John Pearley Huffman over at Road & Track has a moving piece about his mom’s struggles with surrendering the ability to drive herself. For anyone with older loved ones, it’s probably an event you’ve experienced or are in the midst of assessing with concern and no small amount of heartbreak.

Huffman writes:

“I need my car,” she pleaded to me. “It’s the only way I have to get around. I’m not me without my car.”

Fortunately, the Accord was in the shop being mended and that lack of access is all that kept her from driving anyhow. So, I became her major source of transportation, with my wife and daughter also pitching in. Her travels were undemanding. Trips to Smart & Final or Trader Joe’s for groceries were about it. She was so eager to get back in her car.

To get her license back meant going to the DMV and taking both the written and driving test. My smart mom, who had worked in television during the 1950s, somehow got our fractured family through the 1960s and 1970s, and built a thriving real estate career in the 1980s that lasted until just a few years ago, couldn’t pass the written test. A simple multiple-choice quiz was now beyond her. She was bewildered and bereft. It was at that moment that I realized my mother was leaving us.

Read the rest here.

It’s an event that will come for us all, one way or another — even Methuselah had to give up the reins to his donkey at some point. Huffman has done those reckoning with that moment (or collection of moments) a great service with his essay.