All good things eventfully come to an end. And the end has come to my travel partnership with my Mom. She passed away on May 2, 2025, taking the final journey alone as we all must do.
While I knew that this day would come, it always seemed to be out in the future. We were traveling as recently as February with plans for this fall and into next year. Slower yes, but still traveling.
After the first years of traveling, Mom started to ask how many new countries would we be adding during each trip. Her goal was to go to as many places and see as much as she could see in the time she had left. You see, we hadn't started to really travel overseas until Mom was already in her 70's. The one regret she had was not traveling sooner.
By the time of her death at age 95, we had visited about 44 countries or islands, some more than once. We’ve been to 5 continents. And we were north of the Artic Circle.
I’ve often been asked, how do you decided where to go and what was
mom’s Favorite destination.
How was an easy answer. Mom loved to read
and she instilled that same love in me. As I grew up, we liked the same genera
of books, Books that were categorized as Gothic Romance. Books my such authors
as Phyllis Whitney, Mary Stewart, Elizabeth Peters, Agatha Christie and so many
others. These story lines took place in exotic places like Egypt, Japan,
England and more. Fueled by these stories, we chose where we wanted to visit.
In later years, with the advent of streaming TV, we were introduced to such places
as Midsomer Mallow, Shetland and more places to visit.
Picking mom’s favorite is much more
difficult.
She often said she would like to back to
Greece, where we started our oversea adventures.
On that first trip in 2007, mom was just 77
years old. Our tour departed in October, and she was packed by July. She was
worried that no one would speak English and everyone would be dressed in robes.
What we found of course is everyone dressed western and spoke English. On that tour mom was the oldest, as she
usually was. There were 3 mother
daughter travel companions in our group. At Delphi, which is an extremely steep
location, mom opted to sit at the theatre while I climbed up the switchbacks to
see the arena. Climbing up the trail, one of the mom’s said, Becky Where’s your
mom?” I told her she was waiting down at
the theatre while I climbed up. Her response “Oh good! That means I can stop
now.” I must have given her a funny look
because she said that if mom had stopped that meant she could too- she couldn’t
let a 70+ beat her. Even then mom was a
leader.
On the underground mom was robbed and
everyone on the tour group offered money and assistance for the rest of trip.
She chose to look at it as an experience- after all she said, how many people
can say that they got robbed in Athens?
On that same tour we also went to Istanbul.
One of her favorite memories was when we visited the Blue Mosque. There were a
lot of school children there on an apparent field trip. A group of young girls,
I’d guess about 10-11 years old, pretty much swarmed around mom and started
chatting with her and gave her hugs. She often talked about that experience,
along with the hole on the floor with a toilet seat that served as a ‘bathroom’
in the monastery we visited. Clearly
high points of the trip.
The original plan was we were just going to
take that trip and no plans to continue to travel overseas. After meeting the
wonderful people on our tour mom said, Well, our passports are good for 10
years. Where should we go next? So began the next part of our lives, stopping
only for COVID.
Next was Egypt. Thanks to the Amelia
Peabody books, and the great currency exchange, we went to see the pyramids,
great sphinx, cruised the Nile and saw King Tut. I could spend hours talking
about some of the quirky events we ran into on this trip alone. Like being
cursed by the hawkers at the Pyramids, being part of a military escort as we
drove out into the desert to Abu Simbel and so much more.
The following year we spent about a month
in England on our first trip there. We took in the Cotswolds, Oxford, Blenheim
Palace, Stonehenge, tasted Sally Lunn’s in Bath, visited the Roman Baths, saw
castles and the crown jewels of both Scotland and England. On this first trip
to England we used the train. One of mom’s memories that she talked about was
meeting two men on the train with their bikes. We sat with them and chatted
over the next few hours. They had been all over the world but never to the U.S.
They said it was too dangerous there with all the shootings.
I think her best memory of that trip was
meeting the bell ringers and going into the bell tower where we got the watch
the practice, a chance to ring the bells and the special privilege of climbing
up to the bells themselves. And afterward some time at the local pub with the
ringers.
As mom was now nearing 80 and she had
expressed an interest in Israel, we decided to go there. Steve, my older brother, came along on
this trip. We sailed the Sea of Galilee, said a prayer at the Wailing wall,
traversed the bazaar, explored Jerusalem, Caesarea, Masada, Haifa and crossed
into Palestine controlled Bethlehem and more. One of the things talked about
was when I was yelled at by the guard from the U.S. Consulate. They cleared the
street as we were walking along so we were sitting by a cemetery as some cars
with diplomatic flags turned into a drive. As we passed the place, I’d taken
some pictures when the security guard started yelling first in Hebrew and then
in English. He demanded that I delete the photos. So I deleted the one he saw
me take. Yes, I have a number of others. Including some close ups of the
consulate yard and the guard from my hotel room and telephoto lenses.
We’ve visited the Christmas markets in
Germany and met with a never before known cousin in Frankfurt, Guido. He
graciously took us to the village where Mom’s grandparents and great
grandparents where from and showed us the houses. And then invited us to his home
for lunch and met his parents, children and his sister. A highlight of our
trip.
Mom has also been to 49 states, the hold
out is Hawaii. Just a few years ago, we
revisited many of the western states with Mom’s friend Carol Hoskins. We spent
two weeks exploring a number of National parks but I think the highlight was
when we accidently stumbled upon a Buffalo refuge and we got a private off road
tour of the refuge and saw the band of buffalo along with some coyotes and
deer.
With so many stories to tell, I’ll end with
this one. In 2023 we cruised in the
Caribbean. My friends Kathy and Scott and I had decided we wanted to do a
dolphin swim. Mom wasn’t too interested as she was never a strong swimmer which
is why she made sure us kids all were. I didn’t want to leave her alone on the
cruise ship for the day and I convinced her to come along on the excursion. I
told her if she didn’t want to go in the water maybe she could just sit on the
dock and get a ‘kiss’ from the dolphin. Anyway, I talked her round to going.
Once we got to the facility, we got our life jacket Then we went down to the
lagoon where the dolphins were. Mom decided to go into the water and she had on
her life jacket. Mom of course is short. We had to be deep enough for the
dolphins to come in. Mom wasn’t able to touch the ground and kept bobbing just
like a fishing bobber. She had to hold on to me and the person next to her on
the other side, which was Amy Thompson who have become great friends with us.
Then came the dolphins.
One of the things that we did with them,
was to hold onto a boogie board while the dolphins pushed you across the lagoon.
Mom’s turn came. As she zoomed across the lagoon, I don’t think I ever saw such
a HUGE grin. I helped her up out of the water, as she bobbled, she said "That
was fun, do we get to do it again?" She
was 93.
Years ago, she made me promise that I would keep traveling after she died. And so I will. There are so many places yet to see and I too, long to go back to some of our favorites.
My mom embraced life and adventure, always up
for something new. One of her friends, Peggy, said that they would stop in to see if she wanted to go along- groceries, shopping, music, it didn't matter. Mom would say, "let me get my purse" and she was ready. Mom's version of "Hold my beer".
She touched so many hearts quite literally around the world.
We often called her the energizer bunny. She personified that age is just a
number. I hope that I will be just like her.
