HOW TO HANDLE TRAGEDY WHILE ON THE ROAD

‘Tragedy’ is never convenient or simple; it’s messy and complicated. It involves tough emotions and organization/coordination to drop everything and travel (sometimes long distance) to a sick loved one or worse, a funeral.  This is how it is when you live a traditional lifestyle, in a conventional home. 

But we don’t live that life, we live on the road in a 285 sq ft. Travel Trailer.  On Christmas Day of 2022, we set off to cross the country (for the third time), to winter in Florida.   We were devastated to hear that Cat’s mom was being placed on ‘end of life’ care in early January; at this point, we were in Tyler, Texas having work done on the Travel Trailer.   

We knew we had to make some tough decisions going forward. We would need to reroute our plans while attempting to continue to attend work events that had been scheduled for many months.  

Then there’s the 6-hour time difference (from Texas) for updates on her health and well-being.  Along with staying connected to siblings who were doing the heavy lifting of round-the-clock care. Thank God for Starlink.  

In our lifestyle, people generally do one of two things, 

1. They have their entire route planned out for the coming year and all their stops booked and ready to go. 

OR 

2. They do what we do… fly by the seat of our pants (more or less) and only book approx. 3 weeks out. 
    

However, at this point, we had booked numerous camps in Florida, for eight weeks, in winter!  Anyone who RVs full-time or simply vacations in Florida knows that it is booked months and months in advance during the winter season.  So now we had decisions to make, do we continue to Florida from Texas and take our chance on when Cat’s mom will pass away, or do we just stop and wait?  

We decided to continue on.  We had already booked the Tampa RV Show, which was a huge opportunity for us to network, not only with other content creators but with suppliers, to become ambassadors for their products (more on this later).  We’d also signed up to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in Fort Myers (again with other full-time RVers and content creators) and we didn’t want to let anyone down.  

We knew Cat would not fly to the UK alone but how would that work?  Would we leave the truck and RV somewhere, board our dogs then pray everything would be, OK?  Or could someone else travel with her?   Also, where do we book a flight from as we have no idea where we will be once she passes away?  To say this was stressful is an understatement.  

Cat’s mum sadly passed away just eight days later on January 14, 2023, but thankfully she could be with her sister (virtually) all night.  At this point, we had just entered the panhandle of Florida.   

It was agreed that our daughter, Amanda, would fly out from Los Angeles and meet us in Orlando, after the Tampa RV show and our Habitat for Humanity build.  This meant we could save some money by booking the flights two weeks out and we could honor our commitments. 

The major issue came with changing our reservations.  Absolutely no parks in Florida (state, national or private) could accommodate us close to Orlando around the date we needed to fly. This meant Kev would have to make a 10-hour round trip from the site we’d booked back in September of 2022 to drop us off for our flights.  Thankfully, the return journey wouldn’t be so bad as Kev would be in Daytona by then.  What on earth could we do? 
 

This is where the community steps in.  If we haven’t mentioned it before, having a community when you’re full-time RVing is essential.  We are members of a few online groups, but our membership in the Insiders of Keep Your Daydream saved us.  We went to the hive mind and asked if anyone knew of somewhere we could stay overnight; not just for our outgoing flights, but to collect Amanda at 6 am the day before our flights to the UK.  We received a few good suggestions, but it was a member who reached out to say ‘I live just thirty minutes away and you can stay on my property’. No fees.  No questions asked.  He wasn’t even going to be home!  To say we were thankful is an understatement.  We spent three nights on his property, which was perfect.  Thank you so much, Scott! 

Most often, when someone passes away, you hear the sad news and go about your life until the funeral.  This wasn’t the case for us.  Cat (having been a funeral director for almost 20 years), handled the arrangements for her mother’s funeral from four thousand miles and a 5 hour time difference away, all while attempting to reroute our trip which was utterly exhausting. 

Our amazing daughter, Amanda, took two weeks of unpaid leave to travel to Orlando and then on to Manchester, UK for the services.  We flew out of Orlando, direct to Manchester with Aer Lingus, and spent two weeks visiting with family and making the final preparations for the services.   

We laid Cat’s beautiful mother to rest with dignity and class in her hometown of Stockport, England in the same church she’d attended as a child.   During those two weeks, Kevin had to move three times, meaning he needed to break down camp, navigate and drive to the new locations and then set up camp completely alone, with two dogs.  This is a first for him and he did an outstanding job.   

By the time we landed back in Orlando, Kev was at Daytona Raceway for the Daytona 500 and the journey to and from the airport was completely doable. 

Was this much different from tragedy while living in a ‘sticks and bricks’ (regular house)?  Absolutely!  The coordination of where we’d be, when we could fly, where we could fly from, where would we be upon Cat’s return, and how would we find a camp?  All of these factors had to be taken into account.  How we managed it without going crazy is a miracle.  
 

What can you take away from this? 

1. Always be flexible in your plans 

2. Have your community going before you even set out full-time.  

3. Be able to set up/break down your rig alone. 

4. Be comfortable driving/towing your RV alone. 

5. Be prepared to miss some of the things you’d planned 
    

Remember you can always go back to the things you’ve missed – your home is on wheels. 

While writing this, we’ve again realized just how fortunate we are to not only be confident with towing our RV but the incredible community who came around us and helped at our lowest moments.  Thank you to everyone who reached out with offers of help and prayer – we love you all.