I was beyond exhaustion. This was the last few hours in my apartment of 54 years.
I’d been packing up essential things to take to my new Independent Living facility. This followed six long weeks of getting rid of clothes, prized jewelry, business papers, old letters and even older tax returns!
But the most important, and the hardest part, had been sorting through my books. The facility could take a few for their library, and my apartment could hold maybe ten. So, I needed to whittle perhaps a thousand books down to only twenty.
Each time I thought I’d finished, that I was almost through, I’d find another row behind the first row of books or a small box hidden under a larger box.
The day had finally arrived!
With the help of my son Steve and his wife, Katee, I was to leave my home of so many years.
As they packed up the luggage carts to carry my things down to the car, I tried to neaten up the place a bit, but it was impossible.
There were stacks of dishes on the table, bags containing my clothes, piles of books, all taken out of boxes that we couldn’t get into the car.
Shelves that once held perfectly placed books and travel artifacts were now stuffed with things that Steve and my other son, Peter, had yet to claim.
Near the window, garbage bags containing clothes were piled so high that Steve had to lean far forward and reach hard to turn the last lamp off.
When I looked at the rooms for the last time, the place was such a disaster, it didn’t feel so hard to walk out the door.
The trip down to Maryland was hard, especially because the hour that we’d planned to leave was long past. Even though the traffic wasn’t that bad, we didn’t arrive at the hotel we were staying at until 10:30 p.m.
Unloading essential items from the big SUV and placing things where I needed them for my single-night stay at the hotel took a lot of time. I didn’t get into bed until midnight.
Even then, I didn’t sleep well. We were to check into my new facility between 10:00 and 11:00 the next morning. With that, there was no time for us to have a relaxing breakfast before getting to work.
My room at Brightview, now filled with boxes, seemed as strange as my messy apartment that I still thought of as home.
Staff members filed in and out my room all day while my son and daughter-in-law worked hard to get my personal things into drawers and some paintings on the wall before they had to say goodbye.
I felt the need to escape. I went to the dining room.
When I returned, I was so exhausted, I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep. But I did have trouble staying asleep.
I had a very vivid dream that there was a globe outside my window, complete with rivers, continents, and oceans. All the borders were carefully delineated. At the top of it was a knob. Perhaps an Arctic iceberg, I thought.
I found a rubber band and tried to cast it around the iceberg. Again and again, I missed. I never was athletic. It was dark, and my night blindness made it even harder, adding to my list of deficiencies. On top of the globe were small figures. They were my New York friends.
I held on tight, but the globe moved farther and farther away from me. My friends tried to help, their hands reaching out to pull me back. The rubber band stretched to a thin strand.
I prayed that it would hold, even making the sign of the cross.
The shapes of my friends grew smaller and smaller. Then I saw movement. What was that? They were waving. First one by one, and then all of them together.
Goodbye, Barbara, goodbye. Goodbye, dear friend. Goodbye!
With a snap so loud, I jumped and the bed springs rattled, the rubber band broke and fell to the ground in pieces.
New York was moving away and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
My cheeks felt wet. I brushed at them. They were wet.
“Was the window open?” My sleepy self wondered.
“But the windows here don’t open.” My logical self reasoned.
The image was so strong that even when I fell asleep the second time, I awoke with the ominous feeling it was going to happen all over again.
I shook my head and waved my arms trying to wake fully.
I managed to stay awake until the first light of dawn. Holding the beautiful image of orange light shining through deep green leaves in my mind, at last, I slept. Readying myself to awaken and embrace my new life.