My wife and I vacated for two weeks in June. It was just her and me.
After two decades of vacating as a family, our sons have grown beyond it.
Not unexpected, of course, I was prepared for the difference.
Yet I wasn't.
We made the two week trip that we have been making for the last 20+ years to the same location to visit with the same people. However, the number of same people has dwindled due to old age and death, and we find that we seem to spend more time visiting the graveyards of the area than we do living folks.
When I told my wife's aunt I wanted to see Earl, an elderly gentleman who was always friendly and quick with a greeting hug, she told me that he died last year and she meant to tell me but had forgotten. Her forgetfulness is forgivable as she is 82. Her mind isn't what it once was.
We had great plans to hit certain restaurants, to do old familiar activities. But when we got there, those plans didn't seem as important. So we didn't make it to Ryan's Steakhouse or play mini-golf in Chimney Rock, and I found that neither were the priority I thought they were. We did go to the Shake Shop for supper, but while there it became apparent to me that it was nowhere near as special as it used to be. I think I've gotten to the point where I never have to set foot in it again.
We ate out way too much.
Gone were the family get-togethers around the dinner table with the exception of a couple days when my wife's sister drove four or so hours to come see us.
― Stephen King, The Green Mile
Memories are fine things, but they are just mental pictures that don't capture the totality of experience. So we try to record as much as we can with cameras and video. Sometimes with writing or drawing. And this gives us a repository of places seen, people visited, a little bit of our own history in distant lands. It's all wonderful to reflect back upon, but it lacks the immediacy of sensation which is where the real experience lies.
Since the old ways are retreating, we went to some places where we had never been, drove some roads we hadn't driven before. Saw new sights, learned new lessons. And these things added to the value of our vacation.
Still, it was a time of long goodbyes much like it has been over the last four or five years, only it seems to be accelerating now. My sons are becoming adults with their own lives. The old homestead has passed out of reach and knowledge. The way it all used to be is no more.
Time has moved along in its utterly oblivious manner, caring not for the pieces of lives it spits out along the way.
Until, ultimately, all we are left with is goodbye.
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
