🥭The Mango Happiness Project: just a car? Sex'n'fries Podcast Episode: 14

Aug 10, 2021
3 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

Her wheelchair didn’t fit easily between the table and the kitchen island. I finished helping her get ready for the day — the same routine we’d shared for months — brushing her hair, fixing her breakfast, and making sure the morning ran as smoothly as possible.

That day, though, I was bursting with excitement. I had something to show her.

The Mango.

My new car.Bright. Bold. Orange.

I couldn’t believe that I — the woman who hated attention and proudly claimed the title of “introvert of the year” — now drove something that screamed “look at me.”

(The paint color is actually called GoMango — I swear, I didn’t make that up.)

Her reaction was simple, classic her:

“It is certainly orange.”

That was it. And it was already too late.

She would never ride in my brand-spankin’-new car — the one that had eight miles on it when I bought it — the one I’d had for only a single day.

The Drive That Changed Everything

For months, I had been driving back and forth — five hours round trip — sometimes more. My Jeep Cherokee had become my grief carriage, my mobile therapy session, and my sanctuary all at once.

When she went from using a cane to a wheelchair, that Jeep became our lifeline. The chair fit just right in the back, though my gut and arms were covered in bruises from lifting it. We’d go out for breakfast, laugh a little, pretend things were normal — but nothing about any of it was easy.

When I showed up that day in The Mango, something inside me shifted. The drive down the same highway I’d been crying on for months felt… different. There was peace. And a strange, quiet sense of ease — buried deep under exhaustion and sadness — but still there.

For the first time in a long time, I felt a spark of myself again.

I didn’t know it then, but that car — that bright orange beast — was the start of something healing.

When Duty Meets Grief

The last few months of her life were a blur of duty, heartbreak, and numbness. I did what needed to be done because that’s what you do when someone you love is slipping away.

I cried only when I got home — unloading every tear, every frustration, and every ounce of helplessness on my husband. Then, I’d dry my face, gather my strength, and do it all over again.

We bought The Mango in the middle of that storm. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t practical. But it was something for us — a small, defiant act of joy in a world that felt like it was falling apart.

It sat parked outside that day, right where I could see it from the dining room window — the same one I rearranged the furniture by, just so she could look out and see it too.

Twenty-seven days later, I drove that orange car back home — alone.