Visitor may have said his goodbye

I had hoped to meet with Peter. But it was not to be.
When this column is published, I will have been home about four days from a two-week project in Moldova.
But as I write this, I am still in Jay County and my trip back to that former Soviet republic is still on my horizon. I’m trying to store up a backlog of columns so I can concentrate on other things in advance of the trip and so I can recuperate a bit after getting back home.
In some ways, it’s as if I’m writing a letter to myself that I will read a month after it’s written.But even before leaving home, I know that Peter and I won’t be able to get together. His health won’t allow it.
Our paths crossed in 1998 when my wife and our youngest daughter Sally and I first traveled to Chisinau, where I taught journalism for a semester at the State University of Moldova as a Fulbrighter.
We met by accident, but we were soon close friends. Peter and his wife Kathleen had a son, Alister, who was about Sally’s age. And the two families had some memorable dinners together.
From the outset, we knew that Peter and Kathleen were no ordinary couple.
Peter had been a married Methodist minister in England when he encountered Kathleen as a seminarian. To much scandal, Peter divorced and married Kathleen. And for a period of years, the reaction of their church to their relationship soured them on religion entirely.
Then, much to their surprise, they found themselves drawn to Catholicism and converted.
Peter had come from England to Moldova to run a pension reform program for the European Union, but it wasn’t long before he and Kathleen were up to something more than that.
They worked with a marvelous priest, Father Klaus Kniffki, to establish what was essentially a soup kitchen in a poor village outside the country’s capital. Then they went on to replicate the effort at feeding hungry children all over the country.
For awhile, it appeared that working with Father Klaus they could work miracles. Programs expanded. Peter became a permanent deacon of the Catholic church. Good things were happening.
But then reality set in. Peter’s contract ran out, the family had to return to England, and then his health started to deteriorate.
Peter returned to Moldova as best he could, establishing a charity called Moldova Not Forgotten. And when I returned to the country, we were able to get at least one good meal and a few glasses of wine together.
Then Father Klaus, a German who had worked extensively in Mexico, was moved by the church. His replacement, Father Roman, is Polish and speaks no English.
And Peter’s health deteriorated to the point that travel to Moldova is not in the cards.
The exact status of the soup kitchen — the cantina — in the village of Stauceni is unknown as I write this. Peter has asked me to check in on it, but I don’t really have control of my itinerary.
Maybe that’s why his last email before my departure hit me so hard.
He wrote about his condition and about his desire to return to this funny little country that both of us feel bound to.
“I do want to go again,” he wrote, “even if only to say goodbye.”
So, last weekend, getting ready to head home to Jay County and faced with a ridiculously long trip ahead of me, I paused to say goodbye on Peter’s behalf.
And as I did so, I realized it might be my own goodbye as well.