Living Out Of My Car?

Every day I thank the Heavens above that I have a home that is bought and paid for.

This is something I worked my whole life for. To own my own home, mortgage free.

It took many years and there were a few scary times when I almost lost everything, but I’m here now.

My home is in southern coastal Delaware, near Rehoboth Beach. 

Ironically I was a Beach Person in my younger days (I’m 84 now) but these days, in the twilight of my life, I never go to the beach. First for the obvious reasons, I don’t need anymore skin cancer pop ups for my dermatologist to burn off, but the main reason is that going to the beach just isn’t my in my interests these days. What is in my interests is living comfortable in my home until I meet my Maker in the Great Sky above.

Recently I discovered a Substack post of a guy who looked a lot like Pat, my current husband. He’s living out of his car. Something I could never do. He has a good reason to live out of his car, he doesn’t want to pay the exorbitantly high cost of housing himself in today’s economy. I can’t say I blame him. If I was just starting out today I couldn’t afford housing either. My first rental I was paying eight dollars a week for a one room efficiency apartment in Pittsburgh, PA. Before that I had free housing in the U.S. Army at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. But I could never live out of my car. Mainly because I value my privacy too much. Another good reason is that now I am eighty-four years old I have physical limitations. I don’t walk steady. I need a lot of rest (heart problems). I don’t do stress sell in my old age dotage. This guy’s Substack I’m reading, he’s young (relatively 65 or so) and doesn’t require “things” like I do. He’s a minimalist. I’m not. I like my “things”. They invoke fond memories for me of my life with my previous partner/husband whom I was with for fifty-nine years. 

My current husband, who is a minimalist and a Canadian, could probably live out of his car if he had a bigger one. He has a Fiat now. He lives in a small house that isn’t more than five hundred square feet and has minimal “things.” If he gets a new T-shirt a new pair of pants, he donates his old T-shirts and pants to Sallie Mae (as he calls the Salvation Army.) I admire him but I could never live that way. I have oodles of shirts and pants and out clothing which I will probably never wear in whatever remains of my life but I’m keeping them. I even have about forty neck ties from my former banking job. I keep them under my care in my two walk in closets until I depart this earth. My current husband will gladly and quickly dispose of those items. No problem there.

Pictured above is an older photo of me with my Subaru Forester taken a few years ago.  I now own a Hyundai Venue which is even small that my Subaru Forester.  It would be a tight fit for me to move and sleep in the back of my Venue. No thank you.

Every night I lay my old, tired body in my queen sized bed on my air foam mattress and enter my Dreamworld where, hopefully, one day I will be reunited in spirit with my former husband who was and is my soulmate. 

When I go to sleep at night all is quiet around me. No noisy neighbors. No mortgage other worry about. Only thing I have to worry about is that I don’t fall when I get up multiple times in the night to take a pee in my bathroom. 

I’m a Happy Camper. Right here in my own home.