patterns in the sea and unknown goodbyes

06/29  | Twenty-Nine Days Challenge

Hair full of static, lists trailing bullet points, and a meeting thrown in just for kicks.  Things are less strained than they were last week {though no less busy} and I am aiming for focus to get a lot done before more comes my way.

A short fifteen-minute break lands me in Nihon, somehow.  Miyajima Island, actually.  And I am daydreaming about delightful wind, ferry rides, floating tori, graceful dear relaxing in any shade they can find, hiking along green trails shared with monkeys, aqua-blue waters, and patterns in the sea.

  

Why is it, that every time I come back from a foreign country, I know that I did not appreciate it neraly enough?  Even this most recent trip {in 2009} feels that way as I look back on pictures...

...Especially when I think of Keech and how this trip was the last time I spent with him before his death this past October, and I had no idea at the time.  I couldn't have known.  He couldn't have known.  The diagnosis had not yet come.

It brings a sure sadness and I feel that even though these were lovely experiences and memories of sailing towards floating tori and climbing green green mountains, they cannot erase the deep sense of regret and knowledge that I was so near to Keech- in his very part of the world, so very far from my own- and yet I still wasted some of the precious time when I could have been saying unknown goodbyes and painting even more beautiful last-time memories.

I am truly grateful that I saw him one last time before he started to leave us.  I just wish I were wiser then and had valued every moment more.

{polaroid 600:  with patterns in the sea - miyajima island, nihon}