Help When You Least Expect It

Help sometimes comes from surprising places

Today, I went to my local AAA office and got my Mom’s car title transferred into my name.  This was a small miracle. It was my third visit there, after all. The first time, the AAA employee gave me explicit directions on what I needed to do.  It wasn’t going to be a long, difficult ordeal like I feared.  And the best news was that I could complete the whole process there; I didn’t have to go to the regular DMV office, where you need to make appointments weeks in advance and wait in line anyway.

The AAA man said that there were a few documents I needed to bring back. Easy enough, I thought. So, a week later, I had my sister meet me at the office, since there were some forms for her to sign.  Except, I apparently forgot everything that the man had told me earlier. I neglected to bring in the most important papers of all:  certified copies of our parents’ death certificates.

Maybe it’s not so surprising that I blanked that out. Any activity that involves tracking down the death certificates of two of the people you love most in the world is straight up horrible. The angelic AAA man reminded me of this, then had us fill out all the remaining papers. “Next time, all you need to do is come back with the death certificates,” he said.  I cannot say enough good things about him. He was knowledgeable, patient, and kind. I’m not sure how I would have managed at the regular DMV office. I would probably still be in line.

On my third visit to the AAA office, death certificates in hand, there was a different lady at the window. She looked at my papers and said, “You need another form.”

She was polite, but that statement, that I was missing a  form and would need to make a fourth visit there?

I started to cry.  That probably doesn’t surprise you. You may remember a few months back, when I wrote here about the day that I cried at the Toyota dealer service counter? Maybe there is something with me and cars and people who work with car logistics. Hard to say.  But this story ends differently than my day at the Toyota dealer.

The AAA DMV employee looked at me rummaging for a tissue in my purse and didn’t say anything else. She just went and got the form and filled it out for me. In spite of the line behind me. In spite of the fact that it wasn’t her job.  She told me that her Dad was ill, too, and that she had a terrible headache that had lasted for a day.  She said her Mom died long ago, but that it took her years before she could talk about it.

We just about cried together, the lady at the AAA DMV window and me.

It’s strange. Sometimes, the people you count on, the people you think will help you most, who will be there to walk with you with your grief? They don’t. They can’t. Maybe they are sick themselves, or tired, or hate their jobs, or don’t have the energy.

But here’s another miracle: someone else shows up. Someone that you wouldn’t ever expect. For me,  it was the lady at the AAA office who filled out the form for me. She joined me on the part of the grief path where I had to navigate the bureaucracy of getting my Mom’s car title transferred to my name.  This is grace, and grace, and grace.  There are so many ways we have to let our loved ones go. It is a long road, maybe one that never ends. But we walk each other through it. For that moment, I wasn’t alone.