London unbound

The long story short: This London trip was not meant to be, not this time.

The long story, though still abridged: On Friday, after lengthy weather delays, a heart-pounding run between terminals at JFK, a missed connection, futile standby lists on oversold flights, and unbelievably frayed nerves, we were rebooked by American Airlines on a flight to London for Sunday night, two days after our originally scheduled departure. What’s more was that our baggage did make the connection and had flown to London without us. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we would lose two days of our vacation, stranded at an airport hotel in New York without our bags.

However, Saturday morning Thom found out that his grandmother had died the night before. She had been seriously ailing for some time, and earlier this week her condition took a turn for the worse, and so it was then only a matter of days. He planned to forgo the trip and go see his family for the funeral, and he encouraged me to go on to London without him. I was at a loss. I went back and forth between not wanting to go alone versus feeling like I could or should go through with it. I didn’t know what to do. We agonized over it all afternoon, often tearfully, each of us blaming ourselves for the seemingly desperate situation and for the disappointment of our canceled trip.

In the end I decided not to go to London; in the next few days Thom and I will go to Covington for his grandmother’s funeral. We put it in perspective: there will be plenty of time for other trips. London will always be there. Anything we lost is not worth the anguish, and the important thing right now is that we be together.

So we checked out of the hotel, and went to the baggage office at JFK, where we asked them to recall our bags from Heathrow and deliver them to our home address. We took the subway to Penn Station, Amtrak to Washington, D.C., metro to Arlington, and a taxi back to the condo, where we are glad to be home. It feels like two of the longest days of my life.