This beautiful group has been my second family for almost the past two decades. Joan had a Hawaiian theme, having us all greeted at the door by her granddaughter who did an excellent job as a lei greeter.
Gerri's husband researched the net to come up with the perfect phrasing for the cake that Huong's mom baked herself. "A Hui Ho" means "Until We Meet Again" in Hawaiian.
Yesterday we attended a Farewell Party that was hosted by Joan, who used to be my 1st grade teaching partner. It was incredible. I’m still blown away. I don’t know how to explain it. I felt like it was an out of body experience. Then my good buddy, Gerri gave a heart to heart speech that had me retreating into that quiet spot in my mind to try to cope with it all. It was too beautiful, too overwhelming for me. Another friend there mentioned that I remained dry-eyed while everybody else had tears in theirs. I asked Gerri for a copy of her speech so I could hear her words again in private when no one was looking at me or taking photos.
When we returned home, I opened the beautiful Italian music box they gave me and listened again to it play the tune, Chicago. Today is the day I go in for my 1st thyrogen shot. The second one is tomorrow. Wednesday is the radioactive dye or something like that and Thursday and Friday will be the body scans to make sure there are no more thyroid cancer cells lurking in my body. I’ll be carrying that tune, the beautiful memories of yesterday and all your kind wishes to finish this coming week and move on to the final week of our time in Illinois.
