For Easier Goodbyes

Breaking Home Ties by Norman Rockwell

I’ve never been good with goodbyes.  I fail to see what is good about them. Even when I know it is for the best, when the time has come, when it is best to part.

Our children are used to it by now: “ah, come on, Mom, you aren’t going to cry, are you?”

Yes, I am.

The hardest goodbyes are those when you know things will never be the same again.  When you aren’t sure when you’ll see them again or if you will see them again.
When the future is uncharted and unplanned.

My toughest goodbye was when my father brought me to a school in California where I had never been before, where I knew only two other people (not at all well), and where it felt as foreign as if I’d been dropped onto another planet.  He cried as he hugged me goodbye, and in my young 18 years, I’d never seen him cry before.   I know how he felt now.

Our older sons have some practice at saying goodbye and soon our daughter will learn how to do it with ease as well.  They are really very good at saying goodbye and that is very very good.

I’m told it should get easier for me.  But then I wouldn’t know this sweet sadness of knowing things can never stay the same.

Until we meet again.