Goodbye

Suitcases and duffel bags stood in a growing mound at the back of the bus. This time around we had a nicer bus; not a motor coach or anything fancy, but one that had a luggage compartment and all four wheels firmly attached. The bus driver spoke to our two American teachers and gestured to us students to set our belongings on the suitcase pile. Going through the motions of putting down my suitcases seemed to make what was about to transpire irrevocably official and walking the ten feet from where I stood with Mario to the back of the bus where the suitcases were stacked was like walking over a bridge to The Point of No Return.

My suitcases stood to the far side of the pile, opposite of where the bus driver had begun loading bags into the luggage compartment beneath the bus. As if frozen and unable to move, a group of us stood there and watched the bus driver loading up the bags. Though we new, well in advance, this day would come, the moment seemed very surreal.

Frau Strohm, our teacher from America, broke the silence with her announcement that it was time to say goodbye. I turned to Mario and looked into his eyes. Had he said anything to me in that moment, the words would have fallen on deaf ears. My heart beat so loudly it was the only sound I could hear. Until that moment, the sadness of knowing we would have to part had been my constant companion, but I'd held myself together and kept my composure in the hopes that I would receive some sort of last minute reprieve from having to go back home.

But as Mario pulled me close and I buried my face in his shirt, the dam broke loose and my tears fell like a torrential rainstorm that had been waiting to break free. Heaving sobs wracked my body as my heart broke into a million bits and fell, piece by piece, to the cobblestone beneath my feet. In a moment where I should have been telling Mario how much I loved him, that we would be together again, that I would do everything I could to come back, I was unable to make the words come out. The pain of saying goodbye and leaving the one to whom my heart belonged was more than I was prepared to handle. I held onto Mario as if my next breath depended upon it and as I did, he stroked my hair and whispered "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay."

Frau Strohm informed us it was time to go. Mario kissed me one last time and we let each other go. Our eyes met once more before I climbed onto the bus with the rest of my American classmates. From my seat by the window I could see the sadness in Mario's face. The beautiful smile and laughing eyes I'd fallen in love with had been replaced by an expression of one who was terribly hurt and lost. Our eyes stayed locked as the bus driver shifted the bus into gear and slowly lurched forward. The deafening silence on the bus was pierced by my sobs and the cries of a few of the other girls and I watched Mario fade from view until he was completely out of sight.
The bus traveled down the grassy hill that had brought us up to the grounds of Eringerfeld just a few short weeks before. Green countryside and small farms dotted the landscape on either side of the road as made our way from the gravel road toward civilization. Tears fell freely from my eyes as my mind pictured a sweet German boy a few miles back, standing alone in the middle of a cobblestone courtyard, surrounded by the remnants of my heart. A quiet gasp escaped my lips as I thought of Mario, alone at Eringerfeld. In the midst of my sadness, the surreal feeling surrounding my departure from the place that felt like home, and leaving behind the boy who held my heart, I realized I had forgotten one very important thing. I had never said "goodbye."