Goodbye Shoreline

We said goodbye for about a month: goodbye to our Bonneville-Shoreline trail and our very own Utah mountain; goodbye to our friends; goodbye to our key cards, to our elevator, and to the emergency buttons JJ always pushed; goobye to our playground, to our dreamy bookcase hallway, to the storage room that JJ called his sleeping quarters; to my work staff and friends who adored my kids, to the poster room, to the duty bag, to the late night calls to break up parties; to our chapel and the rocking dinosaur in the nursery JJ loved dearly, and the pulpit where Jonny dragged our screaming boys from my side during my talk; to our ward, to our friends, and to the swing set where Aaron dangled his toddler feet, and the sidewalk where he practiced riding his bike; to Jonny's biking routes up immigration canyon and my double jogger route through Research Park; to the medical school, and the classrooms where we would bring dada dinner on those late board study nights, and to the hospital where Aaron had surgery; to the endless maze of construction burdened parking lots, to the shopping carts I used to bring in the groceries, to the annoying parking enforcement, and to the flocks of pigeons that roosted on our roof; goodbye to the big red light switch that saved us so many 'go to bed or else" nights.  Yes, all month long, we said goodbye.

And, yet, when Jonny backed the moving truck up the sidewalk, and we filled it to the brim with all our belongings, and secured them with ropes and packing tape and bubble wrap.  It was still hard to leave it all behind.