SAMMAMISH, WA
29th VII 2015

Climbed the dead end road Beth lives on barefoot with a glass of wine to admire the moon. Hoped I’d see the bear that’s been shitting in her yard. Speculated all month what made the scat and convinced now, it’s bear. Always goes in the same spot. Put on some Billie Holiday CD that spills out through the windows into the night like it belongs there. Sat for a while on the deck by the plastic hummingbird mobile that lights up, our last night in the States. No room I sit in feels right.

Thought about this word Closure and what it means. My friend Steve asked why I wanted to see my old boss, for closure? and he was right, I didn’t get it. Closure is this psychological healing, like if you lose a kid or your husband goes missing in the war, you want the body back.

When I was doing Yoga I learned the body retains emotions and the memory of pain as a physical thing. I had a friend who cried once at the end of a session because she was letting go some pain of her first husband, and their divorce.

When I think of closure, it’s the two cats I had to bury that come to mind, why it was important I bury them and the manner in which I did, the ritual, the sort of loving gestures you need to do for yourself, for them. I haven’t seen a lot of death but I’ve seen enough of it to bolster me to live more. I think about the last cat I had to put down, and looking at my watch as the time was drawing closer I had to take her in.

I went back and read some posts from late 2012, when the idea of leaving like we are now was starting to incubate. You may relate to this, but it’s a kind of out-of-body sensation where I’m watching myself operate as though I’m in a film. It’s freeing and terrifying. My cell phone number goes fallow tomorrow and we lose eight or nine hours and then emerge in Frankfurt Friday morning, with nine months out of the States and a wad of Euros in my pack, a postcard of a church in Wales where my step-dad got baptized in 1939 — a moon that’s full and fat and looks about the same as it does every month, when you’re able to see it. That funny face that looks sorrowful and foolish, but lights the night sky like a candle, and how just a small flame can go a long way in the dark. It’s the best of lives we have, right now.

Categories: travel

Tags: bears, Billie Holiday, closure, Cloud Atlas, death, expats, full moon, healing, hummingbirds, loss, Memoir, spirituality, travel, Wales, yoga