Wake me to Say Good Bye
I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.
“Come see what Landri wrote you on the whiteboard,” Trent Loos said. Landri is Trent and Kelli Loos’s youngest daughter.
The Loos family had put the mules and me up and now it was time to move on. I walked in to the kitchen and read my whiteboard farewell.
Please wake me
Out here traveling across Nebraska with my mules, hellos come in the evening. Goodbyes come in the dark. That’s because the mules and I arrive at peoples’ homes at the end of the day and leave the next morning. We often leave at sunrise so we can take advantage of the cool weather.
If I can’t thank the person before I head out, I’ll leave a good bye tucked in to a door, mailbox or coffee machine.
This was the other way around. I missed Landri. She headed out before I got to say good bye. What started out as a request note turned in to something else with her departure.
For the first time on this trip, I was left a farewell note. For the first time on my trip, I understand why it means so much to folks to be farewelled in writing.
More on Trent Loos at LoosTales.com. You can check out what we talked about on Trent’s “Rural Route” radio/pod broadcast right here.
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