"To Everything There Is A Season......."

I'm writing this post at a Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Atlanta. I drove down here yesterday to stay with my sister Marilyn, after saying the second most difficult goodbye I've ever had to say in my life.

Yesterday morning was so surreal, preparing to leave my sister Julie's home, knowing that the next time I returned, she would not be there. My heart was about to wrench itself from my chest as I braced for saying goodbye to my dear brother-in-law Ron, knowing that when I left, and when the visits from concerned friends and colleagues started dwindling, he'd be in that house all alone, surrounded by memories. I didn't want to leave him that way.

But Ron wound up being the one who shored me up. And he did it fairly succinctly. He said Julie would come back and kick my ass if I decided to give up on life and curled up in a ball in a corner somewhere. He reminded me that Julie would be the first one to tell me to finish what I started, even as much as she worried about me in Africa. In life, she would always welcomed me home for any reason, be it on the lam from the law or in full nervous breakdown mode, but in the back of her mind, she'd be thinking, "Wow, Rachel went out like a total punk-ass."

Well, not quite a punk-ass, but she'd definitely be sorry that I couldn't hack it. So if Ron could stand there on Sunday morning, frying bacon for me and my brother John an hour before I left, trying to convince me that life WOULD go on, then I had no other choice but to leave.

Standing beside my car, I hugged Ron and told him I'd always have his back, and that I loved him, through my sobs. Then I drove down to the Ohio River levee and wept, looking out at the tugboats churning their way north on the calm waters. The sun shone so brightly, it looked like the river was a long, wide mirror the boats were gliding across. Through my tears, I saw the bridge to Kentucky that I would have to cross to start my journey south. I'd sat on my bike or in a car staring at that bridge thousands of times as a child and a teenager, wondering where my life would take me once I left Cairo. I never, ever, EVER dreamed about Gulu, Uganda, but I knew my destiny lay far beyond Cairo.

Now I was leaving Cairo with the knowledge that my compass, my touchstone, my heart's guide, was no longer waiting for me in the lovely, comfy house on 29th Street. My home. My heart's home.

Sitting here in Barnes and Noble, I can't even try to explain how I managed to unclench that steering wheel, mop my eyes and face, and start my 7 hour drive to Atlanta. All I really remember was how absolutely beautiful the day was. That's one thing you don't get to see in Africa....the changing of the leaves. It's almost peak color season in these parts, with a cozy chill starting to set in. It's Autumn near its pinnacle of gloriousness. While I drove, I kept thinking about that song, "To everything, turn, turn, turn, There is a season, turn, turn, turn, And a time to every purpose under heaven."

I used to like that song a lot, and it still makes sense. But where Julie NOT being alive is concerned, it's just a crock of shit. JULIE IS SUPPOSED TO BE ALIVE, and waiting for me to come home, or waiting for me to pick her up from an airport, or off somewhere at an NEA meeting. There AIN'T no season for Julie to be gone.

Still, somehow the drive helped calm my thoughts. The beauty of Autumn was replacing the beauty and vibrancy of Julie's spirit. Sure, the cold rains and the snow will come and strip away all those lavish red and gold leaves, but they'd be back again NEXT Autumn.

And that was Julie's message to me that when you love someone, and they have loved you, that love never dies. Just because I can't see her or touch her anymore, she's still with me. In the rains and snows of my grief, I will focus only on the loss of her physical presence. But in the deep Autumn of my heart, I know that the reds and golds of Julie's fiery love and loyalty and generosity and strength will always, always burn in the hearts and minds of those who loved her. And there are so many who did love her.

Who DO love her. Who always will.