Life; Often In The Way

I have mentioned a few times how important it is to cherish every moment you have while on your travels (here & here), because you never know what life will throw at you – you just don’t know if you will make it back to the beautiful location you discovered, or if you will even have the opportunity to head out again.

Two months ago I had a plan to spend a glorious month alone touring the EU. I had my tickets purchased, and my contacts made, and was already on the other side of Canada awaiting the international leg of my flight, when the night before I was to leave, my father-in-law passed away. I cancelled my trip and headed back home to my grieving husband, who was now an orphan (no matter how old you are, no one is ready for that).

It changed everything for us. Though he has (much older) siblings, he felt his ties here, to British Columbia, were essentially gone. Years ago his daughter left for Vancouver Island to attend University (and stayed there), and my daughter returned to our hometown of Toronto when she turned 21.

Now we were just a couple of empty nesters living in a too big house like (inactive) seniors – with absent children and no grandchildren. I even put on weight which contributes to my significant back problems. That was just not going to do. So we decided that we would head to Toronto, my home, but a place my other half has only visited once, for a few hours.

My husband quit his well paying job of the last decade and a half, we sold our (beautiful) home, and in 3 weeks from now we begin our journey back across Canada. No jobs lined up, no place to live. We are just going.

Life is too short to be wasted.

Are we scared? Yes. It was a huge decision. A terrifying decision, not lost on our friends and family – many of which tried to convince us to stay – more of whom tried to convince Dave to keep his job using familiar scare tactics;

‘It won’t be easy for you to find new work.’

‘You are giving up your month of paid holidays and good benefits?’

‘You will never find a better job.’

‘You will regret leaving beautiful British Columbia.’

‘You will miss the mountains and the ocean.’

‘You won’t like Toronto.’

And though most of these statements are likely facts (except the last one, of course!), we could just no longer live like hypocrites, too afraid to embrace every moment because of a ‘good job’ he didn’t like. It was no longer enriching, he had reached to top of his career long ago and felt there was nothing more to aspire to. He was bored and frustrated.

There is more to life than money and a nice view.

So now I sit in my mostly packed up home, waiting for the storage ‘POD’ to arrive to take whats left of our belongings across the country to a storage facility until we find a place to call home.

The beginning of next month we take our dog and our cat (!!) on another epic road trip across this vast country of ours – something I am grateful to do again particularly because all of my photos were stolen (laptop, two external hard drives and 22 memory sticks worth) when we experienced a very alarming home invasion over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

You can bet I will land on the other side with no less than 6,000 images of this incredible country. I will be able to finish my Canada tour notes, and alleviate a *tiny* bit of the sting of the loss of all my beloved travel photos.

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I look forward to sharing with you!