As I plant myself in the corner of the Dublin airport, amidst a swirling menagerie of foreign travelers, waiting for the next leg of my journey in a jetlagged blur, I have a few moments to contemplate these two conjoined words: Goodbye.
Now I have definitely developed an annoyed grudge against the idea of “Goodbyes” during this summer of forever where I have felt as if I have been saying goodbye left and right while I myself have remained in one place for five whole months.
But yesterday, I became the one who was saying goodbye, and being on the flip side of the experience led me to see the wealth of encounter which a goodbye can hold. As my four sisters grabbed my limbs to hold on tight and covered my cheeks with smacking kisses and my little brothers wrote me endearing notes to read on the plane, as my mom cried in the car and my Dad took a selfie in the airport before the security checkpoint, I knew their love. I could see and feel their gratefulness for my presence and I returned my appreciation for theirs.
When else do we have the opportunity to express appreciation for those whose company we value, but never think to specifically acknowledge? Contemplate for a moment. What is a “bye”? If you will bear with me for a moment, let’s think in terms of football (yup, that’s where my mind goes). A bye in football is a week of rest for a team, a period of time where they don’t have a game. It’s an absence of activity and interaction. When we say goodbye to one another, we are acknowledging a departure and wishing it well, blessing it with the hope that the absence will be good and fruitful. A goodbye is a passage of hope between two people that arises from departure.
So an absence is fruitful?? Yes, in the best of ways. Of course there is the common saying “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” but I would even go further on to say that a time of absence empties and then enlarges the heart to receive more than it could ever hold before, if one is willing to cooperate.
The willingness must arise from the desire to release yourself from the presence of one person or thing, without forgetting it, in order to be able to turn to the new. It is a cleansing of spirit that can even spur one on to energetic creativity. Think of the greatest inventors, they were inspired by a lack of something, a need to create. Like these inventors, the heart is spurred by absence and can be inspired by an imagination that desires to explore and then return.
Life is a journey filled with hellos and goodbyes, comings and goings, arrivals and departures. My hope is that we may leave each goodbye with a truth from the past but a space for the future hellos.
So here is to the most beautiful of goodbyes and a hail to long- anticipated hellos.
Roma, here I come.
