A Moving Experience

Our surroundings are familiar and yet rather strange to Lona and me.  A Paul Simon lyric echoes in my head – Nothing is different, but everything's changed.  The moving van arrived to take most of the contents of our cottage in PEI.  This was our fourteenth year spending the beginning of June to the beginning of October at our cottage in this wonderful place – of sun and sand and labyrinth and beautiful sunrises and sunsets.  But all things must end and we decided early this year that this would be our last. 

We both truly regret this, but the reality is that our eightieth decade is fast approaching and the trip from Ontario to the cottage and back is becoming more than we can manage for many reasons including having our feline animal companion with us.  She (the companion) travels pretty well but enclosing her in the carrier is a challenge each time.  So, it is time to say goodbye to this place and the people that we know and love – particularly the parishioners at St. Alban’s Anglican church in Souris where I have had the privilege to serve in my retirement from parish ministry.

As I noted above – at time of writing, the moving van arrived yesterday and removed most of our possessions.  It took us about a month to get to this point with organizing and packing what we would move to our other home; what we would take with us in the car when we leave; what we would sell – Lorna discovered the benefit of listing things on Marketplace and she managed to sell quite a few of the things we didn’t want to move back to Ontario. 

It has been quite a journey so far and we haven’t even left the cottage yet.  I would not have thought that a cottage would mean there was that much which required organizing, packing, securing and putting in boxes – which of course require taping up once they are securely packed – not as easy as it sounds.  Fortunately, Lorna is excellent in this kind of an endeavor and did so much to get us to this point.

The movers were very effective and efficient and managed to get everything loaded on a very big trailer – 53’ long which is the biggest allowed (at least when I was working on trucking policy in a previous life).  This took only a few hours.  Everything was on track until they had a problem pulling out of the laneway – no traction for the truck tractor.  It didn’t look promising but a neighbour with a farm tractor assisted the tractor trailer.

So here we are for the next week with the cottage pretty much empty – but not quite.  We are getting along with few amenities.  No tables or chairs – correction we have one wicker chair and Lorna and I are playing friendly musical chairs shifting between her desk in the cottage and mine (which is on Marketplace) in the bunkie.  We do still have our computers and the internet until we leave.  And yes, we do have sleeping accommodation.

As I said at the beginning, we are both very sad to leave all that has been such an important part of our life for the last fourteen years.  However, it is the correct decision.  We look forward to what the next stage of our life will bring.

May our journey to our Ontario home be blessed and may you be blessed on your journey.