Journey's End

continued

In the fall of 1978, John and I headed overseas again. Suspecting that Mea would not be alive when we returned, John came with me two days before we left, for what did, indeed, turn out to be the last visit.

Mea was asleep, as usual, a little bit of lunch drying around her mouth. It was awhile before she opened her eyes, still longer before they focused on us. A year earlier, to prevent the spread of gangrene, her left leg had been amputated. She looked so small, lying there in the pink nightie I'd given her for her birthday, her single leg a too-narrow ridge beneath the sheet. At eighty-eight she still had that ivory-smooth complexion. One of the nurses had put a little rouge on her cheeks.

As always in the three years since she'd lost the power of speech, it was an awkward, unsatisfying time, John and I making all the conversation. We'd brought a vase of greenery from our backyard. Years earlier Mea had given me a cutting of "proper English ivy," which I'd planted outdoors, where it had swiftly taken over the flagstones of the patio, the legs of the picnic table, and the side of the house.

I fussed with the ivy; John told her about our writing assignment in France. Finally it was time to go. "Before we leave, Mea," John said, "will you let us pray with you?"

Poor lady, she couldn't say no. Standing on either side of her bed, we each took a limp unprotesting hand and reached across her to hold each other's free hand. We couldn't say what we'd really been praying since the removal of her leg - that she be allowed to die without further pain - so since John was silent, I mumbled something about Jesus being a friend who never had to say good-bye.

I finished, and still John said nothing. He told me later that when he'd opened his mouth to pray he'd started to sob deep inside himself, his throat so constricted that no sound came out.

An image formed in my mind as the three of us made our silent circle of hands. I saw Mea comforted on Jesus' lap, as she'd so often cradled lost and lonely cats.

Suddenly, breaking into this picture, came a wail from the bed. Mea was sobbing wildly, noisily, explosively, face crinkled like a child's. After the years of silence the sudden eruption of sound was stunning. On and on went the wordless cries.

Just as suddenly they stopped, and her eyes opened. And over her face, which had been so expressionless, spread a glorious smile. Then, abruptly, more frantic, heartbroken sobs. Another ecstatic smile. Three times this same sequence.

Amazingly, no hospital staff appeared during any of this, though Mea's cries must have been heard the length of the corridor. Afterward her eyes closed, and for a few minutes she seemed to be asleep. Then they opened, brilliant blue, placid, looking straight at me, but whether with recognition I couldn't tell. At last we bent down, kissed her, and said good-bye.

At the doorway we turned once more and waved. Mea's left hand stirred, and I thought it lifted a fraction of an inch. And I heard her voice, as clearly as I'd ever heard it.

"Good-bye until the morning."

Over and over, in the more than twenty years since that moment, I've gone back in my mind to that room. What was taking place as John and I looked on uncomprehending? A heavenly dialogue we could not hear? Jesus, unseen by us, coming to claim one of his own? Certainly if John had not been with me that afternoon, I would have doubted my ears. Would have convinced myself, by now, that I hadn't heard what I did. That it was imagination, a wish.

Neither he nor I had spoken a word that day until we reached the parking lot. Then I'd turned to him. "What did you hear?" I asked.

And he said, "I heard, 'Good-bye until the morning.'''

When our reunion will be, in that morning light, in what kind of landscape, joined by what other friends and family, I can only guess.

Good-bye. God-be-with-you.

God watch over us all until that dawn!

       

May he keep you, especially, in his care, my friend-over-the-Web, who've accompanied me on this long journey... all the way to heaven.