I can breathe again .. in 2023

I’m here. We made it. Almost 3100km in 3 days. All told, it was probably a $6000 move, not including buying the car & the house … I wouldn’t have made it without everyone.

I still don’t understand how all these people came together for me and got us here. I sit on my front porch, just like I dreamed of, surrounded by trees & birds & breeze & sunshine & the little bit of flowers I managed to plant so late in the season, and I’m … happy?

Am I? I think so. I want to be. The guilt is crushing though and it confuses the happiness and hope. I wouldn’t be happy here if you hadn’t died … I wouldn’t be here at all … so that must mean I’m happy that you died if I’m happy here?

I have all of you with me here. I only opened the velvet covered box to fill the pendants your Dad asked me to before I left. He couldn’t bring himself to .. I struggled and cried, but took a measure of peace from the task .. knowing I was memorializing you for him.

One pendant hangs from his rear view mirror in the truck with your face mask, right where you put it last. The other hangs just above your mother’s heart.

For now, the velvet box is tucked away .. I’m ordering hydrangea root balls for autumn planting this fall and I will open it again then so that you will forever be with me and our hydrangea.

I wrote your name on the back of the provincial sign as we crossed the border .. this is your home too, now. We’ll travel back to the Okanagan soon, now that we’re closer, and I’ll leave some of you with the lake you never got to see with me.

Wherever I go, you go … always, my love. I miss you so much.