Saying good bye to friends and family.

As our departure date loomed closer and closer we realized that we weren’t going to be able to spend one-on-one time with many of our friends before we left so we began arranging evenings where we would be somewhere, a restaurant or bar, and just let everybody know so they could join us if they wished.  The Cameo Ball turned out to be one of these functions that allowed us to spend an evening with quite a number of our friends all at once. 

We were slightly embarrassed when the Master of Ceremonies called us to the stage while they sang good-bye to us but all in all it was a lovely, very enjoyable evening.  Other evenings we spent in the company of several of our friends enjoying their companionship for what might be the last time for quite a while.  This process worked out rather well for us since our calendar was crazy with last minute things that needed to be done throughout March and April.

We were finally coming to an end of the process of getting rid of our possessions.  Final selections regarding what would go with us and what else needed to go where were being made.  We made arrangements to donate the remainder of our possessions with a friend who operates a thrift store in his ministry.  Resurrection Ministry scheduled a van to come pick up everything that we were not taking with us on the day we moved out of the condo, the last day before we got on the plane!

One of the single most time consuming jobs we had to complete was the scanning or recording in electronic format of our photos and important documents and we were finally bringing this to an end.  Our daughter and her friend spent hours at our kitchen table when they were not at class or at work helping us with the photos.  It was so very hard to throw 30 or 40 years of photos away!

We were still selling the last few things, so people were coming by to pick stuff up and we were making almost daily trips to the post office to ship items that were bought from e-bay listings.  Gradually the condo was emptying out.

Little, yet important things also needed to be handled.  We personally updated our wills and trust and had the changes notarized at our bank at the same time we closed our local accounts.  We put the hard copies of our wills, trust, passports, birth certificates, insurance policies, etc. into a book that we left with the executor of our estate with copies for us and a copy to the backup executor.

Interestingly, with all we had going on, we found that it was next to impossible to do without a permanent phone number or permanent address.  We planned to truly be vagabonds, renting wherever we wished to be, for however long we wished, or could be there.  We solved the permanent phone problem through Skype who provides us a local Arizona number with voicemail for $60 per year.  The permanent address problem was solved by using the executor of our estate’s address (thanks Ed we really appreciate you!)

We worked very hard to make the permanent address a very small problem for the executor by changing all our investment, banking, credit card and other correspondence to be delivered via email.  We had also tested the effectiveness of this by having our other mail forwarded to the condo we were staying in for several weeks.  The result was good as we found that primarily junk mail was being forwarded and we were successfully receiving important information electronically.

Our friends got together and planned a phenomenal “going away” party for us, we were astounded at the outpouring of love and support even though we knew many of them thought we were crazy!  We knew that although we would be going to an entirely new life our friends here in Arizona would always be with us, and would be counting on us to stay in touch.  FaceBook, Skype and Gmail were going to get a regular workout!

Getting on track...

We were on track, for the time being.  Seemed like there was no end of things to do; setting up paperless statements, taxes, scanning records, scanning photos, scanning, scanning…….

After all the scanning there was shredding, and shredding…you get the point.  We killed at least one shredder and our printer/scanner would never be the same but that was okay, we didn’t care; it wasn’t going with us.

About this time our youngest daughter and her roommate began to talk about traveling abroad and taking a TEFL course like we did.  Their destination; Istanbul wow!  Our original thought was that this was a little bit exotic for two young girls on their first trip abroad but who were we to judge; after all, we’re nuts right?

A funny thing was beginning to happen to us as we slowly began emptying out all those custom made storage cabinets in the garage and shredded our paper files; we were closing doors on many old, no longer relevant parts of our lives.  Yes, there was some laughter and some teary eyes as we found pictures, letters and items with memories of people and events from long ago.  It was pretty good therapy actually.

We also started making a special effort to spend more time together, you know, just to see how that might work.  How the hell were we going to do that?  Well, this may sound corny but we started with “date night” where at least once a week we would go out together, have dinner and a couple of drinks and simply talk.  This gave us time to plan our now complicated lives and to simply listen to the other which was something we found we had stopped doing.  Pretty quickly, we began having date night a lot more often than once a week.

We were really out of shape and were working our rusty old bodies out for an hour or two, at least twice a week and probably would have injured ourselves if we hadn’t had a physical therapist designing our program.  The problem is that by the time you are fifty, if you haven’t maintained a regular exercise program, your body has had time to degenerate and injuries both small and large have accumulated, so care must be taken to strengthen all areas, slowly in order to avoid injury.

Marilyn started wrapping up service on all the Boards and Commissions she was involved with, letting them know that she would not be available to serve in the following year.   Projects that needed special attention required some hand off and she found people to work with her, so that they would be able to carry on without her into the future.   Wonderful people stepped up and most of the big projects that are very close to her heart (see links below) were taken over by competent, caring individuals, who will undoubtedly continue them successfully.  She also had a built in network of professionals that she could hand off any client that had unfinished business to, when the time came.

The Turnbow Foundation
Ms. Senior Arizona Pageant
The Cameo Ball
The Cameo Foundation
Save The Family
Butterfly House
Tempe Chamber of Commerce

Mike’s partner of several years and he ended their partnership in the spring, not over any disagreements but due to the fact that we were planning to be abroad for an indefinite time period.  We were starting to investigate things we could do to earn money abroad that would help us stretch our savings and were encouraged by what we found.  Writing, proofreading, photography and many other things in addition to teaching English were all things we could do anywhere we found ourselves, provided we had access to the internet.   We both still had to maintain our existing clients while investigating these alternatives and otherwise preparing our lives.  We were busy!

It was a beautiful Sunday morning on Father’s Day and I had no plans to play golf.  Marilyn was running a few errands and I settled down to watch the final round of the US Open golf tournament, my usual Father’s Day thing.

Then my cell phone rang and I answered to the sound of my wife’s sobbing and shaken voice……”I’ve had an accident.”