Saying Goodbye?

I started brainstorming ideas for this, our second blog post topic, back in early September. I had intended to create a list of genius ideas, but only really had one. So I typed, “Saying Goodbye?” with the question mark to indicate my uncertainty and to hopefully trigger subsequent inspiration. Then, without another idea, I closed the file.

The process of packing up your life and leaving everyone you know for three years to sail around the world includes saying goodbye to people that you love and that you have become accustomed to seeing with some interval of regularity—sometimes frequently and sometimes infrequently. Saying goodbye properly was important to both Mike and me. We created a fairly comprehensive farewell plan, which had us traveling to different cities and spanned several months. We wanted to address as many people as possible in person.

Whenever we depart from our beloved family and friends, there’s usually some hope or pretense that we’ll see each other again soon, perhaps even sooner than planned or has happened historically. Three years is a LONG time to not see anyone you know in your life. Saying goodbye in this case is especially difficult because there’s almost no chance of seeing each other any time sooner; it’ll likely be longer.

We hugged people tightly, in many cases choked back some tears, and in all cases gave and received pep talks and monologues of affection. It was sad but also lovely.

Some options remained: we invited people to join us on the boat, shared the itinerary so people could perhaps meet us along the way, made some plans to reunite back on the west coast when we dock there, and promised to stay in touch. But in most cases we knew it is unlikely people will be able to make all that possible, whether they want to or not.

And so we executed our careful farewell plan from July to September. Then in late September, we packed up our suitcases, moved out of our apartment and set our nomadic lives into motion. It started with a previously-planned, two-week trip to Italy with my parents, which happened to tuck in neatly before our big cruise departure. The ship was scheduled to leave Istanbul on November 1. Perfect!

Until it wasn’t.

While we were off enjoying Italy, Miray announced that our cruise was delayed. They had been planning to purchase a ship especially for our trip, which we always knew. The problem was (is) that it’s taking them much longer than expected to complete the transaction. The departure date was changed to November 11 and the port was moved to Amsterdam. A week later, it changed again to November 30, port TBD, and remains that way now until further notice.

Life can be unpredictable. At this point, we, all the other passengers, and (all?) of the Miray employees really have no idea whether we are even going on this cruise. Communication from Miray has been infrequent and vague. More than one month behind schedule and counting, the vessel sale is neither complete nor certain. Once/if it is, they’ll still need to paint it, rename it and make repairs to it before we can begin. The longer we have to wait, the more questions and complications arise.

What we can control is how we choose to respond to the choppy waters we face in life. Is this whole situation a blessing or a curse? Despite the discomfort of real overhaul and uncertainty, we did receive the absolute gift of sincerely telling our people how much we love them. And, after all, no one ever really knows when we’ll see anyone again.

That said, almost immediately after all that anticipated absence, all the gushing and agonizing about being underway a world away, sailing off in our cabin for years, we’ll instead remain, underfoot, only a wall away, snoring loudly in their guest rooms—indefinitely.

I suppose that title was right all along…