I visited Audrey for the last time in Kaohsiung. She leaves for the U.S. on Wednesday, initially going with just her 5-year old son to find a place in Sedona. Her husband will bring Pie and Gracie to her later this month.

In these few months since she revealed her ordeal to me, we've probably spent more time together than in the almost eight years that I've been in Taiwan.

We haven't been close, cordial at best. But that's been good enough for us to connect in the end and end on a good note.

We spent the sunset hours at a solitary beach she frequented and in which she took solace when she was going through her ordeal. If all of my life were film footage I was editing into a film of my life, scenes at that beach would feature prominently towards the end of it (hopefully the end of the film is still coming soon).

It was a bit other-worldly. The important thing was her taking me to that place. We got there and immediately separated. The place had its own importance to her, but it had its own resonance to me that Audrey doesn't know about, having spent a lot of time at shores myself.

In this current lifetime, we're close; connected. However that closeness has been characterized by distance and pushing away against pulling together. And in the end, in light of our dual, practically simultaneous realizations in October, I think it's a happy end that we end our karma with each other.

The karma that pulled us together is done. The karma that pulled us together potentially held complication. It held attachment. It held us as two distinct beings interacting with each other. That's all done. It's no more.

In being special to each other, we are no longer special to each other. And in the pursuit of enlightenment, it's a good thing to lose attachments and to end karma, even to things that seem materially like good things.