The mercy of a gradual goodbye

I can’t help but wonder about transitions.  Some approach us with clear deadlines, expectation, advance notice or ceremony, others without much warning, a bit more gradual, allowing us to say goodbye to a loved one or phase of life without fanfare.

I think part of the graduation drama, for instance, is found entirely in the pomp and circumstance.  We attend something akin to a funeral.  Which is good.  Closure.  Pictures.  A time to unite with friends and loved ones one last time.  I get it.  But what a potential tear-jerker.  The summer that follows is easier, looser, with former classmates starting colleges and vocations at various time, thus never requiring a final goodbye.  I remember writing in each others’ yearbooks that we’d see each other during the summer, and so it was hard to pinpoint when our mourning should begin and end. These kinds of farewells are made up of a lot of see you laters followed by unintentional absences that have lasted going on 25 years.  Easing the pain of cutting ties.

Similarly, I remember knowing the date a good friend of mine was moving from medical school to residency.  I made cookies, had my card in hand that morning for her, only to ever find their truck.  And so we never had the awkward encounter of admitting we’d never see each other again.  This happens all the time as friends have woven themselves in and out of my life.  Thankfully the last few weeks and days before a move are a crazy quilt of bustling activity and erratic and frenetic scheduling.  Trucks are both premature and late.  Dates have a way of changing on a dime.  Because most families relocate during the summer, it sometimes feels like we’re all on vacation.  Until fall sets in and I realize it’s becoming an extended trip.  Mercifully helping me avoid the inevitable tears that would’ve surfaced had it happened another way.

Our dear friends are currently separating, moving on, leaving the little world we’ve created between our families over the years.  But I have no idea what the details are because her troubles are concurrent with mine.  We are two ships passing in the night and so she has somehow tiptoed out of my life, while I feel helpless and toggled to my house, unable to help carry her burdens the way I’d like.  I hate it, but I can’t imagine helping her load a moving truck.  My bending heart would snap and all I’d be is a slobbery mess of tears, providing no support or perspective.  I can’t help but wonder if it’s good for us to say good bye in such a strange way.  It seems wrong, but I know it’s been easier.  Because I can’t begin to know how to tell her in person how much her strength and courage and faith have meant to me, to hug her knowing I don’t know when I’ll see her again.  We’ve exchanged texts but have never really come outright and said goodbye.  I need to go over.  But I’m afraid it will be so final.

I can’t help but love the way my dad transitioned from this phase of his life to his next.  Quickly, efficiently, without warning.  Sitting on the sidelines as a spectator to so many friends my age watching their parents slowly dying is a heart-wrenching trial.  I felt buffered from the acute pain of having to say one last goodbye to someone so close.  We were always planning the next trip, knowing we’d have cinnamon rolls at Christmas and that he’d show Avery how to use his industrial sewing machine next time. Taking his health for granted, it never occurred to any of us he’d be nearing the end.  And so in that bubble, I was insulated from the harsh reality of one last knowing hug. 

I marvel at how our culture insists we keep busy following a loss like this.  We needed to choose a funeral date and home.  Someone needed to alert those across the seas and down the street.  Our assignments required us to write our talks and to acknowledge floral deliveries.  To compose thank you notes and collect old photos.  It was a merciful shroud of business that kept us from mourning too deeply or from detaching ourselves from people who need and love us.  It all eased us over the emotional hump.

I relive summer days with Andrew, who in August would be heading to college.  We had a few bulleted “lasts,” but we had a million scattered ordinary moments that cushioned my emotions.  A completely normal request list to clean his garage, to do his dishes, to write his thank you notes.  We continued to tease him, to hound him, to wonder if he’d ever “get it.”  So our sorrow in seeing his life with us coming to an end was tempered by the fact that we were still in the middle of his life with us.  Except when I made a point to point out the obvious.  A last dinner out.  Finishing up one more game night.  A final road trip.  His last day home with us.  What good were all those notations?  Except to intensify a pending loss.  Interestingly, I ended up down in his college town a week before he and the others arrived, so I never had to watch him pack up his room or sweep his metal shavings into the trash in the garage.  I just caught up with him when he and the others made their way down to Utah the following week.

In fact, even dropping him off at his dorm was unceremonious.  He and his dad had been loading a trailer for us to take home early the following morning.  We’d moved his stuff into his dorm earlier that day, but he had a regular home-cooked meal with us at his grandma’s and about 10 that night we thought it might be time to take him to his dorm.  Nothing like a grand send-off, just a few tight hugs, a few awkward moments and see-you-laters.  We needed to get back.  And so, just like that, we’d detached ourselves from each other.  Not like the movies.  But just like us.

Interestingly, it was like that with my friend and her son during their last week together before he left for another country on a mission for two years.  They’d planned all these “lasts” only to be hampered by company and unexpected details, leaving them little time to pine or really let their pending separation get to them.  The day for him to leave just snuck up on them, and that was that.

Same with age.  What a blessing to grow old a day at a time, marking no significant difference year to year.  What kind of ceremony would it be, to be gathered with friends to say goodbye to our youth?  At what point would we suggest such a commemoration?  So merciful that it’s only in pictures we’re forced to acknowledge what we used to look like.  Because it’s such a slow and gradual process, we find the aging pill easier to swallow.  A merciful way to say goodbye to brighter days.

I guess this idea’s been on my mind because I’ve kind of thought of myself as a pre-surgery Caren and post-surgery Caren.  The original version contrasted with a new, broken, inferior model.  I cried so many nights in Todd’s arms thinking about it.  Wondering if things would ever be the same.  Knowing they wouldn’t.  So I hesitated embracing each day as surgery became more eminent.  I was afraid to love as deeply, fearing it would hurt too much to not have it be the same.  But mercifully, I had to have a smaller surgical procedure the week before my major surgery that helped ease my tension.  I was sore from it.  We were so busy.  We were tired.  We had a full calendar and lots of visits.  Before we knew it, the mastectomy day came and went and I was blissfully eased into a post-surgery room without having had a “this is the last day of our life as we’ve known it” party.  Mercifully, I never had to completely say goodbye to our former life.  We just sort of went with it and ended up on the other side.

I guess I’m just grateful for the diffused edges of difficult transitions I’ve had to make over the years.  Rather than facing so many endings with a definitive, fine-tipped Sharpie, I feel the mercy of a wide-angled watercolor brush, helping to soften the pain of a fresh absence, of saying goodbye to a cherished friend or phase of life.  It doesn’t always work out this way, and sometimes we’re called to a bedside as an aged parent takes her last raspy breaths or we tearfully wave goodbye at the airport knowing we won’t see him for two long years.  We end up with a little of both kinds of goodbyes in life.  I’m just saying that I look at the distractions and sort of sloppy pages here and there as a blessing, a way to take the edge off an otherwise-emotional chapter of life.  A tender mercy in a tiny trial.