Chapter 12 - Goodbye

Passerby says to Helder,
It has been a wonderful visit! But I need to tell you something before I go that changes everything for us. May we sit on the steps?

I have been appointed the Chief of Chaplains for Veterans Affairs, Pittsburgh. I am the first woman appointed in Pittsburgh, and I’m filled with doubt, longing, fear, and, yes, excitement. I am possessed of a terrible need to refuse the call to remain here with you and, at the same time, resigned to a gut-wrenching sense of Her Holiness in the knowledge that I will go.

I found out just before I came for our week together. Perhaps our last together. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you when I first arrived on Friday because I wanted everything to be exactly as it has been for us so that I might remember us as we have been.

I know. Had I told you when I first came, we would have had a week to process it together, but Helder, I know already what you would have said, and you know what I would have said because, between us, there is nothing we have withheld from one another. There is nothing left to say—except Goodbye.

I will come when I can, but I fear it will not be often. As Nancy Griffith sang, “It’s a long, long way from Claire to here.” I don’t know what to say, but I remember what you said about loss and grief; when it comes down to it, sometimes all that’s left is the cryin’ and the huggin’. This goodbye might be like that, and while it doesn’t feel like it is, jus’ maybe it will be enough.

So…we did just that, sitting side by side on the wooden front steps of that cabin where we had spoken plainly, where there were no thought taboos, where Helder fielded my confusions, pain, anger, and frustrations with a patience that I couldn’t have managed, and where I was loved for the first time in my life into falling in Love with Her like Helder was in Love with Her.

As I took that bend in the road heading down the hill to the cattle gate, Helder still sat on the step where I had kissed him on the cheek that one last time. And where I received from him the blessing of the Father…one last time.