A great vacation!

I'm back and refreshed from the best vacation ever! Oh, I've had vacations before, but usually filled with angst over the kids, the pets, whether I packed the right clothes, enough clothes, and fraught with small arguments with my husband over which way to go or who should ask for directions.

This time I set off with trepidation, my aunt having collapsed into a fatal coma just two weeks prior, but still alive in hospice care in our local hospital. I had teary melt-downs over whether or not to go on the scheduled vacation, but my family members insisted, so off I went with my patient husband.

Once I was in travel mode, I realized there was no turning back, and I had time (finally) to be thoughtful about how my aunt lived her life. She had some mental limitations from birth, but you would never have known it. She lived her life way more fully than most people I know, always friendly and "out there" with everyone. She never hesitated trying something new, taking on new friends or projects, reading books for the challenge. She was quite young, 62, to be dying and I just could not fathom a life without her in it. She was only 14 years old when I was born, so like my big sister in many ways.

Needless to say I found myself realizing how this might apply to my own life. Why do we need sledgehammer moments to "get it?" I also realized that anything can happen any time, no warning, no preparation, and that I was going to make the most of this vacation with my husband. Lo and behold we had a great time -- I kept reigning myself in to be delirously happy where I was at that very moment, not to wish I was somewhere else or somebody else, and this amazing thing happened -- I was happy to be me. I knew how lucky I was, how fortunate, how excruciatingly grateful and that mood just took over and transformed my idea of a vacation entirely.

How long will the new me last? There will be flubs, slips and glimmers of the girl of the past, but this was truly a transformation of the mind and in my experience, that usually sticks around. I just finally "got it!" Alleluia!