I Am A Long Way From Home

   This afternoon, I received notification from a cousin that one of my aunts was ill and in hospital out on the west coast.
   If I wasn't thousands of kilometers away here in Ontario I could visit her in the hospital and if there was anything I could do for her I'd also be more than happy to help out.

On the Trans-Canada, leaving Calgary, headed to the mountains.
I want to be able to do this all the time.

   This, of course, is an impossibility.
   I was born in Calgary, Alberta back in 1953 and for the first eleven years of my life (apart from a couple of years in Youngstown, Ohio) I lived out west---in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.
   In spite of the fact that I then moved to London and, essentially, grew up here, the west was still very much imprinted on me. The prairies, the foothills, the mountains and the ocean all have this undeniable hold that I continue to feel to this very day.
   When I moved east, I left all my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents behind. Occasionally I was able to make the trip back and see one or two of them and occasionally they were also able to make the trip this way. But get-togethers were few and far between.
   

Through the mountains and on to North Vancouver.

As happens in life, my grandparents and almost all of my aunts and uncles eventually passed away. For me, though, they passed away in absentia---they might as well have been in a different country. Most of those times I was likely too young even to make adult connections with the remaining family members. In truth, if you asked me, I would not even be able to give you the years most of them passed.
   I have always found this pointedly unfair.
   We moved east following my Dad and his work. He'd been sent to London to help set up an office for the insurance company he worked for and had been assured that it would only be a two-year stay. Forty-nine years later and I am still here.
   As much as I enjoy living in London, much of the time I find myself feeling very displaced. I feel strongly as though I am supposed to be out west. Many times people I know post pictures of their travels to the mountains and the ocean and it is difficult to describe the way this eats at me. 
   I've been fortunate enough to have been able to travel through the Rockies to the coast with Doralyn and we've both remarked at how we could understand people going there for a visit and then just staying there. There is something about the beauty of the place and, for me, I suspect there is something in my genes which connects me to it.

Gibsons, B.C., pretty well my favourite spot in Canada.

   As it happens, Doralyn and I are both at different points in our careers, by about fifteen years. Because of this, retiring out west is likely an unpractical thing to consider. More importantly, all the people we love are here in Ontario and moving away from them all would be more than difficult. At this point, even an extended holiday out there would be hard to manage.
   So I sit here in London with a little bit of an ache in my heart. It's an ache that I got used to a long time ago, though,  and is mitigated by the fact that I actually like where I live. It's good to be here, it's just that it feels so far away from home sometimes....