When life moves on without you

It is probably obvious to most people but one of the strange things about traveling for an extended period of time is that life back home keeps moving without you. This summer, a few of my cousins and good friends had or will have babies and there is a family wedding in California in a few weeks I am missing. A day or two after I arrived in Bishkek I heard from a good friend that he and his now girlfriend are moving to neighboring Uzbekistan, who’s consulate I just spent the morning at applying for a visa. My friends are leaving at the end of August and they will be getting married tomorrow so he can go with her. It looks like I’ll be able to see them before they leave but life in Portland without them around will definitely be different.

A Kyrgyz bus station. This one is much nicer than the one referenced in this blog post but I didn't thing to take a photo at that time.

The fact that life back home is continuing to move on in my absence hit home when I was sitting in a Kyrgyz bus station waiting for the shared taxi to fill up so I could ride with a bunch of strangers across a sketchy mountain road. I looked at my phone hoping it would provide a distraction to pass the time and saw and email from my mom telling me that my ex mother in law, who I’ll refer to as C, was in hospice care. Then this morning, as I was printing documents for the Uzbek visa, I got an email from K saying C had passed away. C started showing signs of early onset Alzheimer’s about ten years ago, before she was 60, and over time the disease has taken more and more from her. As a result I suppose this should not have been a surprise but I taken aback and saddened by the news.

C was a rare human. While K, her father, and I all tend to be a bit judgmental and are all self described realists, C always saw the good in people and the positive side of every situation. Much like the sun, which she had a natural affinity for, she radiated warmth and generosity. When K and I were both in graduate school C and K’s father would cook a weekly home made meal for us that would usually last for two dinners. She would also bake delicious cookies for us and bring the rest of the batch to a local youth shelter. Before retiring she worked for a local college helping students with learning disabilities figure out how to succeed academically. From the stories she would tell it was clear she was also a mentor, counselor, and maybe even something of a surrogate parent to these students. She was always very generous to me and made me feel very comfortable in their home, so much so that K and I lived in their basement together for a summer.

As a result it was very difficult when she started showing signs of Alzheimer’s, particularly for K. In many ways C was K's best friend. One of the many things that makes Alzheimer’s such a terrible disease is that while the person with Alzheimer’s is still physically there, the disease changes their personality. This can be heartbreaking for family members and I wasn’t fully equipped to support K as we went through it. I believe this is a big part of what led to the rift between the two of us.

In a way, watching C age prematurely lead to my decision to take this time off now. I figure I should travel now while I am healthy rather than waiting until I am old enough to retire and have less energy and ability to go to remote places like Kyrgyzstan. This is just one example of how C touched the lives of the people around her, though she’ll probably never know about this one. There are tradeoffs for me taking time off now though. I’m at a point in life where people in my community back home are reaching significant milestones that I am missing. I have acknowledged that while I travel I am changing and while I might like to believe that I can slip back into life when I get back, the truth is that the city and people I left behind are changing. I wonder if what I am missing will make readjustment to regular life when I get back and the reverse culture shock I'll encounter more difficult than I expect. Still, more than half way into my six month break and about six weeks before my flight back to the US I have absolutely no regrets about what I am doing and I’m hoping I can catch up on what I missed without too much difficulty. I do wish I had had a chance to see C one last time though.