09-05-2025
Mark Woods: On Mother's Day, thinking about how a 2001 campervan isn't just another vehicle
Mom's campervan is sitting in our driveway.
It's officially my campervan. It hit me the other day that I've owned it longer than she did. She bought it in 2001 and had it until she died 11 years later. I've had it for nearly 13 years since. And yet I still think of it as her campervan, which probably is why I have a hard time thinking about something else.
Is it time to let go of it?
I have plenty of other things that belonged to my parents. I have lots of books. I have family photos. I have some of my dad's sermons. I have paintings that my mom bought from an artist friend. I have things like kitchen utensils that take me back to the kitchen of my childhood home.
These and many other things are cherished connections to my parents. But the campervan feels different. I know it's just a vehicle, one that will turn 25 next year. But it feels like, outside of my sisters and her grandchildren, the closest thing I have to a living link to Mom.
She bought it new. This alone is something. Growing up, I don't ever remember us having a new vehicle. When I first started to drive in the late 1970s, we had a Rambler, a car that AMC had stopped making a decade earlier. That was the norm for us. We also had an old station wagon, reminiscent of the Griswold's in 'Vacation," and a pop-up camper that we towed behind it.
When Dad was getting ready to retire, he and Mom had plans get a campervan and travel the country in it. When he died suddenly, just a few months from retirement, I remember going home, seeing the brochures he'd been collecting, with pictures of shiny vans and beautiful destinations.
Mom eventually decided to move from Wisconsin to Tucson. And she also decided to get a campervan — a decision I now realize must've come with all kinds of emotions.
It's a Pleasure-Way Traverse, a Ford E-250 taken by a Canadian company and converted into a campervan, back when the idea of something mixing American and Canadian didn't make headlines. The top pops up at an angle, giving it an appearance that feels more akin to the old VW vans than something like a modern-day Mercedes Sprinter.
She drove her van all over the country. She and her dog, Max, drove to Jacksonville to see Mia, who was born the same year as the van. After she met someone in Tucson, she and Abe drove the van to, among other places, to northern California for a family gathering in the Redwoods.
When Mom decided she wanted to do one trip with each of her three children, she and I drove the van to Utah, where we camped in Arches National Park and did a rafting trip through Canyonlands National Park.
I remember thinking that if you'd had told me as a teenager that I'd ever do a vacation with my Mom, I'd have said you were crazy. But I can honestly say I enjoyed that trip. And a few years later, it became even more meaningful.
When Mom was dying of cholangiocarcinoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer, she asked her children if any of us wanted the campervan. We all said pretty much the same thing: Our garages were already full. We didn't have anywhere to put it.
But then I was in Yellowstone that June. I remember seeing an old campervan in that setting, calling Tucson, where one of my sisters was with Mom, and saying, 'I think I want the van.' At that point, Mom could barely speak. But my sister said when she told her that, Mom smiled.
So this isn't just another vehicle.
She died a few weeks later. And that fall, after we gathered in Tucson for Thanksgiving, scattering my mom's ashes near the visitor center where she volunteered in Saguaro National Park, I hopped in the van and, along with my friend Chris Burns, drove the van from Arizona to Florida.
Since then, I have done some family trips with it.
We've taken it to Florida state parks, Anastasia and Gold Head Branch. We took it to Georgia's Stephen C. Foster State Park to paddle in the Okefenokee Swamp and see the night stars. Mia and I took it to a father-daughter spring training trip in Lakeland, camping in Wekiwa Springs State Park. And this last year Toni and I drove it up to Unicoi State Park in northern Georgia, to catch a bit of fall colors.
But we haven't used it nearly as much as I'd hoped. Mostly it sits in the driveway. Mom kept it in a garage. Between that and the dry Arizona air, it was well-preserved. Sitting in my driveway, the sun and rain have taken their toll. Lately it seems like every time I do use it, I find something new that needs to be fixed.
I sometimes think about the amount I spend on the annual insurance and maintenance, compared to the number of nights we use it each year.
From a purely rational and financial sense, it doesn't make sense to keep it.
And yet, even as I've been writing this column, it has helped me answer my own question. I'm not ready to let go of Mom's campervan.
mwoods@
(904) 359-4212
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Mom's campervan brings back memories on Mother's Day
