Life is really simple. Human relationships are even more simple. Each only has three parts: hello, goodbye, and transition. From the moment we are born we begin to die, and from the moment we say hello, we are one step closer to goodbye.
These steps travel in cycles: goodbyes become hellos, hellos become transitions and transition can be just another word for goodbye.
Therefore, might it be possible that we are saying hello and goodbye at the same time? Could life just be a big series of transitions, changes that push us like waves to the center of the ocean?
I have been thinking about goodbyes a lot this year, as so many of my friends and acquaintances are graduating or moving on. We all started the semester driven to finish, and now that we are almost done, we are involved most heavily in the uniquely human pastime: making memories.
It seems that all semester we’ve been formulating our goodbyes, replaying and rewriting mental moments of fantasy and drama, complete with lights and music.
But it’s been my experience that real goodbyes are rarely like that.
More often than not they are informal; perhaps so informal that they might be missed. Just think about a typical goodbye.
As the day of departure edges closer, promises are made, deals are struck.
“Before you go we’re going to have lunch, right?”
“Call me.”
“I promise to e-mail you as soon as I get there.”
“Of course I won’t forget about you.”
“The next time I’m in town we’ll have dinner, okay?”
We plot and we plan, and then the day arrives. It comes and most likely it passes, and the person that was leaving is gone. No lunch, perhaps one phone call or email, and slowly we drift into a separation. It leaves us asking ourselves, if those who are our friends and lovers care so much, why are we so often forgotten?
It is so because absence is the mind’s way of mending. We cannot build a new house with old bricks, and we cannot heal a wound in which the object of affliction yet remains. The only difference between dying and saying goodbye is that in death we change realms, and with goodbye we may not even change location. I think somehow that this makes death easier to handle than goodbye.
This is not to say that life is sad. There isn’t time enough for sorrow. For just as we cry for those who are gone, someone new will arrive. And though it is considered improper to assume that the new “replaces” the old, it cannot be disregarded that those who come after help to speed along the process of regeneration of the spirit, and aid the welcome weakness of the memory.
As I have said before, it is the irony of life that we so quickly forget those we wish to remember most. So many cycles, transitions, changes, movements, greetings, partings, births and deaths.
Goodbyes are just another part of life, and perhaps they should be granted the silence and averted glances deserving of the honored who slip out in the night.
How then do we know a goodbye? We don’t. There are so many ways to say it, to separate it, that we cannot make a memory of every parting.
Thus it happens so often, the ones we love walk close behind us, and as we press forward, some are left behind, most we never notice, unless we turn around, stop and smell the passing.
A well done goodbye would be one where no one realized the person was leaving until they were gone, and once gone, no one would feel cheated out of saying their goodbye.
It should be a last conversation if you will, one with no tears or shouts or pleas, no praise or shameful displays of emotion. No criticism or collections, only a conversation. One that ends with a look of understanding, a look that says, “you know this is the last time.” Then just as quickly smiles, shakes hands and hugs. Partings as they were meant to be, with a reverence for the future and a sincere wish to disturb the lives of others as little as possible.
So this year, as friends disappear, say your goodbyes, and then fall in love with memories. In the end, as long as we have memories, we have love. As long as we have love, we have hope. And as long as we have hope, then there will be others. Therefore, celebrate your memories, and appreciate the friends you have and the life you lead because .
Life is short, relatively speaking. Seventy, maybe 80, years and it’s off to the worm buffet. And there is nothing like the end of summer to turn one’s thoughts toward one’s own mortality.
Personally, I am realizing that I am coming to the end of my invincible years (those teenage years where nothing can stop you, much less kill you), and with that realization comes thoughts of time and meaning.
I suppose the real turning point came for me in an airport terminal at the end of a terrible week, in the form of a “beautiful stranger” late on a Sunday night.

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