"Our Last Goodbye," A Story of Unending Love by Widower and Elder--RiverSoul

       Most goodbyes are ephemeral, followed after a period of time with some form of hello.  Couples in a relationship experience countless separations and comings together, but always, at some distance on the horizon, lurks that last goodbye.  Young people give little thought to this reality.  But the well-known poet, Maxine Kumin, said it all in a poem that celebrates the conception, gestation, and birth of her daughter:  “Death blew up my skirt the day I signed for you.” 

       My beloved late wife, Imogene, seven Earth-years now in the Spirit World, but in this life a widely-published poet, once told me that for poets only three topics exist—birth, love, and death.  She wrote of all three.  She remarks in one poem, in which she described all of the rocks in her life that she had hauled up from here or down from there, that she has handled all of them “except the one I will own forever.” 

       Our last time out together is a treasured memory.  Although very ill and weak, she still liked to go on afternoon drives, even during her last days in hospice.  As usual, I picked her up in early afternoon and drove, at her request, to the hilltop parking lot overlooking Tuttle Creek Dam a few miles north of town.  This second day of December was sunny, 50 degrees, with a soft breeze from the SW.  She lowered her window halfway and asked me to recline the back of her seat.  Soon, warmed by sun and caressed by breeze, she moved into a beautifully calm two-hour nap, the most relaxed I had seen her in weeks.   Knowing the time was near, I gazed long at her and wondered when.

       Back at hospice, as nurses were pushing her wheelchair into the dining room for dinner, seemingly out of nowhere came my exclamation “Even if we never have another time together outside, today was a super good one!”  I kissed her goodnight and left for the day. 

       The next morning, she was non-responsive but gasping, and in early evening of the next day she took her last breath.  It so happened that, earlier in the evening of that second day, while I was massaging her neck and chest, I took her hand in my other and slowly recited the famous poem by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore:

                                  Death is not

                                      Extinguishing the light,

                                  It is putting out the lamp

                                      Because the dawn has come.

     

      Then I kissed her—and she kissed me back, much to my amazement and to that of family members gathered around!  Two hours later, still totally non-responsive, she passed. 

     Greetings and farewells come in many flavors and are not always appropriately timed.  And I, learning to live the life of a widower, have given thought to just when our last goodbye occurred.  I now strongly feel that it was when she sensed something very familiar and kissed me back.  And I also harbor the notion that she, as much as saying goodbye, was sending a promise of things to come.  From the place she stood that moment along her Cosmic Arc, perhaps her reply to my kiss was as much "hello" as "goodbye!" 

                                                                                                      --Elder RiverSoul

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