Reflection on Goodbye

I have considered goodbye. What else is there to do when one is leaving but to consider goodbye? It is often hard for me to know how to say goodbye, it is often hard for me to know how to know what is important to say, what is important to make known. I often see people die, I see their families and I hear the stories they tell. It is not uncommon, when asked, for a family to talk about the life of the deceased and the death they deserved, many of whom will either say in a peaceful death, "It is good the suffering is over," and in a tragic death, "She didn’t deserve this." I wonder if ever they really know what one deserves and what one does not, lest I consider goodbye.

In the days I didn’t know how to say goodbye I would plan "speeches", these long drawn out things more like monologues, what was important was summing up the entire life experiences of my friend and I so that I can have the appropriate closure and move on. It was a carefully planned procedure, at first I planned it for the last possible moment, the time when goodbye is imminent and if I would wait one moment longer goodbye would be missed. Living a life without equal sharing of feeling I had to make sure that this was known, that my feeling were known.
In my head it was pictured so cleanly, All my friends lined up in a row, one by one I would say something to each of them for the others to hear, one by one I would honor them, and I would organize by importance in my life. There was an epithet for each person, a statement of who they are, and their importance to me. Not only were my friends there but those people I respected but didn’t like, with them there was always a firm handshake. Then there was the girl that never knew how I cared for her. In one moment we would live a lifetime… together… in love.

Well these things never happened. I suppose that the mental process itself is important because I need to know what people mean to me, I need to know how they have blessed me and honored me. The thing I learned about this was more that my fantasy of goodbye was filled with narcissism. All people gathering in honor of me, my mind conceptualized that this meeting as the time when time stops. As I would leave and begin to grow and change without them, they would seem to no longer exist to me, only as a remembrance, a memory of my past, a part of me, created to serve my needs. That was the backdrop of goodbye for me, a chance to bring notoriety to myself through the self-flagellation of grief.

Later goodbye changed for me. Don’t get me wrong it was still grand, still narcissistic, it was just… different. I went with the narcissism and realized goodbye was something for me even more than it is for others. Yes they need closure but in my mind I realized that I fantasized all this because I needed closure. So then I consider my basic human need when it comes to relationships… closure, acknowledgement of change. It is still narcissistic, it still puts me at the center of the world but in truth… at least I got honest about it. Hugs were important, words, memories, and most of all to let them know how they have blessed me.

It has been interesting for me to learn that not all people need this form of closure and closure comes in many ways. My last two paradigms flowed out of a low self-esteem. Maybe my esteem has changed little but at least I see it. So what then is goodbye to me now?

I started preparing this time the same as usual, I began to think of gatherings, call them parties if you will. As I gathered with one group of friends I noticed, the party was not the point, the speeches I had prepared were unimportant something had changed. Maybe its growing older, maybe its growing healthier but I didn’t need the speech for me, and in this time I have learned that others do need that speech. I also noticed that it isn’t necessarily kind to inflict my narcissism on others through my speech. Sometimes all I needed was a hug, sometimes a handshake, and for many… just one more dance, knowing that next time we dance something will be different… it must be. And sometimes, I didn’t need to say or do anything, the life I had lived with this person, the experiences we shared said more than any speech I could write.
Even more so the relationship wasn’t culminating. In some ways it would continue to grow, and in other ways it would stop, yet there was this sense of culmination. I danced with a friend last night… The dance had ever bit of soul, every bit of the blues, and every bit of emotion I felt for my friend. We moved sometimes together sometimes apart, but I remember finishing the dance and saying to myself, "That was goodbye, and no word or speech could ever say it better." Goodbye was not in the words said, the hands shaken, the hugs given, but only in the life lived.

So as I go on from here, I think there will be times where I create a speech, but I might start calling it a conversation, and allowing for other input. There might be a statement of feeling and meanings, and there might not be. Sometimes just a dance… a smile… and even a hug… who knows I might even someday get the kiss I have always been waiting for.