This one is about me…
I remember it so clearly…
Everyone was crying. It was a pain and a fear that was so much bigger than I. I can still feel it today. I couldn’t imagine a world without my family. I loved them so. It was like someone was ripping my heart out of me and I could not stop it. It was the night of March 25, 1975.
I was almost 8 years old, and we were really leaving Lima, Peru to go to God knows where… the country where my Uncle Nato lived.
We landed in the US, and it was like landing on the moon. My world went from living color to black and white. My heart went from full to empty. My family was like 50 people, that felt like 100, and now we were 6, my two sisters, my parents and our “maid and nanny” that was our angel, “Clementine”.
And, life started over.
I remember it so clearly…
I never got to say goodbye. Ana, my younger sister, and my best friend, was laying on our foyer floor. She was 7. Strange men where ripping her clothes off. Clementine, our maid, was crying hysterically. Everyone was yelling. Then they started pounding on her like they were trying to kill her, but she was already dead. They were trying to bring her back. She died February 13, 1978. And, now we were 5.
I remember it so clearly…
I was standing by Dee’s bed. I knew it was time. My dad had cried all the way to the hospital that morning. “Say goodbye,” he said. I went to stand by her bed and talked to her for awhile. She could no longer hear me. She was in a coma. She was 15 and was dying of bronchopneumonia, just like Ana had died. Both my sisters had Muscular Dystrophy and didn’t have the strength to cough out the phlegm to save their own lives. They just weren’t strong enough. It was the fact that they weren’t strong to begin with that made the phlegm build up.
I don’t remember exactly what I said. I remember I felt awkward, and I felt guilty. I told her that I knew she was much stronger than I in so very many ways, except the one that mattered most at that time. She was a strong woman at 15. We weren’t as close as I was with my little sister, because my sister who was a year and a half older than I was an adult from the time she was a kid. I was just a little boy. The world had taught her a lifetime by the time she died at 15. Now, we were 4; my parents, Clementine and me.
Through those years, every trip to and from Peru was heartbreaking. It was wonderful, but every time I left I cried myself silly. And, with every trip it got a little easier.
I am a slow learner.
I am still learning.
It’s funny. I don’t have many memories of my youth. But, for some reason, I remember so many goodBYEs… more than you care to hear about.
When Susy left for college, I drove down the streets of Tilden Woods in such distress. I was that same feeling of goodbye, of loss.
Clementine left us when I went to college. She moved with a friend’s family down to Florida.
Then my dad left for Peru, while I was in college.
goodBYEs…
I have gotten much better at goodBYEs… and I am still horrible at them.
I remember it clearly…
When my very dear friend Joe, left Cincinnati after knowing him for a year and a half, I was a mess. It was embarrassing ;-) His cousin had come to help him move. We felt like we owned the town. In his friendship, I had found the love of family. He filled me with hope, with possibility, with dreams, with moments. As they left our apartment, I wept like a teenage girl with a broken heart. I was trying to hold it back, but I couldn’t.
When I left Procter & Gamble… When I left iMark.com… each time, I lost it.
Fortunately, Susy is now with me everyday, and my buddy Joe is with me from a distance, and our friendship has grown, matured and endured. But goodBYEs are still goodBYEs.
When my father in law died in 2003, I couldn’t stop myself from crying.
When my godmother died in 2005, I felt an overwhelming and deep sadness that I doused in tears.
Yes, I am emotional person, but I am amazed by the depth of the emotion that I feel from goodBYEs – even FAKE ones for goodness sake!
When BJ said goodbye to Hawkeye in MASH…
When the young mom says goodbye to her kids in Terms of Endearment…
When the Von Trapp Family says goodbye and runs away together in the SOUND of MUSIC…
When Dr. Zhang said goodBYE to Meredith in Grey’s Anatomy…
I LOSE IT EVERY TIME!
REALLY…
WHAT THE HELL?
It intrigues me how deeply I feel goodbyes, even if they belong to someone else.
GoodBYEs can be so full of disharmony, “I wish you weren’t leaving…”
I think the sense of loss and pain that I felt as a kid so many times… the DISHARMONY of goodbyes.
But now, it is not loss and pain that fills my eyes with tears, with every goodbye. It is about embracing the passing of time. It is about feeling this visceral understanding of things having to come to an end…
It is still an empathetic reaction to a sense of loss, but it is also, I believe, an unconscious acknowledgement that life is finite.
I get that every goodBYE is the end of something.
I get that every goodBYE is like the end of another song you love that will never be replayed.
Maybe this is why I suck so bad at quitting. I don’t like want to put more goodBYE’s than needed. I don’t want to be the one that causes the pain. I don’t want to be the one that flips the page.
I understand that there are many types of goodBYEs.
The goodBYE you say to a dear friend, is more of an I love you and will see you very soon. That is a happy goodbye.
The goodBYE you say to your parents when you no longer live in the same town is more of an I love you and I will miss you. Until your parents get older, and then you start to feel the possible disharmony of a permanent goodbye.
The goodBYE you say to someone you know that you will never see again…
Embracing the absolute truth is not easy. It is often extremely difficult and painful.
I don’t know exactly how goodBYEs tie to the concept of harmony.
But, I do know that they can be momentous in their intensity.
I really enjoy going to funerals. Specially of people that I know.
I like them because they make me so crazy aware that songs end, pages turn, chapters end, and life continues.
“I am the author, life is my book, my only work of art…”
I like goodBYEs because they make me FEEL so deeply…
I like goodBYEs because they mark an end – and we are lucky when we have the opportunity to say goodBYE to those we love…
I like goodBYEs because they remind me of the MACRO absolute truth of life in such an important way…
For decades, I could say goodBYE to my parents after their visits, and feel a sense of relief. Lately, with all of their changes in their lives, and the obvious passing of time and advancing health... I feel that sense of loss in our goodBYEs. I feel them, on some level, very aware of the possibility of its permanence. And, its the fact that THEY get it, that saddens me.
Nothing is forever…
Make the moments count…
Be aware of them…
Live them…
Be grateful for them and acknowledge them…
Because they WILL end…
LIFE IS FINITE…
I can embrace that truth and LIVE, or I can fear that, waste moments, and DIE.
Every moment that I am aware of goodBYEs, I am so much more likely to LIVE!
Thank you for caring enough to stay and read and allow me to this space to grow...
goodBYE for now… and talk to you very soon…
Yours in harmony,
Nestor