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Making goodbyes a little less wrenching

By LAVERNE HAMMOND

One morning several years ago, I awoke and heard my neighbor calling out his usual "goodbye" to his wife as he left his home for work. He fully expected her to be there when he returned, but she wasn't.

Norma, with her sweet and loving ways, died suddenly from a heart attack while she was talking to her sister on the phone that afternoon. Her wash was still on the line flapping in the wind. She had a cake in the oven. It was her husband's birthday.

Life can be unpredictable, but death more so. When someone dies suddenly like my neighbor did, would-be comforters often express their condolences by saying, "At least she didn't have to suffer." But often the reason a sudden death is so hard on those left behind is that they had no time to say goodbye.

My husband had a terminal illness, and he did suffer before he died. When I was no longer able to care for him alone, we got help and the assistance of Hospice. My daughters and I, however, had sufficient time to say our goodbyes to him, each in our own way. As he was dying, he was surrounded by the familiar things in his home and the family he loved.

I remember one of my mother's friends who had a fight with her brother; for years they never spoke to each other. It was only at their mother's funeral that they finally came face to face with a common grief and resolved their differences. Their mother had tried so hard to bring them back together. It made her sad that she was never successful. In essence, she finally achieved her goal, but she wasn't there to see it.

They took a trip to Italy together and tried to pick up where they left off. It was so successful that when they came back, they made plans for another trip. He had never married and she was a widow, but childless. They realized they needed one another, and so they moved into the old family home together.

About a year later, the brother had a massive stroke, and in a week he died in her arms. She was glad that she was there for him at the end and that they were able to say their goodbyes. Her only regret was all the years they wasted when they could have been friends.

I also had a chance to be with someone from whom I had been estranged just before he died. When I was 14 years old, I had a crush on my brother's best friend. We walked to school together and ice skated at the Lincoln Park lagoon. We drifted apart when he went on to high school before I did.

Just before Christmas vacation, though, I ran into him in a bookstore near our high school. He walked me home, and we laughed and talked together, just like old times. He told me that he had been trying to get good grades for college, confiding to me that he wanted to be a doctor some day like his father. He also told me he missed me. As we parted, he said that he would call me during the holidays. That was not to be.

The day after Christmas, he was killed with several other teenagers by a train at an ungated crossing. I was grief-stricken by his sudden death, which was hard for a young mind to accept. I never dreamed that when he stood on my porch that afternoon, it would be our last goodbye to each other.

Unexpected deaths, of course, not only deprive those left behind of their last goodbyes, but also those who die. That's what makes the incident that occurred after Norma's death seem so inexplicable, yet comforting.

Several hours after my neighbor's body had been removed from her house, her husband stood in his kitchen leaning against the stove and talking to a sympathetic relative. Suddenly, he realized that the stove was warm. He turned and opened the oven door and peered in.

There, to his astonishment, was the angel food cake Norma was baking before she died. A cake that had been in the oven for so many hours should have been a complete disaster. Instead, as he excitedly explained to me the next day, "It was just as perfect as ever."

With tears streaming down his face, he cried fervently, "I just can't believe it. It's a miracle. Norma wanted me to have my favorite cake, and this is a sign she was watching over it for me. This was her way of saying 'goodbye.' "

-- LaVerne Hammond, who divides her time between Wisconsin and Florida, is an octogenarian at work on her memoirs. Write her in care of the St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg FL 33731.