Author: wvfurandroot

How do you pack for epic?

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packingI am an inveterate over-packer and pretty much an unapologetic one. My Girl Scout training of be prepared is never more in evidence than when I have a suitcase in tow. It’s a compulsion, I must pack for any possibility no matter how ludicrous the likelihood.

I’m leaving soon on an epic trip – we’re scattering Doug’s ashes in various locales of the Southwest – places he loved. Besides packing everything I think I need, I also have to pack him. It seems very odd to have a box of ashes that is all I have left, besides memories, of my beloved – even odder to think of the box and funeral home tote bag as “luggage.” There’s a joke in there somewhere about baggage but I can’t find it.

regerHow do you pack for epic?

It is going to be an epic trip. I haven’t been in this part of the country since I was 10. My family and I traveled Rt. 66 more times than I can count, but we do so making time not sight-seeing. This time I’ve got 10 days to wallow in the glory of Doug’s beloved desert.

He was an over-packer too, but nonetheless teased me about my affliction. He would be amused to know that his ashes are causing me to have to severely prune my over-packing. A box of ashes takes up all of a carryon bag leaving me one smallish suitcase in which to prepare myself for 10 days of 3 different seasons and a variety of activities– yes, this former Girl Scout has to pack for winter, spring and summer as well as hiking, horseback riding and, possibly, hot-air ballooning.

listNo, I can’t add another suitcase. Four of us and all of our stuff have to fit in a rental car. I doubt they want to add a trailer to accommodate my compulsions. So I am trying, really, really hard to be practical and choose clothing that multi-tasks. But with three seasons and a variety of different activities, I am overwhelmed.

I made a list. You know things are dire when I resort to a list. It’s a fine list. Minimal, in fact. The contents of the list are not going to fit in the suitcase. There is pruning to do. Fortunately, I started early. At present, less than a week out, I am about 33% over-capacity. I have the remainder of this week to pare it down.

I’m excited about the trip. I’m spending it with some splendid people and we’re also spending time in some of my childhood places like the Wigwam Motel and the place of my birth. I haven’t seen the southwest since we left Hawaii in 1970 and drove across the country to Quantico, VA. It’s also my first real vacation in nearly 5 years. How do you pack for epic?

Lines of Demarcation

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Today is one of those days that marks the anniversary of a day when everything changed. A day when the before was starkly different than the one after; the difference noted at the time. Awareness of the import provoked both laughter and fear. Boundaries shifted, the future took a different shape, everything changed and I knew it was happening. He did too.

We could call it a watershed moment. The atmosphere was pregnant with the import of it all, but we dressed it in frivolity and Thai food and satiety of the senses. There were mangos and daffodils and soft whispers, loud guffaws and shy smiles. An old Jamaican woman commented on our radiance.

My heart hurts to recall it, but my mind cannot shut it out.

The future envisioned during that great change is not what happened. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” But we were weren’t really making plans as much as we were bearing witness to what was happening, knowing all the while that what was happening was changing the future as much as it was changing us.

I don’t regret it in any sense, but that line that drew itself that day on this day bears stark witness to what was and what could have been both with what had been and what was being born.

There is only one photo of that day. I’m not sharing it because this is about the visceral, not the visual.

I miss him, but it’s also been long enough now that it feels normal he’s not here. He should be here and we should be having that future, but we’re not. I’m having a different one demarked by another day where I knew then and now were miles apart but separated by minutes. That day, too, I knew at the time heralded a before and after. I’ve lived them both now, the before having been longer than the after – so far.

The pictures are in my head, a swirling, twirling dervish of love and memory. This is not what we thought, but what is. Leonard Cohen might say, or sing, at this moment, Dance me to the end of love.