Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye has always been a struggle for me; the bigger the moment the harder the cat squeezes my tongue and the less and less I vocalize the thoughts that seem to strangle my consciousness. Before any signs of separation appear I feel the strings pulling my friends from me and I feel the cords of depression tighten around my mind. Before any hints of separation show, I slowly sober up to the realization that our time together is limited. I realize this limitation and talk with a little more vigor, crack jokes with a little more edge and hug my girlfriend harder as the time nears, fully aware of the withdrawal I’ll face when they leave. Time slows down and my thoughts grind to a halt, centralizing on the goodbye that is approaching. As the conversation winds down and fate drags my friends their separate ways I stand in my spot, emotionally and physically sinking into quicksand.

I'm in it up to my knees when they talk about their upcoming plans, by the time they bring up their future obligations it’s risen to my chest. I stand there, devoting all my energy to verbalizing the millions of things I want to tell my friends. I stand listing and organizing those million thoughts, trying to find words that don’t exist that allow me to tell my friends what they really mean to me. When the time finally comes and they leave I stand there, caged in my own mind. My friends exchange cordials, slap hands and plan their nights and walk away with no weight on their shoulders while I stand there like a statue; deaf, dumb and weighted down. I mutter generic statements, wish them luck and slap hands-- my body knows what's expected and what to do-- but my heart refuses to play along. If my brain knows the words to say what my heart is shouting they get lost, searching for the courage to hatch. It’s like sticking a square peg into a round hole; anything forced just breaks and becomes useless.

I say goodbye, but goodbye is the last thing on my mind and in my heart. The same fate that blessed me with a school full of amazing friends cursed me with the inability to show how truly thankful I am for them. I stand by as my friend turns on his truck and drives out of the Marshall lot, and effectively my life. I stand there as if I had never known that person, like they had just been a neighbor or nuisance in my life, still in shock of what is happening and trying to put that into words. All of my friends, everyone I’ve been blessed with meeting has affected and improved my life. The cruelest fact I'll ever know is that I only have so many goodbyes with my friends before the last chance to show what they mean to you slips through your fingers into the cold earth. My deepest fear is that when the time comes for the final goodbyes, I'll say and show no more than I ever have.

My friends walk away to start their afternoons or the rest of their lives, but I stand there stuck in the moment and the past. My friends walk away and stay an important part of my life, but they never know more about that. I stand by and survive more goodbyes a day than I care to think about, and each one passes more painfully and less completely than before. Before the feelings of loss set in, I think about how I couldn't verbalize the feelings in my heart, and how deeply I wish I can make my next opportunity count. I sit there and think of things I’ll never say and of actions I’ll never do, searching in vain for the magical words than can even give a semblance of how I feel about the people in my life. My heart doesn't know that my friends have left but my brain does; bluntly aware of the loss. My heart still rings from the fun I've had while my brain slowly wraps around my sentencing of its sudden solitude.

It’s a sort of reverse shyness, the social equivalent to deer staring at headlights, an innate inability to come to terms with whose company I've just lost. I've stood by three of my best friends' come to terms with a worse hand than I've ever seen life deal anyone, failing three times to do the one thing on my mind. I have gained more respect for these three people than for anyone else I’ve ever met but I’ve been able to express less to them, I’ve tried to handle their goodbyes with the same calm that they so inherently have. I've stood there and seen three of my friends handle an incredibly unfair situation with more composure than I had ever seen. I've packed up three cars with three people's shattered college existences, ripped out of their day-to-day lives with unsettling quickness and acceptance. I've said three goodbyes and told three friends roughly three percent of what I really think about them. I’ve said goodbye to people I will very likely not see for months, but I can only muster a goodbye like I’m seeing them for dinner.

And so I sat outside after my last goodbye yesterday. Piling pity onto pity and cigarette butt onto cigarette butt I got a call from my father. My father, who is the epitome of my unsaid goodbyes, lost his friend Creighton to a sudden heart attack. Creighton had been my fathers best friend from the moment he met until last night; any interesting story my dad has ever told me has starred Creighton, normally as the lead role. My father, who is the rock of Gibraltar to me, was more shaken than I had ever seen him, and had called me looking both for consolation and to give advice. On a whim my father had decided to call his best friend for the first time in a few months, a friendship severed by different careers and locales. His friend had passed away mere minutes after he had talked to my father on the phone.

My father was overcome not by the incredible and unfathomable grief of losing his best friend, but by the gratitude that he felt for having called his friend one last time. After they had a standard conversation where they caught up with each others lives they said their goodbyes and prepared to go about their lives which had grown 4,000 miles apart. After the standard goodbye, my father thanked Creighton for what he had given and done for my father. He told me in a weaker voice than I had ever heard him use that he had realized how important Creighton had been to his life, how much he had impacted it and how much my father owed who he was and how he became that man to him. My father had no idea that Creighton was in poor health (he wasn’t), he had just decided to thank his friend for being his friend. I have never seen my father so affected as he was by these two feelings; of loss and of gratitude for that last chance.

After we had talked about Creighton my dad took a deep breath and gave me the only advice he has even given me regarding my friends; tell them that you care about them, tell them that you owe who and what you are to them, and do it often because you never know when you lose that chance. Every goodbye is a struggle for me, but now I understand that it is also a important chance to show how much you care for someone.