I walked into my best friend's house and greeted her enthusiastically. We immediately tried to catch each other up on all the things that had happened in our lives in the past 3 months since this was the first time we were seeing each other since school had started.

We both had been away at our first year in college and now we were back home for the first time for Thanksgiving. After a few minutes, she asked: “How is Jerome doing?”

You see, Jerome is getting old and Jerome is falling apart. Jerome’s days were coming to an end. It was not a surprise that people would be concerned about Jerome. But even with all of Jerome's struggles, I refuse to let Jerome go. There are way too many memories that are associated with Jerome.

There have been many laughs and many tears. Just the meltdowns in the parking lot of my high school during my senior year are too many to count. There were nights after many school dances where I sat in the drive and talked for hours.

Driving home later that day I insisted that I was going to love Jerome until Jerome fell apart and my friend responded with a predictable "Or until your dad takes a sledgehammer to it."

You would think that the fact that Jerome was a white van that was older than me would have been enough reason for me to not want anything to do with it. But Jerome was my first car. Once I passed my driving test my parents let me drive the car on just one condition: I had to drive with the large yellow "Student driver please be patient" sticker.

I didn't have to pay for it (not that I could have as a non-working 16-year-old who had not saved up money for a car) and I didn't have to pay for the insurance. I benefited more from this arrangement than I lost so I quickly agreed to their request of keeping the sticker on the car. The fact that I now did not need to be driven around everywhere by my parents and that I had this new found freedom made me have a deeper appreciation for this car.

A few month later, my best friend and I decided we needed to name it and we settled on "Jerome." I loved the car because it could was a symbol of my independence. And once that wore off, I loved it just because it was my car. I didn't care that it was made the year my dad graduated from high school or that I had days when I would need to jump it twice. I wasn't even too bummed out that it didn't land me a page in the car's section in our high school's yearbook. This was the car I drove to my high school graduation in and this was the car I ran into my grandparent's garage in (sorry Grandpa).

This car was a part of my life.

Now I understand how it could be slightly hard to understand how you could learn unconditional love from an inanimate object but this experience has taught me in some ways to love no matter what.

When I was home for my winter break a few weeks ago, I probably drove Jerome for the last time. However I am almost okay with that because my time with Jerome may be limited but this lesson on unconditional love will stay with me forever.