If you’ve been blessed with a long life, you can no doubt look back on the number of times you have had to say “goodbye.”
Some goodbyes are short and sweet, others agonizingly long and bitter; in fact, heart-wrenching.
“Sadly enough, the most painful goodbyes,” concedes artist Jonathan Harnisch, “are the ones that are left unsaid and never explained.”
People just disappear, fade into the fog that settles in on life. One day you look up and find they are no longer there; yet, they somehow remain woven into the rich tapestry of your life.
New York Times bestselling author Jamie McGuire claims, “Missing someone makes you remember why you loved that person in the first place.”
It often occurs by happenstance; a mere minute to encounter a memorable person …an hour to appreciate them … a day to love them …and then, unfortunately, an entire life to forget them.
I believe that is, in large part, what we fear most in saying “goodbye” …forgetting.
Admitting to yourself you may never again see someone endeared to you, can be a tortuous thing.
Scottish novelist and playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie’s free-spirited fictional character Peter Pan–a cultural icon symbolizing youthful innocence and escapism– undoubtedly agrees, “Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
Many of us, during our own youthful innocence and exuberance, inscribed in fellow classmates’ yearbooks: ”I will never forget you. I will hold onto all the memories. Everything, I promise.”
Yet, as the years wash over our memory, like successive waves upon the surface of a rock, those engravings all too often abandon us.
In his masterful wisdom, Dr. Seuss urged, “Remember me and smile, for it’s better to forget than to remember me and cry.”
While the imaginative “doctor” of clever stories and whimsical creatures might restrain in rhyme the emotion of farewells; in real life, there will always be those goodbyes and fond recollections that are accompanied by tears.
As prolific author Colleen Hoover recounts in one of her New York Times bestselling novels, “I thought I was stronger than a word, but I just discovered that having to say goodbye to you is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
Richard Bach, the American writer widely known as the author of some of the 1970s’ biggest sellers, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, reassures, “Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”
“To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.” —Dr. Seuss
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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