My next trip - a hurdle? a new start? grief and joy mixed together

Last night, I printed my luggage tags for my next cruise.  That's one of the big steps in the anticipation of an upcoming cruise.  I've also gotten e-mails reminding me of my upcoming hotel stays.  It will be here before I know it!

I'm excited.  First and foremost, I'm really excited.  There's something about the sway of the ship, the salty air, and the sun rising over the water that speaks to the depths of my soul like nothing else.  And the chance to hug my parents, sister, niece, and nephew is something I've been looking forward to since I last saw them at Thanksgiving.  And last time I visited Quebec City, it stole my heart.  I even have a special outfit picked out for the day I plan to spend wandering the city.

But he was supposed to go with me.  Since we were planning to just join for the second week, I had been trying to convince him that we should book a night at the Frontenac Castle.  Wouldn't that have been cool?  And we would have been able to walk the halls together of our honeymoon.  I would have imagined myself in that very suite getting dressed in my wedding gown - a gown that hopefully someone snatched up from Goodwill - I didn't know what else to do with a gown that old in the rush to divide our stuff last year.  

We would have taken that excursion to view puffins and gannets and other amazing birds together - him with his binoculars pointing them out to me, me with my camera documenting what we saw.

But it wasn't meant to be.

So I'm traveling by myself but I will not be alone.  I will have to figure out how to navigate shuttles, buses, and Boston on my own but then I will reunite with a family that loves me.  I'm apprehensive about doing some of that on my own but I know that I am resourceful and I am prepared.

There will be grief.  I can't take this trip without grief of what once was and what might have been.  But I will overcome that.  I will make new memories.  I will work through my grief until I reach the joy.  I will smile and I will cry.  I will order good champagne to share and toast to the new me.  And I've already informed my sister of her duty to steal my Espresso Martini one night and pass it around the table as a ritual to complete the cycle - twenty years ago, it was her Espresso Martini I stole and passed around the table.

I'm really enjoying the new me and am going to ride that forward momentum into this next chapter while still making some space for the grief of the last chapter.  It's a weird complexity at times but life is too short to not embrace it all.