Passports

So, here we are, anxiously awaiting the receipt of our passports in order to travel to the USA for Thanksgiving.  I am already salivating like Pavlov's dogs waiting for the table to be covered with turkey, mashed potatoes, my Mother's gravy, and pumpkin pie with spray-on whipped cream (I apologize profusely to my gourmet relatives about that comment)!!!  I hadn't realized that we would need our American passports to travel until a significant brother-in-law mentioned it at the Sunday lunch table a couple of weeks ago.

I had an experience at the American Embassy, which in spite of all the trouble I felt we had about the passports, really put everything into perspective.  We were seated at the American citizens side, which was practically empty, while on the other side of the room, the area of visa seekers, asylum seekers, etc. got busier and busier.  So, when another person came into our side we were ready for a bit of conversation.  Coincidentally, and this happens all the time in Ireland, it happened to be somebody my husband knows, from the very town we live near.  Well, we had a great chat, and talked about our mutual plans to go to the USA, and then headed back home, thinking nothing of it.  We didn't get our passports, and we are still hoping we will get them in time to travel when we want to!  But, even though this was a bit upsetting and stressful, it was nothing compared to what my husband told me a mere 4 days after the Embassy visit.  Our friend we chatted to died suddenly.  He was young, fit, happy, seemingly unstressed.  I really felt shocked. The fact that you'd be chatting to someone like him, and I used to see him on the main street of town all the time, and then suddenly that's it, he's gone.

So that has shown me that I could be stressed out about a small detail, a glitch in my schedule, but that something like that is actually very trivial when I look at what happened to our friend...