An Endless Goodbye.

It began, he told me, with his first wife, the one he had two children with. They used to wave goodbye to each other whenever there was an occasion to do so. Somehow the habit got dear to him of standing there, waving, till they got out of sight of each other. But never, in twenty-five years, they had left each other for more than a few days. One day was enough to wave as if it would be for a much longer time. He began to wonder about this habit only when she was about to leave him forever. That was, when he thought that maybe it was his own habit mainly, and not so much hers. And that's when he created this picture, with the waving hands, on a train station called "Les adieux". He showed it to me.

He got married again. A complicated story, with a lot of passion involved and, in the end, with his giving in to the fact that this new woman would have had to leave the country, if they wouldn't get married. He wanted her to stay. And no more waving goodbye forever.

"It was difficult", he said, "for both of us, because each one was attached to a different culture." And then, he explained, a prior relationship brought her first to France, and then to the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

"I met her right then, when that relationship was at its end."

He was Swiss, but from the German part, and he wanted her to stay.

"So you continued your habit of waving good bye, when you where married with her?", I guessed.

"Yes", he said, "and there were a lot of good-byes. We only saw each other on the weekends. I worked in the German part of the country and had my little apartment there. Our common home was in the French part, her new cultural homeland. She didn't want to change cultures once more."
It turned out that this second marriage had not lasted till the day it was promised to, not "till death do us part".

"I fell in love with somebody else, in my lonely days between the weekends, or that's what I thought, and I confessed this to my wife. And that was it: She wanted to divorce."

"Another long goodbye", he added, sadly.

And not the last one, it showed to be, when he continued.

"I still see her, from time to time, mostly for practical reasons."

It got obvious, from what else he told me, that "practical" meant "financial" as well, but not only. "Part of this is that we still have ugly fights, from time to time. It still hurts. That's why."

He looked sad when he added:

"And there is always a train to take, for one of us, when we part, and sometimes after these fights."
"And then I stand there, by the track with the leaving train, and I wave good-bye, and she waves back, with a smile. An endless goodbye."