I Left My Heart in Arizona

I resisted telling you about driving through Arizona on the way to Boston. Actually, it was lovely. More on the loveliness later. This is about my raw heart. These feelings are fresh. I have not felt this in seven years.

In early June, our family traveled to Arizona to watch the Hubs be hooded for his PhD. I remember staring out the window of my minivan, on the freeway. My thoughts tumbled out of my mouth. Did he feel closer to his sister here, I asked. He replied simply, no. I sat still, and stared out that window some more. I DID. I DO.

This past Friday, I walked up the stairs from the basement of our temporary house into the kitchen. It was move out day, to our current house. The Hubs was cleaning. He stopped and looked at a bewildered me. My eyes welled with tears. Was I emotional about leaving the house, he wondered. That was a lighthearted joke. No way. It was something else. I told him he might think I was dumb. I bargained not to tell him. His eyes were burdened looking at me. He wanted to know. Okay. I took one deep breath. I stalled some more. I made him promise not to respond to what I was about to say, no matter what I said. I asked him if he believed that Carina .......(insert the rest of what I said)........ in heaven. It is a question no one on earth can answer.

"Don't say anything," I said. He looked at me deeply. The tears spilled from my eyes. I turned away and he continued to scrub the kitchen counter in silence. Several days later he has never responded. He honored my wishes and I am grateful.

A lot has stirred in my heart between these two conversations over the last two months. I remember vividly snapshots of 1996 to 2003 with Carina, events that have not been present in my mind until now. She became one of my closest friends. She loved me. I loved her. People looked at her funny every time she said, "This is my sister." We look nothing alike. But that is how she thought of me. Period.

Many, many nights over several, several years we talked until the wee hours of the morning. I met all of her boyfriends. More than anything she wanted to be married one day. But no one was ever good enough. No one could ever measure up to a standard she held. I remembered that on Tuesday while packing lunch for the Hubs. So I threw this note in his lunch.


Ten years ago, the Hubs and I drove across country to Virginia. At the last minute, we needed an extra driver. The moving company failed on a trailer for our car. So Carina met us in Flagstaff and drove all the way with us. I remember being frustrated in Texas that she wanted Chinese food and not barbecue. I remember she teased me for not beating her at the silly Cracker Barrel game with the golf tees in Virginia. I remember more. I remember years and years worth. But I also remember wanting her to come to Las Vegas one weekend to fix the house to sell. She could not, she claimed. Her hip hurt. We were a little irritated. A year later when we moved into the Virginia house, I noticed her wincing. She said it was nothing. It was just that old tendinitis in her hip. Yeah, more than one doctor thought so. She was so athletic. Misdiagnosis. Two years later she called to say it was cancer.

Carina was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She was the oldest person to be diagnosed. Only 150 people are diagnosed a year with this in the United States. It is a two stage cancer. Stage 1 requires aggressive treatment. Stage 2 means you are a walking miracle if you live. This cancer has no Stage 3 or Stage 4. She was very Stage 2, with a 10 centimeter primary tumor on her hip, others in her lung, others in her spine. She opted for the most aggressive chemo treatment available, the "red devil" cocktail of chemos. The drugs are red. The side effects, well, you can imagine if it includes a nickname of "devil."

Carina came to Virginia to visit in November 2002. She thought she might be in remission. We took a weekend trip to New York City, and saw Columbia University, where she deferred her admission for her Master's. She applied there because my husband, her older brother had received his Master's there. It was a ridiculously fun trip. My mother in law and brother in law came, too. Our whole family was together for the first time in two years. Then came the call my mom had suffered a stroke. I was broken. Carina comforted me, wearing a bandanna on her head. Her hair was growing back in. She prayed for me and for my mom before I left on the next flight to California.

The next month we were in Arizona for Christmas. Carina was in the hospital again. Stem cell replacement was no longer an option. Now it was just more chemo. We sat at her bedside for days. That is my long hair over her head of stubby hair. She did not like the news of more chemo. She did not want to lose her little hair or eyelashes. It was all just growing in. I laughed and told her I would share. I sat this way in her bed the days we were in Arizona. We played games, we sang with Christmas carolers, and we made a list. My husband just stared at me when I asked her what her final wishes might be. He did not want to make the list. Carina said, "Let's make the list." But that is how it always went. She and I had ideas that we made the Hubs agree to. So I sat at her bedside, and scribbled her dictation. Hubs had an envelope with him. I tore the sheet off the pad, put it in the envelope, and sealed it. The list went to Virginia. It sat in my nightstand.

January Hubs traveled to Arizona alone. Carina was back in the hospital. She was losing more weight; it was probably the chemo, he thought. At the end of January, she and I had a long conversation on my work break. She wanted me to come to Arizona soon. She said she needed me to come. Two weeks later, my mother in law called. Carina was coming out of a coma and kept asking where I was. Three weeks later, God worked a miracle on a cheap plane ticket on a holiday weekend. I arrived on a Saturday.

What happened in the first twelve hours I was in Arizona is precious, including her death.

I did not expect to arrive and lose my friend the same day. I did not expect to have my last conversation. I do not know what I expected. Not death. The hospice nurses did not expect it. My heart was torn. IT HURT LIKE CRAZY. My friend was gone from this life. Forever.

I arrived in Arizona for a weekend trip. I did not plan to stay a week. I could have bought something to wear to her memorial. I was honored to wear a dress from her closet. My mother in law suggested I could. So I did. I reminded the Hubs to bring the precious envelope with him to Arizona. Somehow I made the necessary calls. Somehow I started to make the arrangements. I was grateful when the Hubs arrived two days later. He and his brother drove south to an airport. Washington DC area airports were all closed due to snow. Hubs handled so much once he arrived.

Arizona is where I said good bye to Carina. It is where our family remembered her on a gorgeous February morning in Arizona. It was in the 70s, clear and bright. It is where I sang with cousins, where the Hubs gave a eulogy sharing our faith and our hope in the Lord. We know her body is now perfect and healed, and that we will see her again one day. It is where my mother in law and brother in law grieved, along with many other family and friends. Arizona is where I feel closest to Carina. It is where a part of my heart that loves her lives.

The Day We Left San Diego We Popped a Wheelie and Never Said Goodbye

Leaving San Diego did not feel final. We did not say most any of our goodbyes, except to family. I feel horrible that goodbyes did not happen. Friends were understanding. But Goodbye was not what I pictured. For the last time, I dropped off the boys with my parents, this time, so we could shove our lives into our cars, shove what could not fit in the cars into our storage unit, and take the rest to the dump. And by "we" I mean the Hubs. He shoved the most.

At 9:30am I was encouraged when my kitchen looked like this.


I thought we would finish before the renters arrived. We did not. I wished we were gone. I really detest key turnover. I refused to participate when we left Virginia and when we left Hawaii. I don't want to see the excitement in their eyes about living in a home I have loved. I don't like to hear how they will treat it "like their own," or how "this is your house." How in the world do all these people have the same lines?

Tick, tick, tick. Time slipped through our hands faster than a greased pig. The renters arrived before we were out. Their kids were ready to jump in the pool. Contrast that with wishing we would have swam the day before. My stomach churned.

In the handful of minutes they talked to Hubs, I breathlessly grabbed what was left in the house and threw it all in the garage. We organized there for more hours. I could hear the squeals of excitement, the kids pounding up the hardwood floors, running over head. Silently, Hubs closed the laundry room door to the garage. He looked at me, unmoved by the commotion, unmoved by the armfuls of their belongings. That's him. Not me.

But he closed the laundry door for me. And the way he looked at me, that was for me. After all of these moves it is never the actual house that I miss. It is what was, what is now no longer. Its the emotional, sensitive, ridiculous, and totally rational in the moment, part of me. It is that part that wants time to stand still to finish what I may have left unfinished. It is that part of me that has a pity party in the moment, if even in my head.

Our plan was to be on our way to Phoenix by 10am. But by 2:30pm, our three car garage still looked like this.
The stuff in the rafters stayed in the rafters. We had that planned. I looked around overwhelmed at what was left. The Hubs was taking care of a bazillion and one last details. I was exhausted. I missed my kids. I despised what was left. About then the Hubs pulled in the driveway. I will skip the story of how he pulled our gas dryer out of storage at the eleventh hour at the request of our tenants, and nearly severed his finger. It is too gory. Moving on...

I told him we just needed to be done. We worked fast and furiously, until 4:09pm, when our cars looked like this.

And why yes, that is our nearly new play structure now sitting in the neighbors yard across the street. Not that I had any emotion over that, either.

Time to GO. We zoomed out of the driveway in separate directions. The Hubs scooted to the storage unit, and I hustled to my parents house. I readied the kids for the road because their daddy was swinging by to get them strapped down. He planned to stop and grab a spare tire for the trailer he was towing. The store closed at 5pm, and he was pulling out of my parents neighborhood at 4:35pm. The older boys ran to greet him on the lawn. He scooped them up, tossed them in the truck, and hugged my parents goodbye. I still had to pack up the baby and a few last things.

Then came a call from the Hubs twenty minutes later. He spoke to me in a shaky voice. "God loves us and is looking out for us." He had called the trailer dealership that Friday afternoon at 4:59pm. He asked them to hold the spare tire for a few minutes, though they were closed. He was three minutes away, exiting the freeway ramp. He hung up, and blew out a tire coming off the freeway. By God's grace the blowout was not on the freeway when he was driving at maximum trailer speed. Our kids were shocked, but safe. The Hubs was safe. That is all that mattered. That, and now replacing all trailer tires to avoid more danger. All of the stress in the world at that moment was futile, worthless. Our family mattered. That was all.

I fed Son3 dinner, packed up my mom's cookies, and did a terrible job of shoving more into that minivan. Finally it was time to pull away from the curb, to meet up with my husband and sons several miles east.



It was just me, Son3, my oozing minivan, and the mattress we forgot to pack in the trailer.



My parents knew it was time to say goodbye. They said everything but goodbye. Maybe they thought it would keep me in front of their house longer if they did not speak the word. They were right. No one wanted to be the first to say it. My dad offered to come with me, right then and there. But really, there was no place for any passengers over 20 pounds. All of the other five seats were occupied with Farmer stuff. We joked for some minutes, but I knew it was time. So rather than say goodbye, I grabbed my camera and we took about 20 or so silly shots until we got this one. I love it. And you know what? Goodbye just did not look the way I planned it. This time it was ok.