Endings don't seem to be waiting for December 31st this year. After a 12-month cycle that saw the deaths of three in my inner circle, Amber and I traveled to Tucson this month to close a 13-year chapter in our lives.
It actually started back in 1999 when, on the uncertain brink of Y2K, we decided to sublet our houses and travel the country in a 1973 motor home we named Betty. Our originally-planned six months turned out to be not long enough. With summer gigs in Michigan and long-distance contract work, we managed to live in Betty for 18 months, until my father's brain cancer diagnosis called us back to the Pacific Northwest.
We spent the winter of that magical sojourn on some women's land just west of Tucson's Saguaro National Park. The Sonoran Desert was endlessly fascinating to us, with its idiosyncratically animated cactus shapes and all manner of bird and animal life: quail, coyote, rabbit, dove, owl, lizard, javelina.
After my Dad died and we resumed "life as normal" back in Portland, the desert continued to call our names. We returned on vacation and noticed many houses featured casitas out back. We contacted a realtor and not too much later, we'd sold Amber's condo in Portland and bought a three-bedroom house in Tucson with a separately-fenced, one-bedroom off the alley that became our beloved retreat for the next 13 years.
It actually started back in 1999 when, on the uncertain brink of Y2K, we decided to sublet our houses and travel the country in a 1973 motor home we named Betty. Our originally-planned six months turned out to be not long enough. With summer gigs in Michigan and long-distance contract work, we managed to live in Betty for 18 months, until my father's brain cancer diagnosis called us back to the Pacific Northwest.
We spent the winter of that magical sojourn on some women's land just west of Tucson's Saguaro National Park. The Sonoran Desert was endlessly fascinating to us, with its idiosyncratically animated cactus shapes and all manner of bird and animal life: quail, coyote, rabbit, dove, owl, lizard, javelina.
After my Dad died and we resumed "life as normal" back in Portland, the desert continued to call our names. We returned on vacation and noticed many houses featured casitas out back. We contacted a realtor and not too much later, we'd sold Amber's condo in Portland and bought a three-bedroom house in Tucson with a separately-fenced, one-bedroom off the alley that became our beloved retreat for the next 13 years.
Not exactly a "vacation home" - no pool, no view. But the sky was nearly always blue. The plant and bird and animal life, abundant. The rental income from the main house pretty much paid for itself. Every time we visited, we enjoyed old favorite places. Every time we visited we discovered something new. We joined, most years, with over 100,000 others in the remarkable All Souls Procession, first memorializing my father with a personal altar, later processing in Marcy's nightgowns five months after her death.
But in this time in which we all must learn the ending of things, it was time to let go of the responsibility of owning property 1,500 miles away. We sold the place easily and booked a flight to go down to clear out our humble but cherished casita.
While I knew it would be sad to say goodbye to our sweet little place, I didn't expect to have so many endings wrapped into this one.
But in this time in which we all must learn the ending of things, it was time to let go of the responsibility of owning property 1,500 miles away. We sold the place easily and booked a flight to go down to clear out our humble but cherished casita.
While I knew it would be sad to say goodbye to our sweet little place, I didn't expect to have so many endings wrapped into this one.
My last visit there, I'd driven away to a week at the City of Hope outside Los Angeles where my friend Bill was in a clinical trial; he died just five months later. The casita was filled with furnishings that had lived in my Dad's home before his death. When my stepmother downsized, we inherited half a moving van of objects. Now it was time to release them - even the patio set from their lanai in Hawaii I'd sat on as a 12 year-old, more than 40 years ago. We sold some of it and gave the rest to Syrian refugees.
I gathered up mementoes of our years in Tucson: little bits of plant life and animal skeletons picked up on hikes, the altars I'd made for my Dad and Marcy, ticket stubs from shows we'd attended....
Once we'd finished our business in town we headed out to a B&B in the desert where we'd first stayed 15 years ago when we began dreaming the dream of a place down there. I arranged all the bits and pieces on our terrace. We took our last hikes, speaking our farewells: "Goodbye Saguaro, goodbye Ocotillo, goodbye Quail, goodbye Teddybear Cholla...."
On our last night we lit a fire in our chiminea and leafed through all the paper memories before giving them to the flames. The next morning, before we left for the airport, we walked out onto the land one last time and hung our prayer flags in gratitude for the strange, wild beauty and the solace we found in the Sonoran desert.
I gathered up mementoes of our years in Tucson: little bits of plant life and animal skeletons picked up on hikes, the altars I'd made for my Dad and Marcy, ticket stubs from shows we'd attended....
Once we'd finished our business in town we headed out to a B&B in the desert where we'd first stayed 15 years ago when we began dreaming the dream of a place down there. I arranged all the bits and pieces on our terrace. We took our last hikes, speaking our farewells: "Goodbye Saguaro, goodbye Ocotillo, goodbye Quail, goodbye Teddybear Cholla...."
On our last night we lit a fire in our chiminea and leafed through all the paper memories before giving them to the flames. The next morning, before we left for the airport, we walked out onto the land one last time and hung our prayer flags in gratitude for the strange, wild beauty and the solace we found in the Sonoran desert.
RSS Feed