In easy transit

From the modest yet elegant Siem Reap airport I find myself in the ultra modern transit area of Seoul’s Incheon airport. I collapse into a deep sleep on one of the wide, comfortable and cushioned benches designed to give transit travellers like me a much needed bed.

My dreams relay departure scenes:  My last embrace with Ming Pow. The 45 minute journey in Phalla’s little car to the airport through the crowded streets of Siem Reap. His emotional embrace seeing me off with love and gratitude.

I wake up after a few hours . $10 dollars for a coffee and bagel and not much of a smile in return to mine.

I have four or more hours until I take off again. I am not able to digest my departure and I already miss the world that I made my own in Cambodia. I am also eager to see my loved ones at home in Wales. I can’t wait to embrace Dan, to see my cousin and Michal, talk to my family in Greece.

The coffee does not really work here. I am back at my borrowed bed opening and shutting my eyes between spells of sleep, dream and thoughts. I am in transit from one place to another in mind, body and spirit.  

Transit is a place familiar to me. This might be the reason why I don’t recognise or I am not as severely impacted by some of the symptoms of jetlag in the same way that others are. I think I spent a chunk of my life in emotional jetlag recovering from Tom’s illness, death and loss in 2007. Some of you know about this.  The others and new readers are learning that I have experienced a devastating bereavement in my life in the death of my then boyfriend, Tom Woollam. His death in 2007 was preceded by six terrible months of gradual deterioration of his health.  Tom always wanted to travel far but probably in a lot more style than this (which was always a difference between us), but in his last couple of years he was limited in his travel and was eventually not allowed to fly. So at this moment I am contemplating the ease in which I am jumping on and off planes, and moving from one country to another. I am determined to do more of this.

I am healed and unscathed. I am no longer in mental and emotional transit and have not been for the past couple of years. I am grateful for my health. I healed really fast actually probably because of love.  I love and I am loved deeply by the most wonderful man in the world for all that I am and have been through in my life. I am loved by my family, Tom’s family and my precious friends. I am blessed and happy. And I am just  lucky and grateful.  So I am not one to forget Tom, what he has meant to me and what he had gone through. I know that as spirits fly and travel across the globe, dimensions and time his must have caught a glimpse of my adventure and shared my wordly joys and emotions. And probably he has had a good chuckle too. 

So this just seems a very easy place to be and the wait is negligible.  As hours pass, I am on my way home…Safe , happy  and with good luck.