Saying goodbye.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post::I just got word of some people who will be moving. While it won't affect me terribly in that I do not live near them and my friendship has always been one of distance, I know it is difficult for those leaving and those staying. I know this from repeated experience. Just because the loss isn't a full loss doesn't mean it isn't a loss, just the same. Six years ago, I wrote about this process of saying goodbye from a "staying" point of view. Someone was leaving, it hurt, and I was tired of people leaving. Here it is.::
The funny thing about living in the same place all of my life is that I am the one who sees goodbyes from a staying point of view. I see the same trail of dust down the same road as I wave limply and turn back to the place I came from.
Goodbye, then. Go on and go. I'm still here. I'll watch everything, and you can ask me how things are and I will tell you and be angry that you are not here and angry that I'm angry at you for something not your fault.
This weekend, I said some more goodbyes. Not really "see-you-laters" -- I'm a jaded optimist.
Plain goodbyes. Goodbye. Then you're gone.
I was talking to a guy about this, and he said it always seemed rather romantic to think of a person who lived in the same place, and even though they traveled the world, always came back to that same place, like a yo-yo or well-thrown boomerang.
The place that pulls them back? That would be home, I guess. I'm tied to home.
Perhaps it is romantic. I quit being a romantic when the guy I had a crush on for five years asked my best friend out in college while I was standing next to her. Romantic thoughts on people leaving only lead to bad poetry and poorly written diary entries.
It's not as bad as it sounds; it's not the loss of hope or dreams, though it is a loss.
I had a conversation with a friend whose family had moved constantly throughout her life. She is still unsettled. Never sure where to put down her feet, it's a continual race from one place to another, dumping off friends and picking up new ones as if people were disposable. I finally asked her in a letter why it was she kept moving. Didn't she want to just go home sometime? Her response was that home was illusive. Her parents had already moved twice in the past two years. Where was she to call home?
So she has no roots, and mine compete with the grass and trees. They pull me down until my heart feels like it is below the ground. She picks up and goes and says goodbye on a whim, and I sit on the front step and watch people leave for something new while my parents and I get older.
It's such a stumbling block to me, trying to comprehend something that seems so abstract when it should be obvious. Who stays and who leaves? So much time in my head is spent wondering about whether I should be doing one or the other.
I think of S.E. Hinton's book Tex. There is a line that I can never get out of my mind, a line that I still can't understand completely, can't get through my obtuse head, a concept that seems so obvious: Some people stay, and some people go.
That's not philosophy. It's an observation. I observe it. I agree with it. I just don't understand it. What's to understand in those six words?
Why can't everybody stay? Why do I not go? Should I keep setting myself up for the inevitable goodbye scene by forming relationships with everyone that comes along? The answers to these questions are I don't know, I don't know, and yes. They are not easy answers, and I'm not necessarily happy with them.
Tomorrow the sun will come up. It will peek across the same slough it has always seen, and it will rise just past the light pole around 11am. At night, the same cottonwood that has framed it will do so again at sunset, and for one week in September the tilt of the earth will be just right so that the setting sun will line up exactly with the gravel road heading west. I know this because I've seen it for 27 years, my entire life. For 27 years I've catalogued and observed the pinprick of earth that one person in six billion calls home. Just once, I'd like to think that if I headed down that road west and into the sun during that one week, I'd find that fiery gold world it promises at sunset and be one of those that goes for a moment in my time, leaving my own trail of dust. Perhaps I'm a romantic after all.
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 3/24/2007 07:45:00 PM
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3 Comments:
Wow. You speak truth..
My hometown is like a pit that imprisons people that grow up there.. while we are forced to watch people from other places come and go. Its hard to form attachments to people only to have to say goodbye.
I love this entry. I know those goodbyes all too well.
By 
Yvonne, at
25/3/07 22:33
Thanks for those thoughts on place and saying goodbye. You reminded me of Annie Dillard and the sacredness of daily earthy things and knowing a place and living a full life wherever you are.
Keep up the good work and the "long obedience in the same direction" which is ours as followers of Jesus.
By Shawn, at
18/9/08 14:05
"Romantic thoughts on people leaving only lead to bad poetry and poorly written diary entries."
That was a good line.
By Bill, at
18/9/08 18:35
