sweet sorrow

it seems to me that there is never a good or "right" time to say goodbye. the finality of goodbye never matches the fleeting actuality of the event. it never goes quite the way that you envisioned it. i've learned that i'm terrible at goodbyes. i always seem to be too busy, too distracted, too attached or too distant, too angry, too sad, too eager, too awkward, too unprepared, or too unwilling.

we've started to "terminate" our relationships here. terminate. what a terrible social work word. in our field, at the end of services, we terminate with our clients and we terminate the relationship that we have built with them. and that's what we have to do here. its part of the experience, part of the "job".

but how to say goodbye to people we've invested ourselves in for 6 months, people we've lived with, people we've laughed with, cried with, and grown with? how do you say goodbye to an entire culture, an entire country? answers to these questions i do not possess, so i continue in my standard sub par form of goodbye, which always seems to fall short and never quite honors the full extent of the relationship, or adequately expresses how much i valued it. i know that saying goodbye to come here was difficult, and here again, half a year later, i find that the thought of saying goodbye to return back home is already proving wearisome. life here cannot be continued as is without acknowledging the giant 'termination' lurking around the corner, inching nearer with each passing day.

last night i was invited over to my supervisors house for a final dinner and a form of goodbye. i say goodbye to half of my UMB family november 4th, and to the rest of them a few weeks later. i say my final goodbyes at CASP in december. i'll say goodbye at the ashram after a month long teacher training which will be yet another difficult goodbye. it saddens me to even think about saying goodbye to our house family that has truly become our family this year. and the harsh reality that these relationships will never be the same again, never the way that they are right now, in this circumstance, this instance. and the vast majority of goodbyes to people here will in fact be irrevocable, and those goodbyes seem to be the most daunting and severe in their finality.

it seems that life is a perpetual revolving door of investing wholly into relationships and their impending and unavoidable termination. but thus is life i suppose, and at the end of the day, i need to acknowledge and accept that each relationship and even their subsequent goodbye is in fact, a gift.

"so dawn goes down to day.
nothing gold can stay."
-frost