Good-Bye Scenes

"How long until you see him again?"

The voice came from a sympathetic-faced airline employee, her dark, wiry hair pulled back into a neat bun.  I'm surprised I remember exactly what she looked like, I was so lost in grief.

"Two years!"  I literally wailed it, snorting as I failed to choke back a sob.

I handed the slightly uncomfortable woman my boarding pass as the love of my eighteen-year-old life trudged tearfully away, down the concourse of Terminal B.  In a few days, he would be boarding a plane of his own, bound for a life that had nothing to do with me.  No wonder the woman at the ticket counter was so uncomfortable.  She had just witnessed the most overblown and embarrassingly dramatic good-bye in all of aviation history.  If, heaven forbid, our farewell was caught by a Salt Lake International Airport security camera, guards somewhere were probably having a very entertaining time of it.

"You guys gotta see these two teenagers saying good-bye," I can just see them saying.  "Watch the part where they won't let go of each other and the guy with the briefcase has to climb over the chairs to get to his plane.  And look, those people over in the corner are crying, just watching them!"

At this point, I imagine the security guard laughing so hard, he can't catch his breath as he pants, "Watch this part!  They're hugging so tight, they lose their balance and fall, knocking out a little kid.  Most embarrassing thing I've ever seen.  Poor kids.  Snot running down their faces."  I imagined the security guard chortling as I boarded the plane.  Wiping my face on my sleeve, I settled into my seat, bound for the tree-nestled Indiana college town where I would valiantly, yet morosely, live out the next two years of my bleak, Scott-less existence.  I had left my Utah home for college in August, three months prior to the inevitable, tragic scene I had just been through.  Back then, good-byes had been rough.  Now, returning to school after Thanksgiving break, it was much more heart-wrenching.  Scott, with his beautiful chestnut mop respectably trimmed and his tennis tan fading under white shirts and ties, would soon be leaving for his two-year church mission.  This was our final good-bye.

"Welcome aboard TWA flight 716..."  The captain's voice flowed over me as I thought back to the moment five weeks ago when Scott had received his mission call.  I had bragged to my new roommates, "He could go anywhere in the world!"  In our compact dorm room, crowds gathered and bets were placed on Mongolia, New Zealand, the south of France.  I had felt, importantly, like a missionary myself, explaining that all 19-year-old Latter-day Saint boys are expected to give two years of service to the Lord.  I had enjoyed the awe that this information had elicited.  My friends' enthusiastic, college-campus-induced, I'm-open-to-new-cultures response goaded me into explaining more about the Latter-day Saint way of life.

The revelation that "Mormons" believe in abstaining from alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco and pre-marital sex had brought on a hushed chorus of  "Wows," followed by a distinct drop in interest level, as if the open-to-new-cultures barometer had dropped from "fascinating and vaguely exotic" to "tragically weird."  Nonetheless, all the girls on my floor at the Read-Clark dormitory had been congratulatory and even a little bit excited when Scott phoned with the news of his mission call.  Riverside, California!  Well, at least it wasn't neighboring Wyoming.

"I love you," Scott had said in his gruff-emotional voice after conveying the news.

Now, as I reached for an in-flight pillow and blanket to help muffle my sobs, I was painfully aware of the next two years stretched ahead of me like a long, thirsty walk through the Gobi desert.  I sat waiting for takeoff, almost believing that my heavy heart, which sat like a soaked rag in my chest, would actually prevent the plane from getting off the ground.  Common sense ruthlessly mocked the resolve I held tightly in my chest.  I would wait, I thought defiantly.  I would just go through the motions while Scott was away, and everything would be just the same when he got back.  Miserably, I knew that my exhilarating new college life would permit no such thing.  Barely one semester in, the truth was, I was already a different person, and Scott hadn't even begun his mission yet.  I was terrified that something would happen to make me forget all the summer nights when Scott and I had looked up at the sky from a plaid flannel blanket in the park, truly convinced that the stars of the Milky Way had been strewn across the universe just for us.

As the plane lifted off, my micro-window allowed me a limited view of the peaks of the Rocky Mountains below, each sharp, grey crag putting more distance between my missionary and me.  I closed my eyes so I could go back to the night before, our last night together.  Scott and I had stayed up all night, not wanting to waste a single minute.  We were at my house, my parents' house, looking at the stars from the basement porch outside my bedroom.  I was wearing a University of Utah sweatshirt, a good-bye gift from the boy I felt I was about to lose.  Usually, when Scott dared to stay at my house past midnight, a call from his dad, Bruce, would wake my parents.  The cue for Scott to make his hasty, belated departure would be my father's deep, slow voice gently bellowing out, "Circe, Scott, it's a Bruce call."

It must be an innate parental skill, the ability to infuse six words with the disapproval of four parents and possibly an entire church community.  Those six words were the final say.

That last night, there was no Bruce call.

Scott and I sat next to each other, hands clasped tightly, a blanket wrapped around us to keep out the dampness of the nighttime hours usually reserved for raccoons and insomniac crickets.  The conversation wasn't always comfortable.

"You won't wait for me.  You'll meet some music guy in Indiana and you'll be married by the time I get back."  Scott's words weren't meant to sting, but the possibility that they might be prophetic angered me.  Scott wanted as much as I did to be reassured that I would never love someone else.  In our perfect world, I would be too busy studying and writing letters to my missionary to date.  If I had any free time, wouldn't I spend it studying my scriptures as avidly as a rabbi?  In so many words, I denied the possibility of anything changing in Scott's absence.  I wanted the courage to tell Scott that I planned on marrying him and having his babies.  I looked at his wavy hair and noticed the copper highlights catch the moonlight.  He was looking at the sky and squeezing my fingers with his thumb.

"I won't marry someone else," I told him.  The comment was supposed to sound forceful and final, to put an end to this ridiculous conversation we were having.  Instead, it sounded like a concession.  A concession to what, I don't know.  There was no way around it.  Things happen in two years.

Scott looked at me sadly.  "You'd better kiss me.  It's your last chance," he said with a hint of a painful smile.

When I woke up at the end of that first torturous flight and stepped off the plane in St. Louis, I remember a pinprick of light in my dark world of mourning.  "I'm three hours closer to the end of the two years," I thought.  It was a desperate thought, but one that gave me a small measure of satisfaction.  And life went on.

Had I been able to see into the future, I would have seen two years stretching into an arduous six.  But I also would have seen an eventual reunion of souls, a near-impossible confluence of events and decisions that would bring the two tides of our lives inexorably back together, this time forever.

Those two tear-stained college freshmen had everything to lose, everything to fear.  It has been an honor for Scott and me to make their wildly optimistic and desperately hoped-for dreams come true.  Gosh, I love those two crazy youngsters.  I'm glad it worked out for them.