How Do We Say Goodbye?

   I tore the sheet of paper towel from the roll and folded it in half to lay by the coffee pot and stirred my coffee with my spoon and laid it down on the paper towel just as I had seen her do for over forty years.  Her clothes hang in my closet neatly pressed with still the fragrance of her perfume on some to remind me they really aren’t mine but hers.  Our front porch and our home are decorated for Fall as she would have done.  She was my teacher as well as my friend.

   We visited with her husband and watched as he courageously goes about his daily tasks without her.  The loneliness never leaves his eyes even when he smiles and jokes with us.  The cancer has robbed him of his ability to walk and the failure of his kidneys, cause him to be swollen to the point his feet are tripled in size if not more.  They are red and swollen and from time to time he moves them and without a word one knows he is in pain.  However, our friend always has a smile and a clean joke to share each time we see him and he always asks the same question she did,” can I offer you something to drink?”  We expected him to meet the Lord first.  Yet it was her that could not stay alone without him.  She never spent a night alone in her life and I dare say few days. 

   She was beautiful inside and out, a woman of 5’6, thin and a smile that would light up any dark room.  She never saw herself as beautiful and perhaps that was the very thing that even made her more so.  She was kind and soft spoken.  She taught me the how the art of unselfishness.  She was always willing to do whatever we might want to do.  She provided the most beautiful clothes for her girls that she made with her own hands.  I remember seeing her French button holes that she made in lined suits.  There was nothing she could not sew.  She was so very talented.  She was faithful to the Lord and to be in his house for worship.  She visited the sick even when she didn’t feel well herself.  Although cooking was not her favorite thing in life there was always food at her table for guests.  She always cooked too much bacon for breakfast and would throw away what was left.  To me her only weakness in life and I know that isn’t true but it was the way I saw her.  She was very sensitive and how in the world she and I were best friends amazes me, because I have the sensitivity of a cow in a flower bed too often.

   She weathered many storms in life and shed many tears, but kept her eyes focused on the Lord.  She questioned Him and taught me that was alright because in the end she always bowed to His sovereignty.  She didn’t like to read but she would read her bible. 

   She loved to play games and entertained people in her home often to play hand and foot (a card game), or dominoes.  I never entered her home that she did not first offer us something to drink before we could even sit down.

   She was scared of everything.  One night we were camping and the men had gone off fishing on foot.  We walked to the end of the sandy road and peered into the darkness looking for a flash light to shine in our direction.  However, no light shown but a rustling in the brush did.  I stood there and in my ears came the sound of four number nine tennis shoes retreating in haste the other direction leaving me alone in the lane.  She and June ran for all they were worth the other way back to camp. 

   She and I have been through so many losses together but never did I imagine I would lose her this soon.  The first major loss was her mastectomy caused by cancer.  Before the diagnosis came we were at the lake on vacation awaiting the final word when we returned home.  I have no idea how or really why other than the obvious, but I read the entire book of Job out loud to her sitting in the camper.  After her surgery I was with her in her home and recall sitting on the floor beside her chair as she cried and I could say nothing but sat there and cried with her.  I helped her make a bathing suit that she could wear.  I was going through old photos and did not realize I had that photo of her in the bathing suit we made.  She never forgot these things and always told me that it helped her that I just sat and cried with her.  That was truly an act the Holy Spirit totally did for her through me because never in my life am I at a loss for words as all who know me are fully aware.

   She had lost her little girl Jacque in death, by cancer of her liver, when she was only two.  I had never lost anyone close to me at this time and it was always something I could not totally feel but had such sympathy for her.  God had given her two precious girls and they were the center of her life.  When we lost Robin at the age 26 I then experienced the pain she had born.

   We gave up our mothers, my grandparents, our best friend June and later our other best friend Joy.  Joy had cancer and suffered on and off for nearly four years.  I know she never left her side and I was 199 miles away so she was there for me as well as herself.  We always kept close contact by phone and we visited all we could.   We were now the three musketeers.  Then Joy died and we grieved together for her and John.  It hurt and it was a great loss but we had watched her suffering and somehow that made it easier to bear.

She was taking care of Jimmy and doing things that only God could help her do as in putting that wheel chair up and out of the van.  She helped him up and down out of chairs and in and out of bed.  She was weakened from the muscles removed in surgery and a slender woman that had not had heavy duties before such as this.  She was almost 74 years old and she was doing the work that would have tired her at 40.  Yet she continued on.  She prepared meals for others and visited others even in the circumstances they were in and he depended totally on her.  He did all he could possibly do and together they braved this new storm in their lives together and mostly alone it seemed.

   We were going through our own storm of life.  My back had finally taken me down and for almost three months I was down literally on the bed.  We drove back and forth to see them as Jimmy had one crisis after the other or she had some heart problems that were critical.  In the end I was laying in the back of the Rav 4 in order to go because I could not bear to sit. 

   One morning we got the call that she was on her way by ambulance to the hospital.  I had spoken to her the day before and she was so tired.  She had told me that she was going to need  help that she could no longer handle it alone.  She sounded so tired and so defeated.  My heart broke for them both.

She never knew me again although I did go to be with her.  She was gone and her last words were I am so tired. The most difficult thing was being unable to go to her funeral.  I was waiting for the surgeon to do my surgery and they were having her funeral at the same moment.

   How do we say goodbye when death comes so quickly and we have no warning?  How do we stop the daily mourning that takes place in our hearts?  Why is it so difficult to turn loose of one and yet even though we grieve, we did survive the loss of the other.  I have only experienced two sudden losses and one was my child and the other one of the three of my best friends.  I cannot understand the daily struggles with my personal loss of Betty.  I understood when it was my child.  It was actually several years before the pain subsided to what I esteem as bearable.  However, why I want to cry every day at some point or other over my friend I do not understand.  God was merciful to take her first and yet I watch as her husband goes on and struggles with his illness and expect any day we will suffer loss of him too.  Eddie said maybe it was because we know we are next, but that is not it for me.  I just was not ready to say goodbye. Going to the time of family and friends gathering together the night before just was not good enough, or maybe a better word final enough. 

   I have been so very blessed to have had three best friends that our friendships lasted through thirty six years of 199 miles separating us or their death finally separating us.  And to think that our friendships were only a little over forty years, yet even with the distance between us, we stayed closer than sisters for thirty six years.  June was my best friend for over 50 years and truly more than a friend, she was my mother, my sister and my best friend.  She has been gone for nineteen years.  And now Leonard is with her and the Lord since August 17, 2012.

   Truly I have been blessed.  Eddie and I have been blessed.  Yet once more I ask the question, “How do I say goodbye?”  I am in hopes that this was my way of finally letting go and saying goodbye to Betty, Joy, June and Leonard because thank you Lord, before long I will once again say hello and I hope Betty will say to me, “can I get you something to drink?”