The thunder of U.S. Navy “Blue Angels” skimming the tops of Seattle skyscrapers reminded me it was a one-year anniversary. On the morning of Aug. 2, 2023, I was in Portland, saying that impossible, final goodbye to Lee, my soul brother for more than fifty years. 

“We’re both going on a journey, but in different directions,” I said to him, leaning close to kiss his cheek. He whispered something I couldn’t understand, but words no longer mattered. We both knew that. I got in my car, dry-eyed with a sobbing heart, and drove north to Seattle. A chapter in my life had just ended. Maybe the whole book. Maybe I was driving into the epilogue. 

All those years ago, Lee and wife Mary Lou had stood as witnesses when John and I married. It was like a marriage of marriages, a foursome. As couples, we never lived close to each other, often thousands of miles apart. Yet we’d travel those miles to share slices of life. Our foursome dwindled as John died in 2007, Mary Lou in 2020. Lee and I soldiered on. Frequent phone calls. Occasional visits. We’d talk idly about road trips we might take together, but we’d both seen plenty of road. And now, here I was, back on the road, the lone survivor. 

I had an appointment to see an apartment in Horizon House, a retirement community on Seattle’s First Hill. I’d visited a few months earlier and fell in love with the location, energy and philosophy. People move here not to retire and die but to live, contribute, and matter. Still, I was skeptical. I’d been invited to look at a studio apartment. I couldn’t imagine a studio large enough for me, much less my “stuff.”

I asked my niece Sandy to join me. A savvy realtor, she poses the questions that never occur to me. The sales rep unlocked the door to 13-A, and I walked straight to the window, all of twelve paces. Windows have always been the most important feature of anywhere I’ve lived. What would I be viewing? An urban valley of rooftops in the foreground ringed by a horizon of office and apartment towers. Columbia Center, Seattle’s tallest building at 72 floors, loomed above the rest, piercing an endless blue sky.

That’s when we heard the thunder. Not a rain cloud to be seen but jets skimming through the air with gasp-inducing precision. Seattle’s annual Seafair celebration, complete with aerial show. I teased the sales rep about arranging a spectacle as part of her marketing ploy.

With or without jets — especially without, I decided the view would keep me adequately absorbed. After decades of living on a riverbank, I’d be watching a different kind of wildlife on the busy streets thirteen floors down. The studio was big enough for me, and the storage unit in the basement large enough for my stuff. For the next three months I lived in an emotional vortex as I prepared to  move. I celebrated and mourned the ties with people and place that had bound me to the Okanogan country of eastern Washington for forty-four years. I’ll never become untied.

While I’ve lived in Horizon House only nine months (an appropriate gestation period), I’m convinced I made the right decision. And here again are the Blue Angels. Thrilling as the aerial shows are, a growing number of voices object to the noise and environmental consequences. Protesters argue that each jet burns about 1,500 gallons of fuel per hour. Each air show puts some 650 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere of an earth desperate to reduce carbon emissions. The Blue Angels may not be around forever, nor will I. But I’m here for at least another chapter.