Saying goodbye, again, again, again
We sit and watch the last of the light fade over the indigo hills just as we have so many nights before. The wine is cool in my mouth and I hold it there, alongside the words I cannot say.
This feeling is so familiar, the sweetness of friendship mixed with the pang of loss. Tonight is the last night here.
Sometimes the purest moments are the most mundane. Memories of standing barefoot in your kitchen on a warm night with a cool glass of water beading in my hand. The way your hand fit into the curve of my back. The look in your eyes when I handed you a morning coffee in the cup I’d made. The silence where we held each other and the secrets we shared.
The beloved wears many faces.
I’m learning how to hold all these things inside me. learning how to accept them gracefully and how to be able to welcome it in— with the awareness that everything changes, everything ends. In this moment we are together, learning how to let that be enough.
Being here at Craigardan is a lesson in impermanence, every week brings a new visitor, a new resident. Every week also means a new goodbye to someone who’s become dear, whether I like it or not. It isn’t easy. I notice that it’s hard to remain open, I’m resistant to change. I want to hang onto what’s familiar. And yet by doing that I do not allow the future in.
My friend Frank asks “how to you say your goodbyes? Do you hurry through them? Do you embrace them? Do you avoid them? He also has some excellent advice on the subject.
Goodbyes are hard. They are also such an important practice. Embracing the impermanence, knowing all we have is this moment makes everything more precious. The grief is indivisible from the joy.
I’m learning. A friend said they sometimes feel like a baby bird, flapping into things. Some days my heart feels like that too.
I want to stay here in this place, I want to stay open.
