Moving

This is getting to be something I'm good at in life - moving.  I moved again about a month ago, from Ohio to North Carolina.  I may move across the street in a few weeks.  I will definitely move from North Carolina to Indiana next August.

Moving causes you to travel light.  With every move, I toss off more stuff.  Boxes go to Goodwill and stray, unused things get sent off to the kids in college.  I've learned to pack the books and the fabric into small boxes, because they don't weigh as much.  And although I do take all this stuff with me, I am becoming increasingly aware of how little of it I really need.

I think about death all the time.  Makaela says it makes me morbid - but it's really just like moving.  When I consider the friends I've lost, I don't think of them as "dead."  Or maybe "dead" simply means a change of address in my mind.  Death, for me, has become less about a status of being and more about location.  It is a change in a place of residence.

The thought of moving makes me tired.  Pulling up stakes is a bit like pulling a band-aid off the skin.  There are spots where I've gotten attached, and it hurts to pull away.  Worse, I know it's going to hurt, and the thought of what it will feel like is always worse than the actual pain.

The loss of someone to death is like that too.  That shock of the quick ripping away of the bandage is enough to make you faint.  We all have these relationships stuck all over us, and to pull one off suddenly is unbelievably painful - even when that beloved is just relocating.  We know they're not moving back.

I will move someday to that far country, we all will.  I'm just hoping that I will have so little to pack that I will just fly away.  If nothing else, I'll have gotten good at it by then with all this practice.