Feeling a Bit Philosophic Today

So, my Aunt Sally died last night of cancer. It's making me think a bit about life and about adventures. It also is making me think of my Grandmother Wallace, my father's mother, who died of cancer the year after I graduated from Boston College.

My Grandmother, Gwendolyn Wallace traveled the world. When she was raising a family of 6 children, she couldn't. But once everyone was out of the nest, later in life, she traveled. I remember stories of her in the Yukon. I got a silk bathrobe from her that she bought in China. I still have the bathrobe. She went all over Europe. And these are just the trips that I remember. I'm sure family members remember other adventures.

I'm going to have to scan it, but I have a photo that was taken of us at my graduation. She had just returned from a safari in Africa and had been feeling a bit ill. Doctors seemed to think that she might have picked up a virus or parasite in Africa and she was scheduled for more tests that next week.

That was when they found the cancer.

I like to think it was indicative of her life that cancer was mistaken for a parasite she picked up in Africa.

Aunt Sally, too, traveled a bit. I know she went to Hong Kong. I'm not sure of all the other places she visited.

Anyway....

I guess I'm just thinking that, as physically challenging and expensive as travel can be, it can also be so rewarding. To see something new. To hear new voices and accents. To taste a new food. Even if where you're going and what you're seeing is something that a million travelers have seen before you, it's still new to you. At the end, you can say, "I saw the lava fields of Iceland, I walked through Westminster Abbey, I ate fermented shark, I swam in foreign waters, I met people, I ate, I drank, I touched, I smelled, I heard, I lived."