Saying good bye to Lucy

He had been dreading this day even before she had made her final departure plans with the travel agent exactly one week ago. They had just quietly celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary a little more than a week earlier at a Malaysian restaurant on Cuba Street that they had discovered earlier in the month. Now they were going to be separated, not just for two weeks but for an indefinite period, maybe a year or more. The most ever in those 20 years. “Now this bag has some clothes that maybe Suzy is interested in for Wilson”, she reminded him that morning as she had reminded him about the bag three times earlier the night before. He thought about how he was going to even miss her propensity for nagging in that motherly manner of hers (“Please remember to put that cream on your face or your skin will look too dried out”). The taxi arrived and got them to the airport more than 2 hours early. Now was the time to appreciate the small size of Wellington’s airport and how close it was to their flat on Oriental Bay. She ordered a latte and he had a flat white at the café near the departure gates. “I’m going to miss the great coffee here”. She caught the look on his face. “Yes there’s a lot about this country that I’m going to miss. I won’t have that splendid view of the harbour in Flushing, NY”. They talked with hope about her plans to get her nursing license and her career going and maybe deposit some money and how maybe she could return sooner than later. He felt carried along in her optimism or maybe it was that the flat white was being a particularly effective caffeine deliverance mechanism that morning. It was enough to make him think of how coffee had maybe become, in his sleep deprived middle age, his number one recreational drug of choice. They finished their coffees and headed over to the duty free shop. He joined in her perusal of the fragrances and perfumes. The names of new perfumes always seemed to him to be a variation on the theme of decadence or of promised sultry seduction. He played a game of creating new names in his head and thought of Insolence or Abandon and Miscreant. She sprayed him with one of the bottles of men’s fragrances and he was reminded on how he would miss that too. “I have to get some pineapple lumps souvenirs to bring”, she said. “Oh pineapple lumps are sooo good”, the heavyset girl at the cash register said. He took that as a cue to engage the girl in a discussion of pineapple lumps, of which he had heard a great deal of since he arrived in country but was not clear on exactly what they were. “They are pineapple candies with a chocolate wrapping and are so Kiwi and so delicious”, she said and then smacked her lips for emphasis. They walked on the international departure section which turned out to be a single gate. He said, “We might be fortunate in that I can accompany you close to your departure gate because they’ll do the passenger screening close to it” and he was right. Still only passengers were allowed past a certain point and he had to give her his impassioned kiss and embrace a bit away from the boarding ramp than he would have preferred. “The godamm terrorists have ruined the romance of saying goodbye at airports”, he said to her just before she went through the metal detector. “If they made Casablanca today Bogart wouldn’t have been able to get on the tarmac with Ingrid Bergman”. There was a large glass window where he could watch the passengers exit the boarding ramp and step into the plane. Some passengers waved at that point to their friends and family that were along side the window with him. He hoped that like them he would catch her at that moment of boarding and that they would then both wave goodbye to each other but somehow she got on and he didn’t see her. How did people stand to say goodbye 60 years ago with no email or cheap international long distance to follow up? Only snail mail letters. And maybe they were going off to war from this same airport and to not be together for 2 or 3 or more years? The plane boarded quickly, a ground crew pulled the blocks away from the nose landing gear and then it began taxiing away. He waved though he had no idea what side of the aircraft she was seated. It didn’t take long for the plane to find its position and begin its takeoff. He was waving furiously with both hands as it throttled by though he was sure she couldn’t possibly have seen him.