How do you say goodbye to someone?

Well to start with, I need to go back to when I said hello. It started after my wife died and I needed to decide what to do with the two houses that I owned. I had met Carol several years ago through my wife while Carol was running the post office in Blanco. Carol and her mother lived in Bloomfield, and she would need to leave her alone whole she would go to work at the Blanco Post Office. So, I needed to do something with the house behind the post office in Blanco, and I thought that Carol and her mother, Cordelia, could live in that house behind the post office and her mother then could be close and even walk over for short visits. We made arrangements and they moved into the house a little over four years ago.

This was the first time I met Cordelia, and she was a very likeable person. The more I was around her, I began calling her mom. It would seem that we would pick on each other in a joking way, and we both seemed to like it. We would go out to eat at various times, the three of us, and for some reason they brought me closer to their family unit. I began to know Carol, her mother, children and grandchildren over the period of years. Each time that I would leave, Mom made sure that I received a hug from her, and she would say, "I love you". At first, I thought that it was just a way to say something when I left, but I later realized it was an expression of what she felt and shared. I enjoyed my time around her, and the only way I can say goodbye now is to use the words she shared with me, and that is "I love you too".

Our Father, who art in heaven, 

hallowed be thy Name, 

thy kingdom come, 

thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread. 

And forgive us our trespasses, 

as we forgive those who trespass against us. 

And lead us not into temptation, 

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, 

and the power, and the glory, 

for ever and ever. 

Amen.