The Rest of the Vacation

The day after I got back from Foursquare Thailand convention, I hopped a plane, a sky train and a bus down to southern Thailand.  I had planned to spend nearly 5 days in Hua Hin which is on the inside coast of the tail of Thailand.  Since I was tired and it was so hot, I chose to   relax my first night including a massage and hanging at the hotel.
The next morning I awoken to the sad news that my friend/coworker from my days at Valencia Elementary, had passed away during the night.  Mary has had cancer for as long as I have known her and has done fabulous in her fight against it.  But more recently had deteriorated and was no longer on chemo.  I'm incredibly grateful to my other friends for keeping me in the loop about Mary's health.  Even though I left Valencia for China a few years back, I still have very fond memories of my time there and have maintained some contact over the years with various people that I got to know.  One of my best memories of Mary was when she told me to 'smile'.  She didn't say it in a mean way but rather a 'life is short-enjoy it' kind of way.  We had a challenging job working with students with special needs and smiling and laughing made things better.  I still remember to do that now because it really does make a difference.
To be honest, I alway thought Mary would beat this disease.  She was always such a strong optimistic person.  While I know that alone can't kill cancer, I personally think it keeps a person healthier than one who is is depressed all the time. 
I can't say that I continued in vacation mode after hearing the news. I actually really wanted to go home to Chiang Mai.  But the cons of checking in to my flight early was that I couldn't change my ticket.  So I spent the rest of the vacation trying to be distracted.  I read a lot, swam a bit and got massages and that was a great distraction.  I actually didn't realize just how effective a distraction it was until I headed home finally on Sat.  Heading home was an all day affair but I finally got home safely.  After my housemate and our houseguest left for a Halloween party that night, I finally got out everything that I didn't know I was holding in.
I realize that there is no good way to end this particular blog.  So I'll end with this.  I want to make sure that I don't keep assuming that I'll still have tomorrow when it comes to family and friends.  Because as I discovered in Mary's case is that even though I knew she was weak, I still held out and hoped that she would be around for awhile.