A different set of altitudes

I look out and I can see blue skies, sunshine and the mediterranean glinting not so far away. I should really get a thrill from it and I do but everything is tinged with a melancholy. There's also the other emotions: anger, guilt, sadness. I've been away for three weeks and I knew that I shouldn't have looked forward to it. That whenever you look forward to something, then there's going to be something that spoils it. You can say this is it, this time. I sound spoiled and petulant. Maybe I am. I feel anger that Beth hasn't been able to see her father and that the week that she was going to spend with him now has been eradicated; you can't re-spend time. They'll have it again but it won't be the same.

And I think of Zach in the hospital room. The way that he will be spending his days there for the present. In a haze of intense medication. Probably not eating much. Drinking water. Pacing around the room. Bored. Listless. Angry. Conflicted. I wonder whether they will try additional and alternative medicine there. I know that they have yoga and ayurveda. This is India, after all. Whether he participates is something else.

So Sam is back in London. Emotionally and physically exhausted with Indian beaurocracy, intense travel, Zach's needs, traffic, fumes, heat and the having to contend with a zillion bits and pieces that continually stymied their movements. Back to London's shifting weather. But the football season calls and the further frustration that his team creates. Will they stay up this season, have an owner, win a game? All good stuff for a diversion. Eventually, it is hoped, Zach will once again join in with the trek south.

So I leave tomorrow for London once more. Leave these wonderfully sunny climes and then to be confronted with the full and unexpurgated version of what went on these last nine days among the mountains, the lakes and traffic fumes.