On Prince Edward Island, as my dad explained it, there are four directions: up west, down east, north shore, and south shore. Anywhere else is away, be it just over the Confederation Bridge or on the other side of the planet. Infamously, a cousin of his moved to Moncton, New Brunswick, a city in the neighboring province, and was referred to as living "overseas." After nearly a quarter century since my last visit, I was finally back from away.
Life is simpler and the pace is slower up in PEI. While I imagine I'd go stir-crazy long-term, it was a peaceful week away from the normal responsibilities of living. We tacked on an extra hour and and a half to our average nightly sleep time, and I knocked out two and a half books during the time disconnected.
Our journey kicked off in New Jersey, where my cousin Jake married his long-term partner, Sarah.
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| Jake & Sarah - Cape May, NJ - June 7, 2025 |
During the festivities, my grandpa began anxiously calling the aunts and uncles. Unfortunately, that's a thing he does these days, and it's incredibly hard to gauge the level of seriousness. He might call twenty times in an hour because he can't figure out his remote control. So when my aunt instructed his caretaker to turn off his phone and tell him it was out of battery so we could all enjoy the evening (unfortunately without him as he'd become too frail to come out), we didn't think more of it. The next day, however, he couldn't get out of bed. A trip to the hospital didn't clear things up: turns out he'd developed sepsis and wasn't responding to aggressive antibiotics. As we weaved our way up the East Coast, my mom's family group chat was exploding with updates and opinions.
We stopped for a night at my dad's cousin's Joan's home in southern Maine and hit up Acadia National Park on day 2. After a stroll and a dinner in Bar Harbor, we battled fog so thick we legitimately feared the hidden moose and called it a night as soon as we'd crossed the border, setting up camp in a minimalist but perfectly clean motel room in Saint Stephen, New Brunswick.
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| Acadia National Park, the major pitstop on our road trip from Pennsylvania up to PEI. |
On day 3 of the road trip, we made it home with time for a beach run and shower before catching sunset with the family over the ocean. On the Aloia homefront back in New Jersey, things progressed and by the next day or two, arrangements for hospice care were set in motion.
It all started feeling real over the Small Halls concert on Friday night. In a decommissioned church built to resonate like the inside of a violin, surrounded by simple beauty, in a world where folks chase manageably-sized dreams, I struggled to figure out how to accept the changes in my station in life, as I stare down the loss of the last member of the generation two notches ahead of me, and as I watch my position within my family structure shift. I'd never quite fit in to begin with, but the years spent living so far away, the vastly different paths we've taken, and the differing interests have led me to a point where I don't quite know how to connect with my cousins, and the feeling's clearly mutual as I wasn't extended an invitation to the goodbye calls arranged with Grandpa. I've never figured out how to be me and also be a member of this family.
The heavy news was sandwiched by the embarrassingly good, the kind it didn't feel right to receive while grieving. The Neuralink valuation, which we'd been waiting on for the past two months, was finally released. It was good, better than even the most optimistic guesses I'd been hearing around the office. And for us, assuming our participation in the upcoming tender offer isn't overly restricted, it means we've got the funds we need to become parents on our terms. It was time to start crunching numbers and reaching out to various financial and logistical contacts. Sitting front-row on the sidelines as my mom and her siblings navigated the loss of their parent while establishing the conditions under which Nico and I will become parents felt overwhelming. The juxtaposition was too stark. Fate felt cruel, especially as the news isn't something we can send my grandfather off knowing: he wouldn't understand IVF, frozen embryos, and gestational carriers. It also means he'll never know about his future great-grandkiddos. Life can be so unfair.
In between it all, I kept running. I admired the lupins. I climbed the red clay rocks at cliff edges. I squished seaweed between my toes and smushed the sand under my feet as I ran barefoot through the water's edge. I breathed in and out. I felt alive.
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| Snapshots from runs around the Island |
We explored the Island. We went to the
Anne of Green Gables House. We sampled the "best lobster rolls on PEI" (according to my parents). We explored the
Bottle Houses. We listened to live music. We went to a show. We (re-)met loads of family. We made sandcastles under the tutelage of a professional sandcastle artist. We ate ice cream. We learned about Acadian history. We ticked off all the tourist boxes. We relaxed. We just were.
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| A whirlwind of PEI tourism |
And then we went home. We were lucky enough to have a recovery holiday the day after our flight, and we hit the ground running. I had about a half-dozen errands, a lyra (aerial hoop) class, and my one-on-one goodbye call with Grandpa, facilitated by Aunt Marie and Aunt Lisa, who kindly did a lot of the talking on his end of the line since he'd already slowed down enough that it was hard for him to speak. It's funny thinking of what to say to someone when you know it's the last time you'll ever chat. What do you tell them? What can you? I talked about my upcoming half marathon, and he asked how fast I'd run. I showed him videos from my lyra class earlier that day, and brought our pup Lily and all three cats onto the video call. The animals made him smile. It's surreal sending someone off on their end-of-life journey through sharing the mundane, though I guess that's what relationships chalked up to - a series of shared moments that one day draw to a close - and it was a privilege to have one last chance to share, knowing it was our last. Seeing him there, not scared but just tired, comfortable and at home, surrounded by loved ones doting on his needs, honestly, made death feel a little less scary. It's a very big thing to offer someone as your final goodbye: comfort that the end doesn't need to be scary.
So it was simple and it was a lot, and that was our big vacation for summer 2025.
