So, I moved yesterday and to say it was a stressful and exhausting day would be an understatement.
My mom lives in Langley which is about an hours drive from downtown Vancouver. A few months ago I started to make a weekly visit out there for lunch – an attempt to not only bring us closer together but also ease the eventual separation when I went on my trip.
Anyway, my mom generously allowed me to store all my earthly possessions at her place while I’m away. I actually had been bringing a few boxes to her place every week for the last couple of months leaving only the heavy and larger items for my final move yesterday.
Since I didn’t have much left I figured I would only need the smallest rental van so I rented a cargo van instead of one of the cube vans I had in the past. Stupid choice. I had such a hard time piecing everything in the van and actually ended up leaving my bbq behind. Oh, and the cargo van comes with no ramp so everything had to be lifted into the van. Like I said, stupid choice.
On top of it all, I grossly underestimated how much time and muscle it would take to load everything so I didn’t put out any requests for help and I gave myself an hour to load everything.
The loading ended up taking 2 1/2 hours and by the end I was so physically exhausted (it didn’t help that I drank the night before on my last night at work and was up til 4:30 in the morning cleaning the apartment).
After unloading everything in Langley I was faced with the inevitable hardest part of this entire journey – saying goodbye to my mom. She is a great woman. She raised two kids on her own and gave us everything we could ever need. I’ve told her many times now that I believe that this trip will actually bring us closer together and that it actually already has. Of course, I’m sure these words bring little solace to the fact that yet another son is leaving her.
Because I was behind in everything for the day, our goodbye was sadly short but heartfelt. I realized as I drove away in tears that it was probably for the best that it was a short goodbye because a prolonged one would have been even harder.
