I expect I’m not the only human who has wondered how to say what would be a last goodbye to someone they loved dearly. Even as a pastor, I wondered. I saw the faces of folks who would show up in church for worship in the days after they had said goodbye to the one person they loved and cherished the most. How did they say goodbye?
I remember one goodbye, in particular. In the weeks before my father – I called him FRB – died, his room at St. Joe’s Hospital on the North Side of Milwaukee was often filled with visitors. Friends of mine – Joanne, who he greatly loved – friends of my Dad and Mom, his sister Edna, who drove from Ellison Bay alone to say good-bye to her brother, and my uncles from the Bay Area of California, Pete and Johnny. I made a visit the few days before he died, and I was there as the room filled with people. My Dad was the extrovert in the family, but he didn’t talk much as he lay in bed, in his last days.
I knew I would not see him again when I left his hospital room that last time. My mother, sister and I had had an intimate moment with Dad as Mom – who rarely cried – cried out, “I love you so much!” I watched as FRB nodded.
Uncle Pete and Uncle Johnny had a flight to catch before mine. In my memory, the room was still full of people. I sat in the chair next to his bed. As Johnny and Pete left the room, Johnny stood at the end of Dad’s bed and said, “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, Frank.” A few hours later, it was my turn to go. How to say goodbye? I looked into my Dad’s eyes and said, “I don’t know when I’ll see you again, FRB.” Dad nodded as I walked out of that lonely hospital room.
I cried all the way home on the plane.
Richard – I called him Ricardo – Joanne, and my Dad in Milwaukee. Who took the photo?
