June 20
More good-byes. Yesterday we went to see some friends and former coworkers and said farewell to them. In a little while we will be going across town to see another friend. This is really reminding me of how many wonderful people we have come to know here. It is sometimes easy to take people for granted, but saying so many good-byes in such a concentrated period of time really makes me aware that I am leaving something valuable behind. I never thought I would feel sad at all when I was preparing to leave here. I used to think about how wonderful it would be to know that I was leaving and to be actually getting ready to go. Sadness never entered my mind as a potential part of that process. But here I am and here it is. It is, however, gratifying to know that some good things came out of my time here. All too often I have felt as if I were wasting my time and doing nothing of any value. At other times I felt that I was being wasted because I was doing so little and not even close to what I was capable of doing. But in this last week, I can see that I was building relationships and that is important. And that makes me happy. So it hasn’t been a total loss.
I’m kind of tired, so I am hoping to take tomorrow off. We’ll see how that goes. It would be nice to just hang out for a day after church and to give myself permission to lounge lazily around for a whole afternoon and evening! If I can just ignore the boxes and totes that are all over the place, I might be able to pull it off!
We got rid of more stuff today--we put all the kitchen stuff that we can’t take on Freecycle as a batch and off it went. That is good. We will be passing stuff along at an accelerated clip for the next several days.
We have our first two stops confirmed. We’ll be in The Dalles, Oregon first, and then we will go to the home of an old friend from grad school for a few days. That will be fun. I am looking forward to catching up with her. I last saw her a few years ago when she and her husband drove over the hill from Ashland, where they making their annual visit to see the Oregon Shakespeare Festival offerings. We went to lunch and spent the afternoon together. After leaving all of the people we will miss so much here, it will be nice to see a friend from the past. It’s a good reminder that sometimes people never leave our lives completely!
Showing posts with label saying good-bye. Show all posts
Showing posts with label saying good-bye. Show all posts
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Important People
June 18
Today we spent the day with some of the important people in our lives. And while it wasn’t our good-bye, we all knew that day was coming. For me, it was a rather emotional day as everything has started to seem more real and less like something that might happen someday. I know that in many ways this will be a tough week. We have to say good-bye to people we deeply care about, we have to give our cat to someone else, and we will have to put our dog to sleep. She does not travel well--even with sedatives. She is 12 years old and showing her age. Even so, we would have considered giving her to someone else, except that she gets very distressed when we are not with her. So we have determined that the kindest thing for her, even if not for us, is to celebrate the good life she has had and let her rest in peace. It is not easy to anticipate this, and it brings up memories of other 4-legged furry people we have lost over the years. We are both glad that we will be leaving and not having to spend a long time in this house when she isn’t here.
I still find it amazing that there are so many people that I will miss when I leave here. It’s hard to imagine not seeing them on a regular basis. And it has been truly amazing to be on the receiving end of such generosity and open-heartedness. Everyone wants to make sure we have everything we need; they ask us what they can give us; and they offer us things they have that we might not have thought of. Today we received a power inverter. I didn’t even know what that was when someone offered it to us, and at first we declined, but then we thought about it more and asked a couple of questions. Turns out it is something you connect to your car battery either via the cigarette lighter or the terminals and it turns it into a regular household current. So we will be able to charge our computers as we drive! There’s something I didn’t even really know existed and now I have one! I wouldn’t even have been able to ask for it, but someone cared enough to think about what we might need and to offer it to us. I am grateful for such caring and generosity and I feel lucky to have such people in my life. As excited as I am about what we are doing, saying good-bye will be hard. Endings and beginnings all at the same time. It’s hard. I feel drained tonight. But I will rest, maybe do some reading and crocheting. Tomorrow I will get up and go say good-bye to a couple more people and be happy that I got a chance to share a part of my journey with them. They have all enriched my life.
Today we spent the day with some of the important people in our lives. And while it wasn’t our good-bye, we all knew that day was coming. For me, it was a rather emotional day as everything has started to seem more real and less like something that might happen someday. I know that in many ways this will be a tough week. We have to say good-bye to people we deeply care about, we have to give our cat to someone else, and we will have to put our dog to sleep. She does not travel well--even with sedatives. She is 12 years old and showing her age. Even so, we would have considered giving her to someone else, except that she gets very distressed when we are not with her. So we have determined that the kindest thing for her, even if not for us, is to celebrate the good life she has had and let her rest in peace. It is not easy to anticipate this, and it brings up memories of other 4-legged furry people we have lost over the years. We are both glad that we will be leaving and not having to spend a long time in this house when she isn’t here.
I still find it amazing that there are so many people that I will miss when I leave here. It’s hard to imagine not seeing them on a regular basis. And it has been truly amazing to be on the receiving end of such generosity and open-heartedness. Everyone wants to make sure we have everything we need; they ask us what they can give us; and they offer us things they have that we might not have thought of. Today we received a power inverter. I didn’t even know what that was when someone offered it to us, and at first we declined, but then we thought about it more and asked a couple of questions. Turns out it is something you connect to your car battery either via the cigarette lighter or the terminals and it turns it into a regular household current. So we will be able to charge our computers as we drive! There’s something I didn’t even really know existed and now I have one! I wouldn’t even have been able to ask for it, but someone cared enough to think about what we might need and to offer it to us. I am grateful for such caring and generosity and I feel lucky to have such people in my life. As excited as I am about what we are doing, saying good-bye will be hard. Endings and beginnings all at the same time. It’s hard. I feel drained tonight. But I will rest, maybe do some reading and crocheting. Tomorrow I will get up and go say good-bye to a couple more people and be happy that I got a chance to share a part of my journey with them. They have all enriched my life.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
One Last Time
We have set a date! If all goes according to this part of the plan, we will be leaving Klamath Falls on Thursday, June 25th! I am afraid to get too excited about the whole thing, and there is a bunch of stuff to be done between now and then. Nevertheless, it feels good to have that date to plan for.
Yesterday we gave away a bunch of stuff and then ran around doing errands. We drove. Both of us have noticed that we really miss walking like we used to, but we had limited time and the things we had to do took us in opposite directions, so using the truck was the wiser choice. This morning, though, we were able to do what we needed to do in town and walk. It was nice to be able to do that even though it was a little hot. The sun here is just relentless. The quality of heat and light just seem completely different than anything I have ever experienced before. Still, I had an unexpected gift of a couple of weeks of clouds and rain, so I can’t complain.
One of the things I did this morning was to stop in at the yarn shop and say good-bye to the owner. I have worked there on an occasional basis for 4 ½ years, teaching and taking care of customers when she needed an extra pair of hands. The shop opened up just a couple of months after we moved here and I was so excited. I remember how I used to wish there was a yarn shop within walking distance when I lived in Fairbanks. So I got it here instead. It was a whole new area of my life that just blossomed. It’s a good place. So is the library.
I stopped in there yesterday to talk to the people I used to work with in the Circulation Department and to give them some cards with this blog address, our website and email. Before I left, I told them that the library had helped to keep me sane--not because I worked there, but because for the whole 5 years I have been here, that library has been a beacon of light for me. It is an excellent library for a town this size. I was surprised at this when I got here and to some extent, I am still surprised. But they have great people working there; they order great books; the circ people get them out on the shelves so I can find them; and what I don’t find, I can interlibrary loan and they will do their best to get what I want. It has been wonderful to have access to words, ideas, thoughts, and knowledge. I have missed having a university library to use, but this one has been almost as good!
So it has been interesting these past couple of days to stop in one last time at these places that have been a part of my life here. It seems unreal that after 5 years of popping in on a regular basis, I have now done that for the last time. But I will always remember the people and the places here that enriched my life in various ways when I really needed them!
Yesterday we gave away a bunch of stuff and then ran around doing errands. We drove. Both of us have noticed that we really miss walking like we used to, but we had limited time and the things we had to do took us in opposite directions, so using the truck was the wiser choice. This morning, though, we were able to do what we needed to do in town and walk. It was nice to be able to do that even though it was a little hot. The sun here is just relentless. The quality of heat and light just seem completely different than anything I have ever experienced before. Still, I had an unexpected gift of a couple of weeks of clouds and rain, so I can’t complain.
One of the things I did this morning was to stop in at the yarn shop and say good-bye to the owner. I have worked there on an occasional basis for 4 ½ years, teaching and taking care of customers when she needed an extra pair of hands. The shop opened up just a couple of months after we moved here and I was so excited. I remember how I used to wish there was a yarn shop within walking distance when I lived in Fairbanks. So I got it here instead. It was a whole new area of my life that just blossomed. It’s a good place. So is the library.
I stopped in there yesterday to talk to the people I used to work with in the Circulation Department and to give them some cards with this blog address, our website and email. Before I left, I told them that the library had helped to keep me sane--not because I worked there, but because for the whole 5 years I have been here, that library has been a beacon of light for me. It is an excellent library for a town this size. I was surprised at this when I got here and to some extent, I am still surprised. But they have great people working there; they order great books; the circ people get them out on the shelves so I can find them; and what I don’t find, I can interlibrary loan and they will do their best to get what I want. It has been wonderful to have access to words, ideas, thoughts, and knowledge. I have missed having a university library to use, but this one has been almost as good! So it has been interesting these past couple of days to stop in one last time at these places that have been a part of my life here. It seems unreal that after 5 years of popping in on a regular basis, I have now done that for the last time. But I will always remember the people and the places here that enriched my life in various ways when I really needed them!
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