The Trials of Jesse West 6- Words of Farewell

It’s a lesson too late for the learnin’

Made of sand made of sand

In the wink of an eye my soul is turnin’

In your hand in your hand.

Are you goin’ away with no word of farewell

Will there be not a trace left behind?

Welcome Home!

We attended morning hour chapel services every day together. We learned the sweet swaying harmonies and we were uplifted by the power of campus services. We would need all our strengths combined to face the paths set before us and to brace us for misfortunes. Our faith did not exempt us from anguish but instead instilled in us the strength for the trials ahead.

Cheryl Ann lost her mother soon into our first semester. Meg lost her sister, in a later year. Their worlds turned gray at those moments and we could not help them find their way through the fog. It would take decades and the gifts of their own children to bring back the colors. At night, as we drifted off to sleep, I could hear their soft laments. I wondered then and now, were they grieving or questioning God’s choices? We had no words or songs for the depths of their sorrows. Their spirits were months in returning. They found it though, in expressions of art, music and the quiet genius that pulled some pain away.They were role models for the others, who would one day, too, suffer the insufferable loss of loved ones. We, too, would raise our eyes and cries to the sky in pain and in query.

We survived it. The harsh Nebraska winters. The ten and twelve hour holiday drives home in blizzards and torrential rains. Tornado sirens screaming in the night during wild spring snows. Our freshman and sophomore years blinked themselves into oblivion. We began to lose each other during our junior year. We had each developed a painful secret and each failed to tell the group. Our finances were suffering. We all stopped eating in the dining hall to save money. We all slipped further into personal doubts. Half of the Six knew they would never become parochial teachers and slid into hypnotic dazes during the endless classes.

In early December, on a cold midnight, I left Concordia before the fall semester ended, without completing my exams or my farewells. In misery, I completed my degree at a large, Colorado university. I felt I’d lost everything and everyone I loved. These 5 women had become my home. Their voices in the clear, open Nebraska sky-my church. I ached without their familiar words, songs, and laughter.

We had it all for a few short months and didn’t realize it. It is with sheer luck, social networking, and time’s sweetening that we hold each other close in our memories. Knowing, we will meet again, at least one more time.

So often did we hear this chorus in our improvised music class, it became our mantra:
Would it were dawn
for only an hour.
Watching a fawn
hearing a flower.

Sharing the moment
enriches the hour
Learning what God meant
In love there is power

Soft speaks the rain
Gently the dew
Quietly we listen
Two of us do

Time on the mountain
Fleetingly slow
Tomorrow was yesterday
Moments ago

Time sep’rate jewels
Lives bound as one
Facets of mem’ry
Mirror the Sun

Then was the Dawn
Then was the Hour
Then was the Love
Left with the Flower

.
.
by Roger German

http://commonsense.typepad.com/coffeemill/

Roger will be publishing a book of his finest works in the near future. Stay tuned.