.m. check, she was sleeping heavily, snoring slightly, as I rubbed her head and ears. I ran inside and whipped off the last thing I needed to do, my editorial. When I went back outside, she was dead from an embolism, vomiting on the seat. Although I had the seat removed and detailed, it never went back in the same.

It wasn’t the last time I would get the car detailed. While taking Cameron to a horse-back riding lesson, he complained of not feeling well. He dropped the passenger seat all the way back into a reclining position (a nice feature, I might add) so he could lay back, starting at the ceiling. And then without warning, vomit spewed out of him like a volcano, hitting the ceiling. And he as quickly learned, what goes up must come down — his face was splattered by his own hurl.

Shocked, I pulled over immediately and started to yell at how inconsiderate he was to vomit IN MY CAR! At least roll the window down! But as soon as I looked at that miserable, chunk-covered face with vomit dripping from the ceiling onto my blue lambs-wool seat covers, I started to laugh. Loudly, uncontrollably. Not so much at him, but at the situation. And now that he felt better, Cameron laughed as well.

I pulled into the Trailside and bought paper towels to wipe him down and rescheduled his horseback riding lesson. And later had the car detailed — twice.

The Corolla had its quirks. At some point, she developed a loose connection with the battery cable. Every so often (more often than I liked), the car would simply stall out, usually while I was idling at an intersection. I had learned to carry a hammer under my seat. I would leap out, grab the hammer, yank open the hood, beat the battery cable to get a better connection, and then jump back in. Each time she would start. It took a number of months for my mechanic to finally figure out the problem. The hammer, however, remained under the seat.

In 1998 I bought a brand-new Subaru Forester after Glenn’s Aunt Ruth left us her 1997 Buick upon her death. I felt I was too young to drive a Buick, so I traded it so I could afford the Forester, which I still drive.

Two years later, when Cameron turned 14 1/2, the Corolla was the car I used to take him driving after he got his learner’s permit. It was the passenger seat where I vigorously pumped faux-brakes and clawed my fingers deep into those fading lambs-wool seat covers during our drives together. Upon his graduation from driver’s education and receiving his driver’s license at 15 years, 4 months, the blue Toyota became his the following spring after the snow melted on the roads.

It was tough giving up the Corolla to him, because she was still a speedier car. It took a while for the cops to figure out why the Corolla was so carefully traversing Jackrabbit Lane, only to see a very rigid-looking young boy gripping the steering wheel. The car phone had been upgraded to tiny cellular phones, although the case was embedded in the dashboard. The antenna was now useless, but it still clung tenaciously to the back window, flipped down out of sight.

Cameron started his memories in that car. It was the one he drove to school, where he boldly tried parking in the senior parking lot his junior year, only to find it had been keyed in punishment.

In 2003, it was the car he drove – following me – across the country as we made our move from Montana to Virginia. The Corolla – perhaps in one last effort to keep us from leaving my beloved Montana – had a flat tire only 60 miles into a 2,300-mile trip. It forced us to spend the night in Billings, where Cameron had a memorable evening chatting with a former classmate, Ashley,  then a college freshman, who happened to be staying at the same hotel that night with her parents while visiting family. I would have 10 flat tires to see that dreamy look on his face again.

It was Cameron who was pulled over for weaving after he got too sleepy during a particularly long drive, forcing me to drive backwards on the shoulder until ordered to stop by the police officer. Realizing Cameron wasn’t drunk, but just sleepy, he then escorted us to the nearest hotel or the night, making me forfeit my Orbitz hotel reservation less than 20 minutes away. It was probably the best $75 room I never stayed in.

It was the Corolla that sat parked for less than one semester outside my sister’s house before I decided I’d rather Cameron have the car in Blacksburg than me drive the 6-hour each-way trip myself to bring him home for vacations several times a school year. It was also that car where Cameron failed to call me often enough to let me know where he was and I called the Virginia State Police to ask if he had been reported dead. Thankfully, no. He had buried his car charger deep in the vehicle. (He still texts me when he gets home….)

His car became decorated with Virginia Tech stickers; the first touting his interest in computer science, which he later exchanged for one in electrical engineering. The sad memorial sticker for April 16, 2007 when a lone student gunned down 32 students and teachers, including a friend of Cameron’s.

And then the following year, the maroon and white tassel from his graduation joined the green and white tassle from his high school graduation on his rear-view mirror. Somewhere along the way, the new stereo sound system, with a woofer the size of a Smartcar, appeared in the trunk. A CD player with an iPod attachment.

Gone, however, were the faded and thread-bare lambs-wool seat covers that were pulled out in 2008. Inside, the car almost looked as good as it did the day Glenn laid eyes on her, although the back seat rocked a bit too much, there was a car phone gadget stuck to the cracking dashboard, and floor mats that never stayed in place.

Then Cameron got a job, and the new stickers on his vehicle reflected his status as a test engineer at Dahlgren Naval Station.

After spending $1,200 in repairs to get the Corolla to pass the state inspection in 2009,  Cameron had a tough decision when the 20-year-old car, which we had owned for 18 years, with nearly 270,000 miles on it, required $120 in parts and $500 in labor for the 2010 inspection sticker. Cameron had been saving for a new car, so he made the decision to buy a 2010 Nissan Altima with the technology package and Bose sound system. He put $21,000 down and will likely pay the $9,800 remaining by June.

As excited as he was to get a new car with a push-button start, heated seats, real seat-belts and airbags, and an in-dash GPS system, he had a pang of sorrow as he pulled all of his stuff out of his vehicle. He had driven it for 10 years, with no tickets or citations and only two minor fender-benders from other people rear-ending him.

As the Corolla sat among other trade-ins, I stroked her the hood, now pockmarked with “road rock” used to sand the highways in Montana after snowstorms. The blue had faded to gray in spots, and rust was etching a filagree pattern along the wheel-well. I touched the back seat where Brandy had snoozed while I covered school board and city council meetings and then later breathed her last. I peeled off the brittle Virginia Tech magnetic stickers and put them on my car. Cameron scraped off the base stickers.

This was the last car that held all of us together as a family, including a memorable trip to Hyalite Canyon with Brandy and Carmel squashing Cameron in the back seat, the same trip when Carmel hurled her dog food within minutes after that first winding curve to the lake where we would spend a beautiful afternoon.

They are all gone now, first Glenn, then Brandy and Carmel. The cats are all gone, too; Sidney, Studley, Gremlin, Frieda, Jasmine, Smokey, Snicker, Bimini, Harry and finally Spook. Only his treasured guns and Civil War collection share my life in a house in a state where he never lived. That little blue Toyota Corolla was the last vestiage of a life we shared together.  

As I drove away, I looked back once more and saw only the beauty of what that car was 18 years earlier – seeing her through the same filter in which Glenn had always seemed to look through at me – at a time when our future had no end. And then I wept.

 and in my eyes, as Glenn also looked at me – I saw only the beauty and the memories of that car that once held us all together as a family as we drove to Hyalite Canyon, when Carmel hurled her dog food after the first curve up.