Last Thursday, in the throes of our loss, with the rain in its perpetual drizzle, nothing felt motivating or worth pursuing. Don had gotten out of bed, had a shower and breakfasted, and went straight to lying on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, back facing the window. That’s when I knew it was bad. We both needed a shake up.

I started looking at last-minute vacations online, getting Don involved. About 20 hours and a thrift store shop later, we found ourselves on a plane bound for Mazatlan, Mexico. We are rather famous for our spontaneity and we continue to impress. One of the things about having nothing on the docket at the moment, is that we are free to do whatever we want whenever we want. Our only consideration is our dear Charlotte and making sure she is feeling loved and protected. Our dear Emily, I am choosing to believe, is taking care of us, as she clearly let me know on the second day after she ended her life and my new one began. I am going to keep believing that. Every time something serendipitous happens or we barely make it somewhere (such as to the gate on time because we were enjoying our lounge privileges), I silently mouth the words, “Thank you, Emily,” and I feel the warmth of her heart and smile. It’s my turn to take care of you, Mama.

The beauty of this beach, the relentless waves, the blue skies…they all seem to beckon Emily to our hearts. We were surprisingly triggered at first by what I initially thought would be a healing respite from our grief. But as Don sagely said, “Better to be grieving here than in the living room looking out at the rain.” I agreed, as I sat out on the balcony on a Sunday morning, eagerly awaiting my cup of coffee on the beach, toes soon-to-be wiggling in the sand.

We have been blessed with many beach vacations, having lived in Asia for nearly 30 years and the entirety of our children’s childhoods. Emily has been to countless beaches, made thousands of made-to-order meals out of driftwood and seaweed and sand, and has frolicked with abandon on all fours, kicking up sand across continents. I spent hours everyday gazing from of our expansive balcony and seeing her in the sea, the sand, the stars…

In the Uber on the way to the airport in Vancouver, our driver regaled us with stories of his homeland, Korea. Normally, I would have stepped in and told him that we had lived in Seoul for three years and we would have discussed favourite foods and memories – and we all would have so enjoyed the conversation and made a bond through our shared experiences of his country. Without saying so, though, Don and I both kept quiet, only murmuring our acknowledgements of his knowledge, all of which we already knew. Somehow we had each decided without saying so that this reinvention would not involve us bringing up our pasts with random strangers. My ego wanted to say, “We are not some random retired couple from the suburbs who is going on their annual vacation to Mexico.” I wanted to share a part of me, but I also wanted to keep that part private because it now involves that other huge hole of Emily not being here. So better to keep silent and let him believe whatever he wanted to about us. It’s not my job to entertain others and it’s not my priority to feed my ego by telling of my own adventures.

I had the idea that coming to Mexico would make us anonymous, so we could be just like the other countless couples here, fitting a certain Canadian profile that perhaps I am not quite ready to enter into. I’m no longer the exotic expatriate coming home for the summers; I am now the settled Canadian who goes south for the winter. On top of Emily’s death, we are also undergoing culture shock and an entire reinvention. Along with filing papers for Don’s naturalisation and organizing repatriation details and claiming status, we are bidding goodbye to our old lives. There is mourning that accompanies this as well. We feel like fish out of water on this cerulean sea.

I’ve been playing with the idea of reinvention. On this trip, I thought it would be a bit of a new beginning: nobody knew who we were and what we were enduring. What if we were just a typical Canadian couple from the Lower Mainland, visiting Mexico? This seemed like a good time to try on a new identity.

When we arrived in Mazatlan and had collected our luggage and were waiting for the minibus to our hotel, who did I see but a girl I had grown up with down the road in Greendale. I panicked.  She was a friend on Facebook, had perhaps even reached out with her condolences, and there she was with her boyfriend, unmistakably a childhood peer. I panicked and dragged my suitcase and Don to another area of the terminal.

“Why don’t you just say hi?” he asked. But I couldn’t: I wasn’t here to face the ‘smooshy middle,’ as my friend Steph calls it: people I know and who are not in my inner circle, but who do know about the death of our Emily. The emotional energy that this would take seemed too much to bear. At the best of times, I am reluctant to see people I sort of know in unexpected situations. This felt impossible to me.

Fortunately, the worry abated and the week passed without me seeing her again, until just now when we were on the bus back to the airport and there she was, in front of us. I had already decided what I would say if I saw her, so I greeted her with a smile, exchanged niceties and told her I was sorry I hadn’t acknowledged her earlier, but it was just too hard to discuss our recent loss. Of course, she was kind and considerate and gentle, and it was a pleasure to have a short discussion. I was glad I had been able to say hello. 

But this is what I am faced with now. The same thing happened when I saw my aunt last week in a situation where neither of us expected to see one another. She didn’t have time to prepare her condolences so they were clunky and uncomfortable for me to receive, and I didn’t have the opportunity to say I was not emotionally up to discussing my grief with her in that moment. As my therapist has since reassured me, I can save all my energy for my own healing and don’t need to take on anyone else’s. I can simply tell people I don’t yet have the emotional space to discuss the death of my beloved.

The trip, in the end, was healing: the sun, the waves, the all-night pounding of the ocean with our balcony door open and the air conditioning off. The ‘black tequila’ in the morning caffeinated me and the strawberry daiquiris in the afternoon loosened me: the blue skies, the wind, the sun freckling my face all gave me a fortitude and renewed resolve. 

And Don and I were still able to stay in our own little bubble of solitude: just a couple of middle-aged Canadian tourists escaping the rain.