Saying goodbye has always been so difficult for me. I really struggle with it, and most of the time I avoid the painful feelings that saying goodbye can evoke. Like my nephew, when he was a toddler... he never wanted to say goodbye. We would come into town for the weekend and have the best time. And when we were getting ready to leave, his mood completely changed. He would get all grumpy, hide his face, leave the room, and not speak a word. I get it, little dude. I SO get it.
My Auntie Jan - one of my mom's sisters - is currently in hospice care, losing her 10 year fight with ovarian cancer. Doctors are projecting that she has very little time left. Days, maybe weeks. I am so sad. And so stuck in trying to figure out how to properly deal with this loss. How to truly honor her life. How to say goodbye.
A while back, I read a random person's status update on Facebook - it was a friend of a friend type thing, and my friend had re-shared this person's post. It has really stuck with me... I think it might be one of the most important things I'll ever read in my life. It was a man who had just lost his father, and was explaining what he had learned in his father's final days. I will never forget what he learned and what he shared. And if I could remember his name, I would credit him here. He said that he struggled with what to say to his father in these last hard moments. He figured out that it was most important to say these four things:
1) I'm sorry.
2) I forgive you.
3) Thank you.
4) I love you.
To really honor his relationship with his father, he needed to say these four things. Wow. So simple, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't have much trouble saying the second two things. But the first two things are very hard for me. And I can see why they would be so important to say, especially to someone with whom you have/had a close relationship.
In the end, nothing else really matters. These things matter.
I feel like I have taken the easy way out of goodbyes too many times in my life thus far. I avoid break-ups. I don't make it to the goodbye party. My childhood best friend's mother passed away a few years ago from breast cancer, and I couldn't make it home for the funeral. I was secretly relieved. I chickened out. And I'm still so disappointed in myself for not properly honoring this woman's life. This woman, who is so present in my childhood memories, and was like a second mother to me during that time. It just felt so huge to me, and I was overwhelmed with the idea of laying her to rest in my heart.
And that brings me to today. How I'm feeling about saying goodbye to my spunky, funny, loving, courageous Auntie Jan. Someone so dear to my family and my mom, and so present in all my family memories. Someone so important in the scope of my extended family life and so close to the beating heart of my collective kin. Someone who has loved me well, although we live far away and don't see each other often. It feels so huge, so hard.
I don't want to open myself up to the pain. I don't want to feel the weight of this loss. I want to hide my face and leave the room.
However, I really don't want to keep chickening out of goodbyes, either. This is so important. It is a basic tenant of the human life. You say hello, you say goodbye. You enter this world, you leave it. Why is it so difficult when people leave?
My husband and I talked the other night about why losing someone is so hard. I asked, "Why is loss always so sad? Why can't we celebrate someone's life when they are at the end of it? Why can't we be happy about the life they lived? Why does it hurt so much?" My wise husband brought up the idea that we tend to emotionally attach to people - to each other - and therefore it's hard and sad to let them go. Rather than trying to see our time with each other as a gift and stay a bit more un-attached. It wouldn't mean that we don't love... it would mean that we love without selfish attachment. It's a very zen Buddhist concept. One that I aspire to attain in my own life, as I think and write a lot about being able to let go of things. But I am not quite there yet with people. Not at all yet there.
I want to do the right thing. I want to be brave and to let the pain in, to wash through me, so that I can honor my Aunt the best way that I know how... to acknowledge her in my heart. To acknowledge what she has meant to me in my life. To celebrate hers.
So that I can peacefully, and presently, let her go.
I'm trying.
I'm so sorry for everything you've endured. I'm sorry we didn't have more time together, and that I didn't visit more often. I forgive you, although there is nothing you've done that really needs my forgiveness. Thank you for your heart, your humor, for loving us all - for everything you are. I love you always, dear Auntie Jan.
