to speak the prayer of letting go

[coyotegoth]

I had a conversation with my sister while I was in Ipswich, which led me to think about loss, and the ways in which we deal with it. She reminded me of a friend I'd not thought of for years; when I was about four years old, he was hit by a car and killed. As soon as she mentioned that, I could remember going into our backyard garden with a trowel soon after the funeral, and burying my favorite plastic dinosaur. A brontosaurus, it was. Even now, I find myself doing things like writing sestinas, and scattering ashes of poems into he river, and suchlike; I need some sort of private ritual, of letting go, in order to truly say goodbye to someone who's passed.

How do you say goodbye?

Comments

[kobold.livejournal.com]

I don't think we ever do. I part of us still clutches and covets precious moments and people. There have been times that's all that's kept me going.

[camfangrrl.livejournal.com]

I had a favorite pet rat die recently, and when my companion J said, "Say goodbye to him," I couldn't. I said, "Hi there, buddy. Hi there, sweetie boy. Let's go put you away now." To me, those who have passed on are still here, because I can imagine them doing things they liked to do and since I still have my memories of their pasts, they are as present in my brain as they were when they were alive. Loved ones who aren't in my living room are still my loved ones even if they've moved thousands of miles away and happen to never get in touch again, or have passed away.

I've just this moment realized what's going on with that, too. It costs me nothing to keep the feeling of a person's life alive in my own mind. Just like I have zillions of gigabytes's worth of hard disk space on my computer and zillions more in external storage to save every binary and text file that tickles my fancy, so it is that I have a brain which has infinite storage to permit me to save the sense of the life of someone who was special to me. I feel no compelling reason to say goodbye, so I don't.

[scheherazade.livejournal.com]

I am not awfully good at the saying "goodbye" thing. And I really should be by now.

XX

[http://users.livejournal.com/__kel__/]

sometimes you don't. sometimes, you just have to work toward accepting the absence.

[beeeej.livejournal.com]

It depends on to whom I'm saying goodbye.

My aunt died of lung cancer a couple of years ago. I've been trying to quit smoking ever since, but I think (or at least I rationalize) that one of the reasons I've had so much trouble isn't because it's hard to quit smoking in general, it's because I'd have to acknowledge that I'm done saying goodbye.

A family friend died of AIDS ten years ago. I did the first Boston->NY AIDS Ride in 1995 as a way of dealing with the anger, but it didn't "finish" the job of saying goodbye; I've been doing the NYC AIDS Walk for years as well, and now I'm even captain of my college alumni team.

Sometimes honoring someone doesn't have to mean saying goodbye. And losing them doesn't have to mean relinquishing them.