Home Sweet Home, or, Two Weddings and a Funeral for a Friend

(Note: More on Bali and our trip to northern Thailand, as well as pics from our trip home, will be posted later, maybe when I catch up with those pics again at home in November. This post takes up with us in Pai, in northern Thailand. Since then, we have been to England and I am writing this from Amsterdam the night before we leave for Lubeck, Germany.)


We planned to return home from northern Thailand for a two-week family visit on July 8. As it turned out, my old friend and former brother-in-law Gary passed away a couple weeks before, so we decided to return home early. (See also my Sad News post.) This was a terribly tough decision, as my heart was home with Gary and our extended family, as well as in Asia with Eric and our friends Holly and Jacob, where we were to finish our Asia adventure with more treks and ruins to visit in Sukhothai. I guess the biggest conundrum was whether my return at this time would really make a difference to anyone at home. In the end, whether they really needed me there or not, I needed to be there with our family. Of course Eric fully supported my decision and was ready to come home with me. In arranging travel that morning, the choices for the 20+ hours transit home were either to leave in two days (the day of the memorial) and arrive at the memorial late, jetlagged, and bedraggled, or to take a bus now from Pai to Chiang Mai and then fly to Bangkok, then on to San Francisco. So our leavetaking from Asia was abrupt. We had a quick lunch with Holly and Jacob, then stepped into a tuk-tuk, the driver sealing us in with a plastic sheet against the pelting rain, through which we waved good-bye to Holly and Jacob as we pulled around the corner, verklempt and in disbelief. How could we possibly be leaving Asia? All of the memories of the last seven amazing months bloomed inside me, to remain memories (and stories!) until I pass this way again.

I never regretted the decision to leave when we did. It felt very right to say good-bye to Gary in person, and especially to be close to his daughters and our family. I also reconnected with some old friends I hadn't seen in quite a while. And I was able to spend some special time with a few family members, talking with them and giving them Reiki, which seemed to help them create some peace.

At home, we went to the wedding of two of our friends, and got to see a number of friends we haven't seen since we left for Asia, in addition to Sheila, who was with us in Vietnam. The next morning, we met up with Holly T and Rob in San Francisco, with whom we were in Cambodia, Malaysia, and Bali. We also visited with Josh and Matt at Josh's cool new company in San Francisco.

We also visited with another friend who filled us in on her magical April wedding, which we were sad to have missed. And we joined my old work team for a retirement lunch for our friend June, and managed to see some other dear friends as well as missing some other dear friends.

And we got to see a lot of our family. We visited Eric's folks at their home in California's Gold Country, where we went creek walking and panned for gold. The one food I had been hankering for in Asia, peaches, were in abundance there, in all their juicy goodness, and we ate lots of them. In Mt. View, we visited with my dad, saw the Harry Potter movie twice (once with Todd and once with Hayley), and went on hikes at Deer Hollow and along the bluffs above the Pacific north of Santa Cruz. At home, I cradled the lovely cedar box that holds our kitty Spike, and felt very close to him. Timmy finally remembered who we are and came out from under the couch. Zoette deigned to have us pet her once or twice. My mom and stepdad, along with my brother Mark and wife Teresa, came to see us, and we celebrated everyone's 2007 birthday with one cake and many candles.

People keep asking if we have culture shock coming back, and I have to say no we didn't. What I did experience was kind of like coming back into the world after meditating for eight hours or so. The energy of all that is home was crisply defined. Situations that were blurry came into sharper focus. All that is sweet and loving felt all the more so. My relationships with family and friends became more clear and the love that is really there was all the more immediate. The air felt pristine, the sunlight soft, and the smell and energy of the redwoods, like our little house bordered by morning glories, felt like home.