The Final Countdown...

Here we are less than a week before I board a plane in Orlando, with a one way ticket to St. Thomas, where I'll hop aboard a ferry to St. John to join Leslie to begin (as a couple) our new life there!

I still have what seems to be a billion details to attend to (even taking a few minutes to post this update seems like a guilty pleasure). I vacillate between panic because there's no way that I can get it all done, and calm when I realize that if I just maintain the pace of the last few weeks, that I will.

I really am thankful that I have a lot to do, it keeps me from getting too choked up from the realization that the place, generally speaking, that I've called home for more than fifty years will no longer be so.

I've experienced some of the emotional good-byes that I saw Leslie go through all those months ago.

Yesterday, the team of 16 year old boys that I've been coaching in soccer for well over three years all got together at a local restaurant to have a sending off lunch for me. One by one, they all stood up and said a few words (which was WAY out of the comfort zone for most of them) - some sarcastic, some touching, some funny - but all heartfelt and appreciated.

Afterwards I looked through the cards I had been given and saw a really neat picture of the team by a beach. "I wonder when they took that? Hey! - I'm in it, I don't remember that. Wait...that beach looks familiar and it's NOT one from around here...

Pretty clever photoshopping!

Today was the last game of the fall season. Next week they will all disperse and go to their respective high school team tryouts, and I'll go to St. John.

Afterward, while I waited for my friend, (who is also the head coach) to make it out to the parking lot, I sat and watched all of the activity at the park.

I spent almost ten years on an advisory board while this particular park was being planned and built, so I consider it to be "mine". This was a beautiful afternoon, and I was watching our vision play out before my very eyes and it tugged on my heart a little bit.

...but not as much as the short conversation I had with Antoine just a few minutes later. Saying good-bye is tough, certainly tougher than I remember it ever being before, and I've seen a fair number of folks come and go in my life. Perhaps our advancing years brings home the realization that this might really be the last time. Maybe the distance and fact that I'll now be a plane ride and then some away exacerbated those feelings. Who knows?

I do know that having to say an emotional farewell is a small price to pay for having had someone in my life who I value as much as Antoine. Or as Tony, who I said good-bye to earlier in the week. And there will be more to come this week, I'm sure. But I know that not only do I have a butt load of work to do to keep me from being too down, I have a smiling face waiting for me on St. John that I really miss seeing.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Inner Visions - you better "bring it" this coming Saturday night!