This is it. The end of my time at Hopkins, and our time in Baltimore.
I feel like I’ve been preparing myself for this day for weeks now, if not months (or practically the whole year, as I look back through this blog). And yet, down to the end, there are still goodbyes to be said, and all the anticipatory grief in the world hasn’t made them any easier. I guess this is how goodbyes are.
This past week was really, really hard for me. Cooped up in an apartment that less and less resembled home, working for hours to make our life possessions disappear out the front door, or into neatly piled boxes, I found myself desperately throwing the windows wide open, or lacing up my sneakers and running down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. Just to see, hear, and feel the city around me for a little while longer. To go walking - anywhere really - without a direction or a destination in mind. And it felt impossible to go more than a block, in any direction, without triggering an absolutely poignant memory from the past eight years: a particular tree or flowering shrub that I photographed in seasons past. Pawprints studded in pavement, which made me laugh when I first saw them years ago. The memory of a particular patient, or a particular shift in the hospital, which my mind had mysteriously linked (probably through another meandering, introspective walk in the distant past) to a particular alleyway, city block, or part of town. A fragment of skyline, or a passing summer rainstorm, that made the whole place feel familiar - like home. The sunset, shimmering over water. I wanted, badly, to not say goodbye to any of them. Quite unexpectedly and suddenly, I found myself in tears several times during the week, which is not typical for me (my line of work demands a lot of empathy but also a substantial ability for emotional compartmentalization. I’ve joked that I feel like the world’s most emotionally available robot). Yes, it’s been that kind of a week. To be honest, I think I’ll be processing it for awhile.
We’re moving up to Boston, which means that the Mid-Atlantic blog will now officially, finally, come to a close. I’ll pick back up on one of the other pages (haven’t decided yet whether to make a separate entry for Massachusetts, or append to our Maine / Adirondack trips). So, until next time - which will not be long, I’m sure. For now, I’ll share the photos here, including many taken on the fly with the phone camera. These are the record of my final days and sunsets in Baltimore - and the incredible people that I shared them with. I will forever treasure them.
