Long friendships, quick goodbyes, and a chapter’s certain end

We said goodbye to two of our best friends Saturday night, and I thought to myself, Well, it’s the beginning of a new chapter.

And in many ways that’s right. Bill and Verna Weber have been our buddies for more than a decade, and now they’re moving to the other side of the world.

Posing before a Cincinnati Pops Christmas concert, December, 2019.

No longer will we go with them to the symphony or a movie.
We won’t take road trips with them to visit our kids living hours away.
We won’t share holidays and more meals than I can count, both well-planned and spur-of-the-moment, at their place or ours.
Evelyn will no longer giggle at Verna’s wry sense of humor.
The four of us will no longer mull over everything from politics to theology to happenings among church leaders we know all over the world.
We’ll no longer tell them our problems and listen to theirs.

With their move to retire in New Zealand to live there with their family, our happy memory-making is finished.

When did it end?

But the truth is, it has been ending for years. As the limitations of Evelyn’s diseases have encroached on our lives, the two of us as a couple have had little capacity for the activities and conversations that nurtured this friendship, or any others.

So I’m wondering, When did the old chapter really end? Was it when we told the Webers about Evelyn’s diagnosis? Some couples retreat into isolation with the news of Alzheimer’s. We absolutely have not done that. But when did I realize that all my efforts to stay social were in a new chapter instead of the old? Was I afraid to admit I was turning a page?

Was I afraid to admit I was turning a page?

Did the new chapter begin the night we left the Super Bowl party before halftime because Evelyn couldn’t sit and watch the game any longer?

Was it the night years ago we decided to stay home instead of using our Cincinnati Pops tickets with them?

Verna and Evelyn, this Easter.

When was the last delicious meal Evelyn cooked for them? (I can’t begin to remember.) When did Evelyn first leave the dinner table to stretch out on the couch in the living room while the rest of us finished the meal? Was that the beginning of the new chapter, or did the chapter open when I finally relaxed and accepted that this would happen every time we ate together?

I stood at my retirement banquet 6 years ago and waxed on about turning the page to all the possibilities in my new chapter. But I’ve since discovered life is not that tidy.

Granted, sometimes new chapters begin in an instant, as with a tornado or sudden heart failure or a baby’s birth. But more often, changes ooze into our lives slowly until we wake up one day and realize everything now is different. So often chapters don’t begin and end, but flow into each other like a rushing stream picking up debris along its banks.

Traveling downstream

And it’s clear to me, for many reasons, we have traveled quite a ways downstream. This goodbye shows one more example.

Ten days ago, the Webers with two more best friends, Terry and Shirley Wuske, came for dinner. “This will be the last time the Webers are in our home,” I said to Evelyn one lunchtime the week before.

She looked up. “Oh, that makes me sad,” she said, before returning to her bowl of strawberries.

We posed again, this time also with our friends the Wuskes, just a few weeks ago.

We had dinner with the Webers and the Wuskes again this Saturday, this time at the Wuskes’ home, and I reminded Evelyn when we stood to leave, “Give Verna a hug. This will be the last time you see her face-to-face.”

Her face contorted, and she said, “I’ll miss you,” and she and Verna opened arms for a teary embrace.

But it didn’t last long, and 10 minutes later when we were driving away, I had to remind Evelyn to look up and wave goodbye.

These muted reactions demonstrate the flattened emotions seen in many Alzheimer’s patients. Tell them their best friend has died, and they’ll respond, “Oh. . . . And where did you say my shoes are?”

So Evelyn’s brief expressions of sadness at this goodbye, slight though they were, show a bond buried deep beneath today’s forgetting. She may always remember this friendship. But I’m left to ponder which is sadder: our friends’ departure, or Evelyn’s reaction to it?

Tuesday, without emotion, Evelyn was fine with my leaving her at home with a caregiver friend while I helped take Webers to their New Zealand flight. We wouldn’t have imagined handling it this way, even a couple of years ago.

And I thought again, as I drove home from the airport, We’ve entered a new chapter for sure.