I had taken a bit a hiatus in posting. In my last entry, I mentioned my father was ill. Unfortunately he was diagnosed with cancer, and a little over a month later we had to admit him to hospice. For those of you lucky enough to not yet know what hospice is, it’s care for the terminally ill. 
I drove up to see him the day after we admitted him, and my low fuel light came on. I loathed to stop for gas — time was of the essence! I was only two miles away, so I made it to the hospice, clipped on my visitor pass, and spent the day sitting with him.
My husband drove up that evening and met me there. When I mentioned my low fuel light was on, he said casually, “Oh, that’s fine, you have a mile or two of fuel left.”
A mile or two?! That wouldn’t get me to the next gas station! With white knuckles I eased out of the parking lot and coasted to the closest pump. When I got there I noted how many gallons it took to fill up: 11.453 gallons.
According to various sources on the internet, my gas tank holds 12.8 gallons. Considering I get 26 miles per gallon, I actually could have made it 34 more miles (since [12.8-11.453]*26 = 34.32]). That’s good to know, though I hope to never cut it that close.
I’m sad to say just a day after my gas adventure, my father passed away – six weeks to the day he found out he was sick. I could wax mathematically about life expectancies, quality of days versus quantity of days, or how I hope to see him again when my time comes…but if you will forgive me, I will end with a borrowed verse of a poem:
“Even as I am heaving sorrow I know
counting the years will cost me too much.
So I embrace my grief this early morning
I do not want to waste the time I must wait.”
Miss you, Dad.
That was a very touching entry, Alice.
That was so sweet! :`-(
I’m so sorry for your loss.
But I have to comment on the gas tank issue…just because your tank holds 12.8 gallons does not mean that you’d get to use them all. Gas tanks are irregularly shaped (that’s why it takes me more miles to get to the halfway mark on the fuel gauge than it does to go from half-full to empty). And there’s usually a depression in the middle of the tank (sometimes with a magnet in it to keep machining scrap that might have been present at assembly from going into the engine). So your car will stop functioning before you’ve used all the gas, especially if you’re say, on a hill, and the gas tank is lower than the engine. My car has a similarly sized tank to yours- and even though I had nearly a gallon of fuel left, I found out the hard way, I can get approximately 17 miles after the fuel light comes on. And the next time I had it in for service after running out of gas, I needed a new air filter– running the gas so low had funneled a lot of crap from the bottom of the gas tank into it and it was absolutely filthy.