Splitting Up

Saturday morning, our paths diverged. The family dropped me off at the Las Vegas airport and I took a flight to Long Beach, CA. They drove off to Death Valley.

Last year about this time, my writing partner died. He and his wife lived in Long Beach. Saturday afternoon, his wife had a memorial party for him. Forty or fifty people came to their house, ate some of Jim’s favorite foods, looked at pictures of his life, read some of his stories and talked about him. It was hard to be there, since I still missed him a great deal, but I enjoyed talking about him with his wife and friends. And laughing about things he enjoyed. He would have loved the party.

I took my friend Jill with me and then went back to her house and spent the night. We drank some wine and talked about writing and planned a writers conference we’d like to put on in a year or two. I got up very early on Sunday morning and headed out to LAX to go home. Despite it being the last day of the Thanksgiving holidays, the airports were prepared for the onslaught of travelers, so I didn’t have any trouble at either Las Vegas or LAX. I knew all the things I needed to do, from the 1 quart bag for my tiny liquids to putting the laptop in it’s own bin. No problem.

The weirdest part was knowing within half an hour when I would return home from this very long trip.

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