Saying Goodbye

These past few weeks have been littered with good-byes. We said goodbye to our dear chocolate lab, Gracie, who past away while we were in Minnesota. Although not unexpected, it was still hard. The children’s biggest regret: “We weren’t able to say goodbye.” I reminded them that we had been saying goodbye for weeks now, ever since April when she received the diagnosis of stage 5 lymphoma. It wasn’t much comfort to the kids. They wanted more closure. They wanted to have that concrete memory of saying goodbye “for the last time.”

Interestingly, our process with Gracie paralleled the grief process we were experiencing with losing our rector and his wife. We found out in early May that they were leaving our parish. Since that time we have been to numerous dinners and events, all to say “goodbye” to them. It was two long months of saying goodbye.

Being a psychologist, one would think that saying goodbye would be something I might do well. Alas, it has always been the hardest part of my job as a therapist and something which I prefer to avoid at a personal level. But, it is unavoidable. Life is filled with goodbyes, and these partings are usually painful.

Last night we said our final goodbyes to our rector and his wife. We had dinner, we laughed, and we swapped vacation stories. Someone looking in on that dinner from the outside probably wouldn’t have guessed that we were meeting one last time to say goodbye. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t “heavy”, there were no tears shed. It just was.

We returned to their empty home, the moving van having driven away with the contents of their home right before we left for dinner, and we talked some more and took more pictures and gave more hugs. Slowly, more people started to stop by their home to say their final goodbyes. Within a half of an hour there were twelve of us crammed into the kitchen, hanging out and standing around the center island. Despite the repeated offer from Dearest Dragonfly to go outside and sit down on the porch, no one seemed to want to leave the comfortable and close confines of the kitchen. There we were, enjoying the gift of relationship just as we had done so many times over the last few years in this very same kitchen, and we didn’t want to move. It was as though we wanted to freeze time and preserve this kairos moment.

Eventually champagne was opened and poured and a toast was made “to friendship.” It was at that moment that God’s grace penetrated the sadness and grief I was feeling deep inside. I looked around, and I realized that the evening’s gathering, this small group of people hanging out in the kitchen, all bound by the common thread of love for Fr. C. and Dearest Dragonfly and love for the Lord Jesus, who made us one in Him, was a foreshadowing. This really wasn't the end, it was just a snapshot of what is ultimately true. It was a small, but glorious, taste of the heavenly banquet which is to come.

And in that moment I was thankful -- thankful that I had the privilege of knowing and loving Fr. C. and DD, thankful for the imprint that they made on my life and the life of my family, and thankful for the privilege of serving the Lord Jesus alongside all the people who were hanging out in that kitchen. The work of the Lord goes on, and I am His servant. We may no longer serve side by side with Fr. C. and DD, but in the end, we all get to gather at the same table, and this time, it's for eternity.

Thanks be to God.

"O the love of my Lord
Is the essence
Of all that I love here on earth.
All the beauty I see
He has given to me,
And His giving is gentle as silence."
- song from the Waymarks CD