After seven years in California—it’s pretty much all our four kids know—we are moving to Oklahoma this summer. We are thrilled about what this, overall.
In the process, though, I have been reminded of how nostalgic, how bad at letting go I am. I’m feeling cognitive dissonance—like one life is coming to an end, and a new, completely unrelated one is opening up. It’s an exciting feeling. It’s a sucky feeling.
This, along with all that’s been going on in life over the last year, has shown me that I’m bad at saying goodbye—to anyone or anything. And it’s a crazy time in the world, technologically speaking, for someone like me: I could virtually (no pun intended…well, yeah, pun totally intended) avoid ever saying goodbye. Even when we find ourselves across the world from one another, with a click of a button we can see everything going on in a person’s life.
And this is essentially how I’ve used things like social media. If I’ve ever known you, I intended to stay in contact, up-to-date with you forever.
So I’m having to learn how to say goodbye. I sympathize with Bob Dylan: “Goodbye is too good-a word, Babe, so I’ll just say, ‘Fare the well.'” But sometimes, goodbye the right word to say.