The odds are that we will never get a chance to properly say goodbye.
If we are lucky, and we live long enough we can hope, hope, hope that we get a chance to say the things that we always meant to say. Say the things we should say. And will get a chance to let the people who impacted our lives positively how much they meant to us.
Too often we feel the need to unleash our demons, or break open our emotional boils but none of that clears you, empties you, helps you. It may clear the conscience, or clear out the bile but it doesn’t erase the feelings behind that. Some things are just better left unsaid. In the end the last thing you should be doing is spreading manure and vomiting anger and regret. The last thing you should be doing is dredging the lake to look for bodies in your heart. Whatever guilt, whatever anger, whatever frustration you hold needs to be released No, to me it’s a time to celebrate what was, what is, and not to mourn what was never to be.
But we rarely get the chance to say goodbye.
People dance in and out of our lives, staying for one short song or for a marathon, but we rarely can see when they will leave and how. All you can do is enjoy one another as the dance goes on and see what happens next. You can’t anticipate and worry over saying goodbye before it happens because it robs you of the sheer pleasure you can find in the company of others.
And the thing is this – you rarely control when you leave the dance yourself. Sure, you can live healthier, eat healthier, and take care of yourself and limit the things that put you at risk for certain illnesses and ends but for most of us there will come a time when we shall leave the dance for good and that will be that.
Of late I have come to dwell a lot on the inevitable endings that face us and I find myself none the wiser as to how to look on them. The fact is that there is no easy or ‘good’ way to say goodbye. Not really. It just…is. And that is all it can be. You can do your best to do and say all the things you need to do and to say but there will always be things left undone. Things left unsaid. There will always be pockets of emptiness where the absence of someone or something was never, and could never be filled. There is no use in worrying over what is to be though because you will miss the beauty of the dance itself. And as we dance we find that we don’t always need to vent our spleens, or to lavish everyone with love and adoration. We just need to dance, dance, dance together and try not to cling, try not to push, and try to be the best partner we could be expected to be and to see what happens next.
I have a heart with an ocean of regrets but a sky full of so many good memories that in the end I am allowed to stand on an island and sometimes I shall look down at the waters and ponder their depths and others I will stare at the stars and try to count their numbers and to remember in both cases that whenever the music ends and the dance stops I will have been lucky to have danced as long as I have and with those partners I have had.
I can’t say I will see my end coming, or the ends of those I have danced with but I can hope to have the grace to bow, to wave, and to remember the sweet music of the times we had.
…c…
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 