23 April 2009

Never a right time to say good-bye?

When I was a day camp counselor, we were told, rather counter-intuitively I thought, to end a game at the moment that the children were having the most fun.
Despite my initial qualms with this approach, it makes sense-leave them with good memories and wanting more... At times I feel like I'm in the middle of my favourite game, or at least the most familiar and it's about to end. I know it's about to end. I don't want it to, to a certain extent, because besides my brave persona I'm a little afraid, because while I know the schedule, I don't really know the rules of this next game...
Last night I sat on my deck with a friend in every meaning of the word drinking a bottle of wine, looking up at the stars, listening to Amos Lee and enjoying each other's company through conversation and argument. We discussed the desire to leave a situation when one feels good about the outcome, the impact and accomplishments instead of staying or coming back for more and then being faced with the possibility of leaving and wishing one had done more the second time around or so.
I share those thoughts from time to time,had I had more time I would have...done any number of things, but who knows what I would have missed out on? All in all I'm thankful for my past four years. The hard part for me are the melancholy and pensiveness that come to visit me in company with the inevitable good byes.
I'm horrid at good-byes, yet my life thus so far has been full of them. Living in seven different states, one other country makes good-bye a necessity. The fact that I have been happiest in new environments means that many more are to come...I wish that I had learned the steps of this dance better by now.
I cried when the family drove West on I-10 not wanting to face the unknown known as Texas.
I cried when the plane took off from JFK.
When I left Bordeaux I bawled as if my heart was being slowly unseamed from within my chest.
It wasn't in all reality. Only a small part of it was left there, as is normal for me.
When I went through a break up last year,I cried all the tears from through out the ages, I thought. But almost a year removed, looking back, I see that specific good bye as being necessary. What's scary is how a little more removed from the pain, I can understand him more than I ever could when we were together and even feel the faintest of all desires to want to thank him for the experience.
And now, I am once again at a rupture, a fault line, an end of a paragraph.
Like any journey, not everyone or everything will make it to the next leg of the journey.
It will hurt. Each time I accept a good bye for what it is, it will hurt, because that is who I am. The only thing that I know will definitely travel with me is this rosary of sorts.
I will always connect that sadness with sadness to come. I will string the new good byes to come with his and use them as a medium for my prayer, a rosary of tears ,but also of smiles and hope for more hellos.

Sometimes you can't hold on and sometimes there is not only a right time to say good bye,but a rightness in understanding, accepting, against one's, my, lesser inclinations that you can't control the world,the music, but only your steps in it.

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