I felt the shift a couple of weeks ago. As promised, time does heal, somewhat, but I suspect that reassembling my life had something to do with it too. Not to get all sentimental, but things just fell apart after Mojo died. I mean literally, things fell apart. The car got smacked in the parking garage a couple months prior, but two days before he died, I took it in for a tune up, and I wanted to replace the busted side lamp. Three weeks later I had to call to remind them, they (Toyota) told me they would send it right out and that it was something I could replace easily. Sure I could, if only I had the tools and the knowledge to remove the bumper. So the replacement lamp sat on the counter next to the replacement lock for my mailbox.
Yeah, my mailbox key stopped opening my mailbox the week after Mo died, and then a giant potted plant that sat on my dresser for the last four years, decided to fall over and break branches and spill dirt, and a photo fell off a shelf and the glass cracked and and and my world disintegrated as I knew it. This perhaps, wouldn’t be such a big deal except for two things: 1. I keep a pretty orderly life, some have called me anal, but that’s going a bit far. I do keep my place clean, and my work and financial life totally together so all of this stuff breaking was weird. And 2. I couldn’t seem to fix it. Being that I own and wear a shirt that states, “Who needs a husband when you can have a dog”, I consider myself to be not only fiercely independent, but quite handy around the house. This scared me. Suddenly, I couldn’t fix shit and I no longer had a dog or a husband, or apparently anyone to call for help.
All of this only gave me more excuses to cry, which was exactly what I needed to do.
Over the last month as the reassembling commenced, I started feeling physically stronger. My friend, Kurt thought of an ingenious way to get the lamp fixed without removing the bumper, I called the locksmith to finally fix the mailbox lock, I started doing my run again and stopped crying every time I thought of old Mo. My broken heart was on the mend.
It’s been a tough year. Not only did I lose Mo, but two (what I thought) good friends and a long distance relationship with one of the great loves of my life. So I had some letters to write. Some closure for god’s sake. The love of my life called me on my birthday in May – he got a letter, but E and M, well I figure if they were willing to let our friendship go (even after my attempts at reconciliation) than it wasn’t worth spending another drop of energy on them. Closure can come in a variety of forms.
It was the day I wrote the letter that I decided to take a look at a map of the Northwest. I had been fantasizing a road trip but decided I needed more time to plan and more money to spend so postponed it until next June. None-the-less, a reward was in order, and I had been satisfying my escape needs with this trip. I zeroed in on my main goal, Roslyn, WA. The town where the old tv show, Northern Exposure was filmed, and the impetus for this trip.
My gaze panned the google map to the left, and right, and then I started going north to Seattle, then Vancouver and the Vancouver Islands along the coast to, well more islands, but no towns. Just treed islands with names like Bella Bella, Princess Royal, Banks, Queen Charlotte Islands and the Alexander Archipelago. I was in Alaska! Oh wow, is it possible to drive to Alaska? The AAA said I could, so I set my sights on Ketchikan.
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