Marlena Fiol/ Personal Transformation: Lucky to Hate Goodbyes?

I’ve always hated goodbyes.

Last summer, Ed and I put our eleven-year-old grandson Louis on a flight alone (as an unaccompanied minor) from London to Newark, with a plane change in Reykjavik. The three of us had just spent seven days touring Europe together, visiting five different countries. It was an eye-opening, bonding experience to see Madrid, Venice, Milano, Zurich, Paris and London through the eyes of an eleven-year-old.
Louis grinned as he confidently walked toward his gate. “Bye, Nani.”

I unsuccessfully tried to stop my tears.

Ed made fun of me, pointing out that Louis was fine.

I wasn’t.

– – –
I’ve hated goodbyes since all the way back to when I was a little kid in Paraguay, and I’d have to say goodbye to my parents every Sunday as I boarded the bus to go for the school week into Asunción, 81 kilometers away from their leprosy station.

In my new book Love is Complicated: A True Story of Brokenness and Healing, I describe a hot summer day in 1963. I was eleven. “Sei gaot – be good. Goodbye,” Dad said in our native Low German, as he pushed me in against the bulging human mass in the bus. As the diesel engine started up, everything jostled side to side and I fought to not lose my bearings, standing with my feet far apart for stability. I looked out through the dust-covered large flat rear window of the bus just in time to see Dad’s station wagon disappearing over the hill behind us. Tears spilled from my eyes and landed on my shirt. Through my tears, I kept staring at the place where Dad’s car had disappeared from view. A strong magnetic thread seemed to pull my heart along behind that brown station wagon, even after it was out of sight.
My lips silently mouthed, “Please, Daddy, let me stay home.”

– – –
And I remember the day nearly 35 years ago, when my then fifteen-year-old daughter walked away from me on the concourse at Kennedy International Airport, about to board a flight to Spain, where she would study for a year.

She turned around to face me just before turning the corner to disappear from sight down the jetway. Just like her son decades later, a big grin on her face, she waved at me. “Bye, Mom.”

– – –
Did you know that the word “goodbye” actually derives from an Old English term “Godbwye” a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye?” What a blissful phrase for what has always been such a sad moment in my life.

Is it sadness and fear of losing the connection we have with the person we are saying goodbye to that causes such grief? Or is it that the temporary goodbyes are reminders and a foretaste of the final grand goodbye?

When a serious illness or accident strikes, or when someone dear to us dies, it becomes especially hard to ignore the final drop-off that lies just around the next turn or two. Rita Berglund, my guest on this week’s podcast “Finding the Courage to Embrace Life after a Son’s Death,” inspires each of us to trust in the larger mysterious reality that is divine and intended for love and life and aliveness at its very best, even in the face of death.

Yes, I’ve always hated goodbyes. But I’m beginning to think that Winnie-the-Pooh had it right when he said to Piglet, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

How lucky indeed!

View the full blog post here.