Day 78 - Saying goodbye

October 10.  Columbus Day.  One can't deny it anymore.  Summer 2016 is history.  Fall is full on.

Said goodbye today to Dairy Queen.  Last date with Rosie until sometime in March, 2017.  As we finished our sundae, I thought, "I wonder what my life will look like next spring?"  A lot of potential changes on the horizon.  I hope they will be good ones.

I also did the last - LAST - swim in Buzzards Bay for 2016.  No doubt.  The water temperature dropped like a rock in the past several days.  I'm ready ow to wash the suits and put them away.  Turn to biking, walking, running, and occasional swimming at the YMCA for exercise.  It was a GLORIOUS summer of swimming.  It's ok.  I think I'm actually ready for new routine.

Four years ago this evening, October 10, 2012, I said goodbye - or maybe it was goodnight - to my mother for the last time.  She passed peacefully in my arms that evening. I mentioned it to two people today who offered me condolences.  I responded thank you, but it wasn't a sad day for me today.  Rather, I choose to mark it by embracing life.  Maybe that's part of why I and to swim one more time today.  Because I could.

A friend came into the gallery this morning to say goodbye before leaving the Cape until next Spring.  She is a neighbor, who I met just a few days after my mother passed, when she showed up at my door carrying an armful of daisies from her garden.  Daisy were my mother's favorite flowers.  I shared that with her.  It was like an angel visitation that day, her showing up with daisies.

This morning, she did the same.  Knowing that my mother passed sometime around this holiday weekend, but not remembering the date. She told me she meant to stop by with the flowers on Friday afternoon but her travel delayed her.   I told her she got it exactly right.  Today is the day.  Showing up with those flowers today was exquisite.

Enjoy every moment you have with loved ones.  You already know that.  I'm not telling you anything new.  But saying goodbye helps us to remember to appreciate even more the times BEFORE goodbye.  Because sometimes we just don't know when the one that happens today might end up being the last one.

It was a GLORIOUS swimming season.  I will carry the memory through the winter.  Thank you to each one of you who shared the journey with me.  Love you all.

xo
​Mimi

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