hello, goodbye

(A philosophy on saying “goodbye”)

     I’ve always felt a lingering sadness at the way the Lord of the Rings trilogy ends. There’s such a bittersweet ache to seeing Frodo take off into the distance without Sam that it’s stuck with me from ages seven to nineteen. I think that it’s because it represents all the feelings of endings, and the sorrows of saying goodbye to a story you’ve fully loved, or a friendship you haven’t yet fully lived. It’s the same reason I unashamedly bawled my eyes out in a theatre this year to Avengers: Endgame- it’s sad to come to the end of something great. To know that what it’s been will never again be exactly the same. And most of life is exactly that: a series of ending moments. Moments that don’t ever come back the way they lived and breathed the first time.

    I used to be dreadful at goodbyes, and dread changes (it probably has something to do with a childhood full of both of those things.) When I graduated the eighth grade I had to move on to high school without most of my friends that I had spent two years growing very attached to, and little thirteen year old me spent my last day of middle-school crying through all of my goodbyes. But it was then that I was introduced to a phrase by one of my friends that has hung around me for years now:

“It’s not ‘goodbye.’ It’s just ‘see you later.’”

There’s something about that change of phrase that takes the edge off just enough, and allows for hope against finality.

And this is my first lesson learned in saying goodbye:

We live long lives, and so much more often than not, no matter the oceans or continents that come between, it is fully possible for all your hardest goodbyes to rather be see you later’s.

     Last year in July when I left Frydlant, Czech there was a deep ache to many of the goodbyes, but it didn’t quite bubble up to the surface because I had an overwhelming feeling that I. Would. Be. Back. And I heard from one of my friends the same saying as we said one of our goodbyes at the end of our trip. “It’s not goodbye, it’s just see you later.”

And this year I was lucky enough to be able to go back to Frydlant after my trip. And so I got lucky enough to see the faces of some of the most brilliantly amazing people again after a whole year of life. I experienced tangibly the truth that many of our goodbyes are not forever.

     This summer when I did camp in a different city in Czech I found myself looking at the second truth about goodbyes: they come with hello’s.

It is impossible to experience new joys and new friendships and new moments and experiences without letting go of old joys, friendships, moments and experiences. If I had never said goodbye to Frydlant last year I would never have been able to experience new cities and people in Czech this year that have brought me so much immense joy. As in love with a moment as you can be, unless you move on from it you would be doomed to repeat it until you were sick of it, or be stuck in it for so long that it would no longer be livable. And so instead of viewing goodbyes with the sadness of leaving something, I’ve begun to view them with the joy of approaching something else, something new. Every great hello I get to have in my life is only possible because of the goodbye that came before it. The goodbyes and the hellos are linked in this way; fully intertwined, and co-existent.

  “Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard... And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water... and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

   All our goodbyes come with hellos. Hello to new white shores and far green country; hello to new people and memories. 

          At the end of Return of the King Gandalf instructs Sam with a few words of wisdom and comfort.

     “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

And at the end Sam departs from the shore of the sea back to the Shire.

     “But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven... 

     At last the three companions turned away, and never again looking back they rode slowly homewards; and they spoke no word to one another until they came back to the Shire. But each had great comfort in his friends on the long grey road. 

     ...Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within, and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him his chair, and out little Elanor upon his lap. 

He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”

     So this is the last thing that I will say- you have full permission to feel your goodbyes. They are things deserving of our emotion in all its heaviness. But what I have come to think is that heaviness is not the extent of the feelings of an ending. It‘s a personal philosophy, and I’m already biased by the luck of having been able to avoid goodbyes that others are not able to avoid. But I’m forced into an optimism as I look at them now. An optimism in that even if something is slipping into the distance, it might not be a distance you never follow. It might be a distance that leads to greener things. 

(& If you are needing to weep tears that are not evil as you think about goodbye's, here is a song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7kgMtZHgem1PlJhuP7vbur)