The Long Hello

The Long Hello

I’m no good at good-byes. I never have been. When most kids rejoiced on the last day of school, I silently grieved. I knew I would miss my teachers and that there were likely some students I would not see again when roll was called in the fall.

Now, as an adult, I’ve found that I dread good-byes even more. I do not want the circle of people I love broken. I just don’t. I long for us to remain connected to one another. I long to keep seeing the faces and hearing the voices of those whose hearts are knit to mine. Every good-bye first stings like a cut and then aches like a bruise, and I am getting less and less graceful at receiving them.

As delighted as I was to hear my sweet great-niece say her first discernible words (“Uh-oh!”), my heart also broke a little to hear her chirp, “Bye-bye!” to me as I walked away. She reminded me that we learn early to say those words. We have to. And even with lots of practice, they don’t get any easier. Every time I left the home of my mother’s oldest sister as a child, I left crying—looking out the back window of the car until I could not see her face, her house, her street, her town. Only when I could no longer glimpse the top of the local water tower would I turn around, wet faced and resigned, and look toward home.

But praise be to God, there are at least two unexpected gifts in our unwanted, lifelong gathering up of good-byes. First, each painful good-bye is a sign that we have loved—and this is no small thing. For those of us who believe in the resurrection, our good-byes are a mournful prelude to a joyful day when parting will be no more. As songwriter Billy Sprague puts it, “Heaven is a long hello.” Imagine it! Long hellos, hundreds, thousands of them, rolled into one eternal greeting with no dreaded good-bye. We won’t need that skill, those words, ever again. Jesus made sure of it. In him we will know only hello, forever.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

Revelation 21:4