Moving day finally came. I rented a 16-foot Penske truck from Home Depot, with a dolly—I was not going to schlep all those boxes of books one at a time.  My son Brian (31) and daughter Hannah (15) volunteered to help me load the truck.  I had been so focused on packing and cleaning that I neglected to ask for help loading the truck.  Brian brought a friend he met years earlier in Oklahoma during his church missionary service.  His Chinese name sounds like John Wayne, and he invited me to just call him that.  Brian, Hannah, and John Wayne were heroic!  We loaded a thousand boxes (actually 100) and a few pieces of furniture I am keeping.  Most of my furniture and household furnishings I am leaving for Brian and Avery to use, since I will not need them (or have room for them) at Mom’s and Dad’s house.

Many poignant thoughts struck me as I drove the big truck away from Tooele to Sandy.  (1) I am mourning leaving my apartment—my home.  No matter how good the new circumstance, we often grieve the circumstance we leave behind.  (2) Living alone in an apartment after 27 years of marriage was not my choice.  But making that apartment my home was my choice.  And I made it a beautiful, comfortable, safe, peaceful, happy home for myself, and for my children when they came to see me.  (3) I struggle with transitions, that place of belonging neither here nor there, neither now nor then, of belonging to no place and no time.  I am glad this transition is ending.  (4) The last day in one place is as strange as first day in another.  (5) I did it!  I made it!  I lived alone for six years after a traumatic divorce.  And I made it through.  Intact, even!  Stronger!  I emerged from a long, dark tunnel of trauma into the light of life and love, and even created my own light along the way.