Two years ago this morning the doctors finally admitted my FIL would not recover from complications due to heart surgery. They told us to say our last goodbyes – but what they didn’t tell us was that there is no “last goodbye.”
When you lose someone who has been a daily presence in your life for decades, there is no single moment when you say farewell.
There are thousands.
I still step inside the farm office expecting to see him sitting in his chair. I open the door to the shop and think maybe he’ll be sweeping or putting up tools or changing oil. I cut my grass and wonder if he wants the mower next, forgetting in that second that he’s never going to mow again.
He loved photography and whenever there was a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset he’d call me, asking, “Are you seeing this sky?” I’d step out on my porch and spot him, across the field between our houses, standing on his patio with his camera. We’d wave before heading back inside. He called me when the moon hung ripe and golden over our old red barn, or when storm clouds boiled over the grain bins. “Go outside and look! You’ll love it!” he’d say. He called me for rainbows and snowflakes and icicles as big as my arms. For the first eagle of the season, the first blooming rose, and his mother’s surprise lilies. For hummingbirds and cardinals and the fox that has kits in his culvert every spring.
I see these things and wait for a call that never comes, hoping that wherever he is now he can see them, too.
He hated horses – hated them – but he tossed mine apples and carrots and the first handful of corn at harvest. He picked clover and timothy and brome to throw over the fence, and he took care of them when we left on family vacations. He never complained – even when they escaped and left trails through his bean fields and manure in his driveway.
He was brilliant and patient and kind. Thoughtful and generous in the small ways that matter so much more than you think.
He was my husband’s best friend and farm partner.
His absence has left a huge hole in the shape of our lives, and two years hasn’t been long enough to weave a patch over the rip. I don’t honestly know that any length of time will be.
In the two years that he’s been gone, both my kids have graduated and are about to start college. He would have loved talking rocks and geology with SnowBear and farming with Stretch. I signed a book deal, something he knew I’d been dreaming of for years. I never got to tell him, but my contract is dated on his birthday so maybe somewhere he knows. His son has built a lake and bought a farm and put up pivots. There are cats all over the place again, and if he were here he’d be their favorite person.
In two years, everything has changed.
But we still miss him so much, and every day brings a dozen reminders that he isn’t here. It’s like saying goodbye over and over and over again.
Wind and Words 