Tribute to Summer

Distance. 

I was so excited for this summer to start. Four months ago, I was sure this summer would be filled with all manner of excitement and happiness. I knew I would have to say goodbye to a few people, but I thought I'd gotten fairly used to that; after all, the pain of saying goodbye was masked by the excitement of saying hello.

As I shed my summer skin, I look back at what the summer really was, not just what I anticipated it to be. There is one ongoing and consistent theme I encountered all summer long: farewell. Saying goodbye is something I've learned to be okay with over the past few years. Some of my closest relationships have been complicated by a relocation to China. Other people I've had to meet and leave within a matter of months. Some goodbyes aren't because of location. Some goodbyes you have to say late, after you realized the other person already said goodbye to you. Some farewells are offered up to places or things instead of people. Sometimes you are leaving a circumstance that meant a lot to you-- and those goodbyes hurt, too.The most painful of all, though, is the cycle of goodbyes. Saying hello for two months just to say goodbye for nine, and then doing it all over again, is painful. Not only painful, but each time you say goodbye, the distance feels farther than ever before. This summer has hosted many goodbyes of different varieties, with carrying degrees of pain and attachment.

What I've really been seeing recently is that everyone says goodbye differently. Some may cling tightly to a person before they leave, while others may push away before the actual goodbye in order to save emotional pain in departure. I've seen that my way of saying goodbye is spending as much time with the person I'm leaving, or the person that's leaving me, as possible. This shouldn't come to much surprise considering my primary way of giving and receiving love is through quality time. I think this way of farewell-ing may have come from my past regrets after loved ones have left; I've often looked back with discontent when seeing I could have spent more time with people I then miss. This has led me to do whatever I can to avoid losing precious time with those I know are leaving. So this plays out practically-- and quite subconsciously-- as me sacrificing much time and energy to be with people (though can it really be called a sacrifice when it is something I chose and enjoy to do?). Many things have been put on hold these past months because my emotional capacity was being poured heavily into making sure I had "good" goodbyes.

I remember a realization I had one day when I was younger. It was after my siblings had all moved off. I kept hoping they were coming home for holidays. I would wait for the word of their return, and count down the days until everything could be like old times. Only the old times never did come back. One day I realized that those days were gone. Things would never be the same. Changed had happened without me. I often felt, and feel much like this now, like Beth from Alcott's Little Women. In the movie she has a sizable monologue about her feelings in dying. She says that she never understood why the other siblings wanted to go away. They all went off to foreign places, but Beth stayed home where she was comfortable. She sadly says how she didn't like being the one left behind, but that finally she is the one to go ahead. It's a heart-breaking moment, and I think of this scene whenever I think of saying farewell to someone. 

I'm very different from Beth, but my young soul resonated with her deeply. I didn't like being the one left behind. I didn't understand why everyone wanted to leave.Now I do understand why change must happen. I am much more like Jo May, in that I am a catalyst for change and movement. I want to leave. This is maybe why I hate certain goodbyes so much. I'm not the one going ahead. I'm the one being left, and I have been for many years. Even if it hurts others, I would rather be the one going on to new places to see new things. I hate being left behind; it's so heavy.

If I had known how many people were going to leave, or how I handled goodbyes, before this season started, I may have been able to prepare myself for the exhausting task of pouring myself into relationships that would cease as I know them. But I did not have that luxury; Before I knew it, I was caught in a whirlwind of goodbye-saying and time-spending and note-writing and airport-visiting.

T 1: My youth group. Saying goodbye to my youth group may have been the hardest goodbye of the summer. It was a support system filled with people I loved and cherished that I couldn't be a part of anymore. And it isn't something you chose to leave, but rather grow out of-- but I didn't feel like I had grown out of it, I felt like it was finally just what I needed. But I had to leave.

T 2: My arm. My arm had been splinted for a month, and I was so ready to get out of that splint and stretch. No one told me I wouldn't be able to move my arm. And no one told me it was going to take so fucking long to get it moving again. I had to say goodbye to my hopes of using it for awhile.

T 3: My dear Jona. She was an exchange student from Germany, who was headed back home from her sojourn here in The States. I wish we would have had more time together. She is one of the relationships that inspired me to pour myself into those I know are leaving, because I wish I would have done so more with her.

T 5: One day I found out that one of my favorite people, John, was moving to Europe in a week. I had a week to see him again before saying goodbye.

T 6: My house. I moved out of my house early summer. I was, in many ways, leaving for the unknown. The unknown left me back in my house again after a week. So there I was, saying goodbye to the unknown.

T 9: The friend I feel like I should have known forever but had only just met. And then it was time to say goodbye. It wasn't supposed to hurt to say goodbye to a person I'd known only ten days, but it did. It hurt a lot. When he left, he assured me that we still were side by side, just in different places. I would be wise to remember that more often.

T 9.2: My aunt, uncle and cousin. I had a very brief time with them, but they are people I truly enjoy. I'm not at all used to seeing them, so the saying goodbye to them physically wasn't as hard as what it represented in my head: saying goodbye to childhood.

T 9.3: My house (for real this time). This time it was quite a lot harder. I'm embarrassed to say that it was quite hard for me to leave the walls of my bedroom. I don't want to struggle with sentimental attachment to things, but I do. I'm a sentimental person in many ways (I always have been). Not being able to sit on the back steps I sat on on so many occasions to smell the old cedar under me, and the freshly cut grass around me is hard. Not being able to feel the cool concrete of my front walkway under my feet as I look at the blooming hasta plants in the shade makes me uncomfortable. It was hard for me to let of go what I had been used to for eighteen years.

T 9.4: This goodbye took me by surprise. I wasn't ready for it. And I still haven't really processed it.

T 9.5: My favorite Czech, Jane. I've know her beautiful spirit only a little while, but it was long enough to fall in love with. What a joy she brought to the house. And her sister and mom only added to it, until we had to bid them all a fond farewell.

T 10: My hobbit-like fellowship: Before I said goodbye to my three best friends individually, I had to say goodbye to us as a group, as a unit, as a fellowship. These beautiful girls have walked by me the past several years in more ways than any "normal" friends. They were there to feed me when I was hungry, to take me in when I needed something, to teach me when I was foolish, and listen to me when I was not. They were there to support me through the gravest of times and the hardest of circumstances.

T 11: Natalie. The first of the fellowship to go. We had grand plans of living together with teapots and paintings and dish ware. But God took Natalie to into the west, and I was well underprepared.

T 11.2: My dear friend Hannah. She has stood by me as a wonderful friend for many years. One of my most effortless relationships, in that she understands me like most others can't. I am used to not seeing her, but I still miss her tremendously.

T 12: The new friend-- old friend to all my good friends. We only spent a couple days together, but by quality of person, it was still a bitter goodbye.

T 13: Michaela. The second of the fellowship to leave. Saying goodbye to her was overwhelming, because it felt like something was really ending. It was becoming real that this really is the end to what I have known. No one said it would be this hard.

T 13.2: Tess, my summer roommate and a beautiful soul. Her goodbye is a very bitter one. Our house won't be the same without her here at all.

T 13.3: Shelby, my closest friend and the last of the fellowship leaving. This time, I didn't have to say goodbye to seeing her (she's quite close still), but rather I have to let her go start a new life without me. I will always be in her life, but I won't always be in every aspect of her life, and that's what I have to say farewell to; it's time to leave.

T 14: Matt and Kara: This is the goodbye I've been waiting for. I knew when I said hello three months ago that this would be a very painful goodbye. No matter how many times I say it, it doesn't get any easier seeing my sister off to China. But I always find that the end comes before I'm ready for it. Goodnight, jie jie, travel well.

T 14.2:  With my last goodbyes finished, it is time for summer to end. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm happy it's gone. I'm done saying goodbye. Summer is gone.

The summer of 23 farewells.