Good-bye…Hello

I’ve never been very good at saying good-bye. Of course, not too many people are very good at it. After all, good-bye is a word more often tinged with melancholy than anticipation, unless of course one is waving off relatives who have come for a visit and then outstayed their welcome. But saying good-bye, for me, has always been particularly painful.

I knew I was in trouble when I was about twelve. I was watching the cartoon version of Gulliver’s travels. Things were going along merrily until the Lilliputians gathered at the end of a pier and waved good-bye to Gulliver,who, having built a boat that actually fit him, was setting sail for parts unknown. The piteous look on the faces of the little people, waving wet hankies and snuffling into their sleeves made me burst into tears. I was inconsolable for a good three minutes.

I’m afraid I’m no better now, at sixty, than I was at twelve when it comes to saying good-bye. And at sixty, I have had to say good-bye a number of times in a variety of situations, some as silly as the empathy I felt for the Lilliputians and some as deeply hurtful as the inevitable pain that the death of a loved one inflicts. You’d think practice would make it easier but it’s not. Maybe it’s just not something we are meant to get used to.

Of course, in the good-bye department, it depends on whether you’re the Leave-er or the Leave-ee. As the one leaving, there is always a sense of anticipation about what’s next. When I left Toronto to come and live in Vancouver, I was too excited about the prospects of what lay ahead to allow any feelings of regret to steal into my thoughts. Those came later, as I remembered my parents’ faces as I said good-bye to them, stoic, brave faces but with moist eyes and trembling chins. These were faces that wanted me to stay but couldn’t wait until I was gone so they could relax and give in to the loss they felt.

I remember too, being the one left behind. A little boy of 10 dressed in brand new jeans, shirt and cable knit sweater tied jauntily around his waist was alight with anticipation, excited about the plane ride he was about to take. He was going back to Ontario to live with his Dad and see all of his old friends, or at least as old as friends can be at ten.

He had waved to me enthusiastically and then turned and walked away, with the flight attendant on one side of him and an old man in a wheelchair on the other, each having to be escorted for reasons that illuminated the polar opposites of life. I watched the little boy for a very long time, bouncing along, talking happily to his escort. I watched him until he was gone. He never turned around to look. It was perhaps at that moment that I fully appreciated how my parents might have felt when they said good-bye to me. But I was forty and he was ten. And so it was also at that moment that I felt the pain not only of loss but of failure too.

Somebody’s always saying good-bye. That’s what Anne Murray says anyway. I think she’s right.

Of course the sadness of a good-bye has a way of heightening the joy of a hello. Recently I was at the airport waiting for some friends to return from their vacation. The Arrivals area was relatively calm, the air flat and uninspiring. And then scheduled planes began landing.

It was then that the entire place came alive with little buzzes of conversation here and there and faces filled with excited anticipation, as tired passengers filed through the doors searching for the sight of a loved one. It became a joyful place, a place of hello.

And so I think too, that every good-bye must make room for a hello. Hello is where hope lives. It is also where joy and learning, potential and possibility take up residence.

Hello can more than compensate for the pain of good-bye, if we choose to let it.

And I do. The Beatles do too. Click here to see what I mean.