I Need to Say Goodbye Before I Can Say Hello

I Need to Say Goodbye Before I Can Say Hello

 "Who was that on the phone?" Nancy asked reluctantly

Jim sank into the chair next to her and sighed. "That was our Realtor, telling us that she really couldn't give us any more time and wishing us well in finding our new home."

"I really can't blame her, Sweetheart," Nan admitted. She's worked very hard for us. I'm not surprised she gave up on me. I'm just surprised you haven't."

"I love you, Nan. You know that. And I can see this –whatever the hell it is – is tearing you apart. I'm not giving up on you. I just wish I knew how to fix it."

"I'm the one who has to fix it, she sighed.”I've been debating since this morning whether or not to tell you about this, but since it seems likely that I'm already crazy, I don't imagine this can add much more proof. I had a dream last night – and voices in the dream kept saying – 'You have to say goodbye before you can say hello." "

"And what do you think that means?"

"I think it means I have to say goodbye to something precious I left behind before I can create a new home with you - for us."

"But we've been through this already. Nan. We've tried to find your grandmother's house, the one you lived in for many years. There is nothing at the address you have but a vacant lot. Neighbors don't know what happened to the house you're trying to describe to them. They don't even remember a house being there. Town records have no information about a house on that property either. All we can find are dead ends."

Nancy winced at Jim's exasperated tone. "I know I'm unreasonable. I know it. But I'm not ready to give up yet. Let's get some sleep now. You leave on your trip to Chicago in the morning. If I haven't found an answer by the time you get back, we'll call the Realtor back and put an offer on that house on Fountain Street we both liked. Deal?"

He put his arms around her. Hugged her tightly and whispered, "Deal."

As soon as Jim left the next morning, Nan got in her car and headed 20 miles out of town to visit St. Michael's Shrine. It was a small chapel, famous among believers for providing small miracles made possible by an intervention from the Archangel himself. A visit there had always provided both comfort and clarity for Nan. She'd been prompted to visit before as she struggled with the process of buying their new house - or as Jim preferred to put it, finding their new home - but she had resisted until now.

Why is it, she thought, that I always wait until the last minute to pray? Nan mused.

She sat outside of the shrine on a small bench and let the sun drench her body and maybe clear her mind.  And then she silently asked the question she'd been given in the dream. "Why do I have to say goodbye before I can say hello? And, by the way, say goodbye to what?"

When she entered the chapel, she lit a candle, selected a seat in an empty pew a few rows from the altar, closed her eyes, and just listened. Her thoughts poured out from there in a steady stream.

In the memory that came forth, she was about six. She was disembarking from a large ship with her parents. It was dark and cold and noisy. Then there was a long car ride, one that lasted all night. Very early in the morning, they arrived at a house with a big porch. A lovely lady came out to the car to greet them. Then she took Nan's hand and led her into a big, warm kitchen. After that, Nan's thoughts scattered. She remembered a huge bed with warm covers and a rag doll that she fell asleep hugging.

She pictured a tire swing in a tree at the side of the house, and the lovely lady, who they said she should call Gran, was pushing her on the swing, high up into the limbs of the big tree. She remembered helping Gran churn butter – pushing a wooden paddle up and down in a barrel until her arms got tired, and Gran sent her outside to play. Other mental snapshots included family card games, brownie scout meetings, dancing lessons, fireworks and toasting marshmallows over an outdoor fire.

I was safe, Nan thought, I was so safe

There was a very big garden that was an important part of that house. Her grandfather called it a Victory Garden. Every morning she and Gran would pick baskets of vegetables from the garden while the dew was still on them. They kept some to eat, some to can or freeze, and some to give away. 

That house was where she learned about celebrations – birthdays and Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas. Her grandfather built her a table and chairs for doing homework on the big front porch, and her school friends came often to play. She and her grandparents went to church, and they entered their prize vegetables in the county fair and won. A bright memory flashed of the night the war ended, and the whole town celebrated together on the street right in front of that house.

Home, she thought, that was the place I called home. I've lived in many houses, but that was my only home.

When she came out of her daydream, her answer was clear. That's the home I have to say goodbye to before I can say hello to my new home with Jim! She felt a  kind of excitement she hadn't felt in years, and it felt wonderful!

But as she left St. Michaels, reality again set in. How would she find this place? Her mind raced. It wasn't as if she hadn't tried. Several years before, she and Jim had driven to Hamden, the town in which her grandparents had lived, but the address she knew was right, was nothing but a vacant lot.  The lot was barren, not even any grass. It was surrounded by a split rail fence, but it had no house on it.

They consulted the neighbors, but the lot had always been vacant as long as they could remember. Court records showed that it had been deeded to the county by an anonymous donor, but there was no indication in the county records that there had ever been a house on it, either.

Well, now finding out where her grandparent's home had been had taken on new urgency for Nan. She had nine days until Jim returned, and she intended to find out. She found a very pretty little B & B on the outskirts of Hamden, and optimistically, she took a room there for three days.  A conversation with the proprietor of the B & B provided her with the names of several families that had lived in the town at the same time her grandparents did. 

Her plan was to contact each family to see if they remembered either her grandparents or if they knew about a house on the vacant lot. The first two families knew nothing about either, but when talking to the third family, she found a glimmer of hope. The elder of that family was her mother's age, and she remembered the Victory Garden and Nan's grandfather. She and her mother used to go there during the war to get free vegetables, but her memory was that the garden filled the whole lot. There was no house on it.

Still puzzled, Nan drove out to look at the vacant lot again. Maybe something will jog my memory, she thought. And turning again to St. Michael, she pleaded; I really could use a good clue.

To her astonishment, the entire lot, still surrounded by the split rail fence, was filled with a magnificent array of wildflowers. Blues and whites and yellows and purples and greens jumbled charmingly the way wildflowers always do. The scene and the scents were intoxicating - as were the bees and the dragonflies and the butterflies that flew among the blossoms.

This lot was brown and barren a few years ago, she thought. But then she realized that she and Jim had come to this place in January, and it was now late spring. Many species of wildflowers, she knew self-seeded and returned year after year. Winter was probably the only season the lot wasn't filled with wildflowers.

As she stood looking at such a show of beauty with total appreciation, her thoughts turned happier. Clever of the county wasn't it St. Michael, to find such a good use for this land, right in the middle of a residential neighborhood? And should they ever put it to another use, it would be easy enough undo.

Remembering that she had seen a small church nearby on her way to the lot, she was suddenly inspired to go there to see if anyone remembered her grandparents and if perhaps also, a house on what she now thought of as the wildflower lot.

There was a man standing on the front steps of the church, looking up at the sky as if he was seeking a weather prediction. When Nan approached, he introduced himself as the new church minister. Her heart sank a little, realizing that if he was new, he probably didn't have the memories she was looking for, but she was wrong.

When she mentioned her grandparent's names, he said he knew them very well. He had lived right next to that lot as a boy and used to help her grandfather with the garden. And no, her grandparents had not lived on that lot but in the house next door – on the other side of the lot from where his parents lived. And then he told her a story that contained the answer to her prayers.

As her grandparents aged, her grandmother developed a chronic illness and was bound to a wheelchair and a single bedroom with a window that overlooked the garden. Eventually, taking care of the garden and taking care of her grandmother became too much work for her grandfather. The war was over, and the vegetables were no longer really needed, so he dug up the garden and seeded the space with wildflowers so your grandmother would have a lovely view.

After she died, he had the county divide the lot where the garden had grown so that it was deeded separately from their home, and when he died, he willed the lot, to the county with the condition that it always be seeded and reseeded with wildflowers. He wanted to make sure the neighborhood retained one beautiful spot in his wife's memory.

Drying the tears that had flowed freely as the minister told her grandparent's sweet love story, she thanked him profusely, sharing with him how badly she had needed to know that story. Then she drove back to the lot and really looked at the little house next door. It had been considerably remodeled, the big front porch had been removed, and the large tree that had held her tire swing was gone. There were enough other superficial changes that she knew why she had not recognized the house at first, but now she could see that, of course, it had once been her grandparent's home.

With great gratitude, she said goodbye to the home she had loved and knew she could now say hello to a new home. It would be the home that she and Jim would live in together, a home in which they would raise their children and a home around which they would plant wildflowers in loving tribute to her wonderful grandparents.

Yes, I did have to say goodbye before I could say hello, Nan thought. Then she took out her phone and called Jim to give him the good news.