A Long Goodbye

            Type in “The Long Goodbye” and you find the 1973 movie and the 1953 novel.  Change it up to “A Long Goodbye” and you discover poems and memoirs about Alzheimer’s Disease.  Experience a long goodbye and you understand the grinding heartache stretched over weeks, months, or years.

            I’m thinking about long goodbyes this afternoon because I read on the Whidbey Presbyterian Church prayer chain that Bob W. has made the final journey home.  Debilitating health problems compounded by a fall that messed up his memory led to a year or so at HomePlace, the memory care center where my own mother lived from 2012-2013. 

I have fond memories of Bob.  He was the one who invited me to be part of the informal band that performed for the Oak Harbor senior citizen dances once a month. We had a fine time playing simple swing music with piano, drums, several varieties of saxophone, clarinet, flute, trumpet, baritone, bass, and a solo singer.  I was the lone female in the group, and just about everyone else was old enough to be my father.  Bob would joke with me throughout our practices and gigs.  At church, he always had a grin, a wisecrack, and an encouraging word for me.   

I am quite sure that it was a long goodbye for Noreen, nursing him through repeated hospitalizations and long recoveries at home until she broke her leg and could no longer care for him.  Her cheerful spirit always touched my heart—and still does.  She seemed to take in stride poignant developments such as when he thought that the skilled nursing care facility was a cruise ship and when he stopped recognizing her, thinking she was his mother-in-law. 

Long goodbyes are never easy.  I’ve experienced them with my sister and then my mother.  However, those last weeks and months when you know that the final goodbye is on its way have their own sweetness.  Each visit gets tinged with the knowledge that it could be the last.  A fleeting moment of recognition, a shared joke, a held hand:  all carry the sweet weight of love.

So, goodbye, Bob.  See you on the other shore.  Maybe we can play “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” one more time.  I’m pretty sure my mom and sister would love to join in, too.