The drive to the airport was as grim and tense as I’d been dreading it would be; Lena went in the MPV taxi with mum, dad, and their luggage, squeezing-in a last few minutes with them, and I followed with the aunts as my passengers. Min tried talking to me as we drove to Bristol International, the old Lulsgate Airport, but I had too much on my mind right then, so after a while she gave up, Doreen just leaning over to brush my face with her fingertips without saying anything. Lena had been even more uncommunicative this morning, the reality of our parents’ leaving now striking home, but I had nothing to say to her; what could I possibly have said? Min and Doreen seemed to understand this, and even their small talk together soon petered-out.
We sat in the departure lounge, waiting for their flight to Paphos to be called, me mostly in silence, Lena looking lost and ready to cry.
I felt like I was about one step behind her; they weren’t going on holiday, they weren’t retiring abroad, they were going to Cyprus because my dad was dying, and his doctor thought he might eke out a few more weeks or months of life if he left. I understood that; I’d probably have made the same recommendation, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it.
Then the moment came I’d been dreading; I looked up at the departures board and their flight was up, time to go. Mum saw it as well and pulled Lena to her in one last, desperate bear-hug. Lena looked at her in surprise, then glanced up and saw the board, and a look of utter loss and desolation settled on her face. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a soft mewing sound of anguish and unbearable loss.
Mum and dad started pushing the trolley with their hand-luggage to the gate, Lena tagging along with them, and me trailing behind, unable to believe this moment had actually come, that they were actually leaving us. The two aunts hung back, crying as they waved goodbye, their own hugs and farewell kisses done. Lena started crying, and mum reached up to wipe her tears, tears streaming down her own face. When we got to the gate, dad turned to me and hugged me close, holding the back of my neck as I hugged him, then he pulled away and grinned his old grin.
“See you in a month or so, eh?” he smiled, and I grinned back in spite of myself.
“You bet, have the beers on ice!” I smiled, suddenly feeling just a little more upbeat; we’d see them again in a few weeks, this wasn’t goodbye, it was just ‘Au Revoir’; it helped if I thought like that; not a lot, but some.
“Love you, Son!”” he whispered, and I whispered back “Love you too, dad!”
When we’d finally hugged and kissed them goodbye a dozen times, they walked through the Departure Gate, and it was all I could do to stop myself barring their way, dragging them back home; I was a doctor, I could look after my dad, he didn’t need to die in a foreign country… thoughts like these filled my head, but I stood my ground; they needed to do this, it was for dad, and it was what he wanted, it was what he needed for mum.
Just as they disappeared through Immigration Control, Lena darted forward, obviously planning on following them, but I’d been half-expecting something like this and I caught her before she gone two steps, grabbing her round the waist and holding her as she struggled.
“Get… off… they’re leaving… No, Darryl, please, … fucking let go of me! No…. Mummy… no, don’t go… wait for me… Daddy, no, wait for me, pleeaase…!”
I held her tightly, holding her against me as she struggled and tried to squirm out of my grasp.
“Lena, no, stop it, no, Lena, wait, you can’t go in there, you haven’t got a passport, they’ll arrest you, stop it!”
She suddenly went limp against me, moaning softly “… No… No… They’re going… stop them, please, Darryl, please, make them stop… mum…!”
I held her close to me as she cried against my shoulder, stroking her hair as she sobbed herself out. At last she stopped crying, taking the tissue I offered her.
“Why did you stop me Dar? I could have called them back; they don’t have to go…!”
I gently pulled her round to look at me.
“Look, baby, you can’t go in there, but this is what we’ll do; over there is the Easyjet desk, we’ll get you a ticket and you can fly out tomorrow, with a passport and a proper ticket and everything, OK? I knew you couldn’t let them go, not like this, so you go out and stay with mum and dad for as long as you want, I’ll be here, waiting for you. I won’t be lonely, Aunt Doreen lives nearby, maybe I’ll ask her to come and stay while you’re away. I really think you need to do this, so you should. I’ll hopefully have a new job to be getting to grips with, so I won’t have time to be lonely, but if I need you, I can still call you, and you just come back home when you’re ready.”
Lena looked at me wide-eyed.
“You’d do that? Really?” and I nodded.
“In a heartbeat; I can’t bear to see you crying, and I won’t have you being sad when I can do something about it. We can fix this easily enough; you were wrong when you said you could let them go, we know that now, so let’s fix this right now. Come on; let’s get your ticket for you!”
My heart was breaking as I said it; the thought of losing her, maybe for months on end, was something I didn’t even want to think about, but I couldn’t have my girl hurting and sad. She needed more time with mum and dad, and I could give it to her, it was the least I could do, and it was the right thing to do; my own needs would have to take a back-seat; my sister, my girl, the centre of my world, needed me to do this for her.
We booked her on a flight bound for Paphos the following morning, and drove home in silence, both of us too full of our thoughts to talk about anything, even the aunts sitting silently in the back seat, and spent a gloomy afternoon packing her bags and a quiet evening talking about nothing much. When we went to bed, Lena held me close all night, almost fearful of letting go of me. We didn’t make love; we had far too much to think about.
I took her to the airport alone; Doreen and Min had elected to let us have a little privacy and spend the day together, so it was just the two of us at the airport, fidgeting as we waited for the inevitable. When her flight was called it felt like the end of everything, and once again I had to restrain myself, this time from holding her back, from preventing her getting on that flight, but I let her go, and walked her to the gate. Once there, she turned and held me close, kissing me long and desperately, then breaking off to hold my face in her hands.
“I’ll be back soon, baby, I swear; I just want a chance to say goodbye properly; they did everything in such a rush I just got… swept along, and I never got to say goodbye properly, or get used to the idea of them leaving; that’s all this is. I love you Darryl, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, but I have to go and say goodbye first, can you understand that?”
Of course I understood, I always had; in truth I wanted to do the exact same thing, but now she had to go, so I kissed her and watched her walk through Immigration Control and disappear. Going home was almost unbearable, the thought of going back to that big echoing house alone was almost too much to bear, and when I got home, it was as bad as I thought it would be. I wandered around, completely lost and alone for the first time in my life, a solitary ghost haunting this enormous house where so much had happened, and now it was just me, drifting sadly from room to room, nothing here now but fading echoes of the lives that had been lived there before moving on.
Min came home about seven that evening to find me moping about the place, already more lonely than I had ever been in my entire life. I’d already called mum’s old boss and had confirmed an appointment to see him the following morning, so maybe I’d have a job to fill up my days and distract me from the aching loneliness now that Lena was gone.