Silence

She has been silent now for over five years.

She lost her voice when her constant companion contracted multiple sclerosis and was no longer able to ride. He was afraid that if he tried he would end up killing himself, or worse, someone else.

She sat silent, bereft of shelter or companionship, for over three years. Silent tears of fuel wept from the holes that ate through her gas tank, her throats clogged with water.

One day he asked me to take her away. I loaded her up in the back of the truck and took her home. Finally she had shelter, but still she sat silently.

She has been silent since I last touched her start button for a short trip, a chance to stretch her wheels and feel the asphalt beneath her tires. That was a little over five years ago.

She and I have both wept silent tears for the man, her constant companion and a man that I have grown to love as a second father. We have watched, and wept silent tears of rage as his disease has run it's course, transforming him from an active soul to a helpless invalid, tied now to a wheelchair and hospital bed.

I do not know what she has thought; she sits silently, and if she has a voice to speak I cannot hear it. I myself have suffered in disbelief, but the truth is clear. This terrible disease will not relent; remorsefully it has robbed the man of his motion, of his dignity, and it will finally claim his life one day.

This disease has robbed her of her constant companion, it will rob me of a man who has been as close as family to me.

I wheel her out of the shed where she has lain for a little more than two years. She once spoke for me, perhaps she will speak again.

I pick up my tools.