"Leaving is like dying a little."
Re-uniting is to overcome the guilt of the broken promises that were made upon leaving. I got a lesson in this the other night. It was very ineresting and still is. Here's why.
As a person who has lived through what could be an above average number if comings and goings, I have had to adjust and readjust my emotional attachments many times ever since I turned fourteen. I went to a boarding school and when we began in freshman year, we were 52. In total there were 125 or so of us in the same school. There was a high level of turnover and it was difficult to adjust to the constant shrinkage of the population. I went through about two and one-half years of suffering through all kinds of emotional upheavals when one of my schoolmates would leave. Naturally, I learned to steady the ship and steadied myself for the long haul.
Then, I had to leave since I was going to Europe for four years of graduate work. One of my mates, one with whom I was rather close did not tell me good bye, he simply said, "We come and go without thinking because we do it so much. But you and I may never see one another again."
To make a loing story short, he died before we ever did see one another again. I have a blog entitled "No Crying at my Funeral" in which I have written that I have hardly ever used the words "Adieu" or "Adios" when separating myself from another person...except once or twice in my life. I recount one of those times here. So here is what happened to me the other night.
A schoolmate of my son was in town for the holiday. He had not been around for many years, maybe 20 or so. Thyey decided to have some of the people whom they knew around for chit-chat and conviviality. They were four. I joined them for about an hour and we exchanged pleasantries and some stories of the past. At one point the visiting lad confessed that he had great misgivings about meeting his boyhood friends because he was afraid of how they would treat him. He said simply, "I have so many unfulfilled promises that I made as I was leaving that I could not bring myself to face the people to whom I had made them." To those of us hearing this, it came home as being a sincere confession of a deception that this man had inflicted upon his closest friends. We immediately jumped in and comforted him and made him know that we had never thought of such a thing. My son said, "Hell, man, I lie every day at work when I say 'I'm fine' when they ask me 'how ya doin'?" We all laughed and talked about it some more and one of the boys said, "Well now that you've broken the ice, every year when you come to San Diego, remember you promised to stay in touch." More laughter. Another said, "Yeah and the next time be sure that your mom stays longer." (His mother had chauffered him to the gathering and stayed a short while.)
Finally, over the days I couldn't help but dwell on the impact that "meaningless" vernacular expressions that we consider to be unicorns (we have them, but they don't really exist) rear their heads and make life uncomfortable. We don't like to think that they really do exist as things that can disrupt our lives. Fortrnately this young man discovered that his unicorns really didn't exist. The thoughts of them danced around the camp fire a bit that night, but now, they have disappeared into the mist of friendship reasserted.
So, be careful when you say good bye. Don't say anything that could twist your innards into a bunch and make future joys more difficult to attain.
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