I loved my Honda. Is it OK to cling to that emotion, even after a car takes its final drive and lands in a dissection yard to be pulled to pieces so other old Hondas can stay on the road? Are there counselors out there specializing in car grief who might advise? ’Tis the Christmas season, so I can imagine what they might say: Let it go, let it go, let it go.

This tale is an attempt to do just that, and to highlight some random acts of quality humanness along the way.

It began on a rainy Sunday morning, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, in fact. I was cruising to church in my 1997 Accord, which I’d owned since it was three. It was, as Click and Clack of Car Talk would say, a keeper.

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