Nadia '77

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“Nadia’s Theme” floated from the speakers on the dashboard, as the rain poured out of the December sky. The dusk rose in the distant west, and the clouds and the approaching darkness blackened the sky above. Headlights from oncoming cars – the inference of other lives – illuminated the huge drops on the windshield for a moment, until swept aside by the wiper blades. I knew the road well. My mind drifted away from my earthly confines. Back into the past that was all too recent. 3

A tear slid down my cheek. Angered by this sudden backsliding of my strongly-built facade, I pushed the drop from my face. It was the last time. 4

I drew a breath slowly, and then another, trying desperately to force down the acceptance, the finality of the farewell. My throat constricted in defiance, and again the tears fell. 5

My hands gripped the steering wheel as I attempted to control the emotions to which my tear filled eyes now bore witness. My mascara ran, in blackening streaks from my eyes, as a lingering shadow of the flowing pain. I shouted – enraged - into the emptiness surrounding me. “WHY?!” The pain I had seen in his eyes as he spoke seemed to envelope me. And I found myself pleading for an answer I knew did not exist from a God whose existence I now questioned. 6

His hand had gripped my own as he summoned all his strength. “The rain… I couldn’t see… so fast… I’m scared, I ‘m so scared”. 7

The rain that had once been my friend had betrayed me. It had left me alone again. The rain that had been there when we first met as we laughed at ourselves in our soaking clothes was now drowning me. We had run with each other as the rain made tiny craters in the sand during a summer storm. In the autumn, while others left the stadium to escape the downpours, we had stayed… his smile came from his eyes through the rain and warmed my soul. The rain had helped us first to say hello that night. Goodbye was never said in the rain; in fact, we never said those words. 8

I drove on, not wanting to go home, not wanting to even go on. 9

We never said goodbye until that night. When he died, words which usually came so easily were nonexistent. When his eyes closed, signaling that Death had come, I could only say goodbye… “Goodbye Daniel”. But the words were hollow, uneducated and fell into the deepening abyss of my sorrow. 10

A few days later, at his graveside, the rain had turned to snow and the words to life. Life in the absence of a heart I once shared, a friend I once knew. But there was life. Again I said goodbye. It seems I am still, and will always be, saying goodbye. 11

Perhaps then, it can be said that goodbye is never fully accepted. Perhaps the words will come easier as I speak them more often. Perhaps no one ever fully comprehends the finality of goodbye, only the reality of learning to live after saying it. 12