Pictures can be misleading. Let’s take this picture of Jenny and me for instance.

Don’t we look happy? We’re with each other. We even have milkshakes. What could be better?

In actuality this was one of our saddest moments together. It happened at the airport as I was waiting to head over to my gate. Jenny would not join me on my flight as I was headed in another direction. With each delicious sip of our milkshakes, we knew the time to part was coming closer.

Jenny wrote about this experience in another recent post she did. What she said was true. Leaving her was like the end of a favorite television show you had watched for years. It felt so permanent even though we knew it wasn’t. After more than two years together, but actually not together physically, we were minutes away from saying goodbye in person for the last time in a long time.

We did our best to stay happy hence ordering milkshakes. I even grabbed my boarding pass then left the airport and came back in again through security three times just to spend a little more time with her. We wanted to make sure I didn’t miss my flight just as much as we didn’t to miss each other.

The milkshake pictures may look like a happy, fun moment. In reality, it was the beginning of a journey home for me that was about to take about a day and a half.