From two years ago… the original comments, which can be found here are very special to me as well.
I hate saying goodbye.
I’m not good at it. I never have been.
I don’t know what is worse, saying goodbye, or not being able to say goodbye. I have experienced both.
Endings are hard.
Some people let them roll of their back and quickly move on. The rest of us struggle.
One of the most poignant thoughts I ever read about endings came from Robert Anderson’s play “I Never Sang For My Father.”
“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind towards some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.”
With the anniversary of September 11th approaching, I feel vulnerable. Not physically but emotionally. And it somehow feels necessary to remind all the special people in my life how much they mean to me.
Consider yourself told.
May G-d bless you and yours.
In Memoriam – 9/11. For everyone who suffered on that horrific day… I wish you and your loved ones peace.
The “F” part of Lisa’s nickname for me is on hiatus for this post.
Some times, goodbyes are agreed upon in advance, like when the neighbors move away or the school year ends and people graduate and head off to college.
But mostly, they’re not. Those goodbyes that just happen when you don’t want them to are a reminder of the arbitrary and random nature of life. Lightning doesn’t plan in advance who to strike. I don’t think people ever get over the randomness. Bad things do, in fact, happen to good people. Virtue, hard work, intelligence, money might all avail you nothing. We often think modern society has conquered the randomness of life, which makes it all the more jarring and painful when it surfaces.
So the quote in your post about how final resolution to a lost relationship is not guaranteed is quite true. And no matter how much it has happened in my life, it’s still painful to realize that happy endings are not a sure thing. In fact, they sometimes seem so few and far between that they’re the exception rather than the rule.
I witnessed the events of 9/11 from a far-too-good vantage point, floor-to-ceiling windows in the top floor of a skyscraper located about three miles directly north. I was walking into my office after a meeting when I saw the impact of the first plane. I couldn’t believe what was happening, even though I didn’t know the cause at that moment. Since they shut down the trains for hours, I got to see the whole day unfold. Although I didn’t lose anyone close to me, I knew a number of people who were in the towers and got out, and knew a number of people who lost loved ones. My secretary, in a four-generation NYFD family, personally attended 38 funerals.
The hardest thing about this was coming home at night to my son, who was watching all of this on TV, and trying to comfort him and help him to ask questions, particularly since he didn’t ask many, keeping it inside. Even harder was preparing him for school the next day in an exclusive suburb where Wall Street is by far the biggest employer, telling him that he should expect that somewhere between 5 and 20 kids had lost one of their parents (real number, to my amazement, was exactly one; some same-sized towns in NJ lost dozens).
A day I remember well but can’t bring myself to write about, HCFG. It was fantastic meeting you and Lisa last Sunday. I hope we get to do that again next year.
I love that Quote, Lisa. It’s what I was driving at in my song Can’t Leave My Mind, which, ironically I wrote as a love song for Cathy but got to sing at a funeral for a B-I-L. It now gets play on a Christian station for whatever reason.
Talk to you soon.
B
It’s hard to believe that was seven years ago–it left such an indelible impact it feels like yesterday.
I think one of the hardest things for me in dealing with it is the fact the day was so beautiful. The sky was so very blue and clear. It was a contradiction of the worst degree.
Much love, Lisa.
Right back at you, LisaB. MIss your postings, but delighted you’re happy, or at least seem to be. Paz.
It’s weird down this way. While I was in England on 9/11, but it happened on 9/12 in Kiwi time, so the papers always seem a day late with their memorial pieces, even though they’re not.
Great reposting.
Peace to you and yours. It’s a tough day for most of us to get through every year.
You’re a special woman, and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this day.
I still think of it often because my mother-in-law passed away the very night before in NJ, just an hour away from NYC, and we were with her. I posted my journal of that week we were there on my blog practically every year since, except this one. This year I tried to think of something else to say but I could not. The sound of the 1st plane I heard hit tower one, the images on TV, the words I wrote, emotions I felt, not just my own but those elderly folk in the complex where she lived who were so frightened by the events– it’s all stained in my mind and soul like indelible ink. It can’t be re-written or window dressed in any other fashion. And while I didn’t lose anyone in the attack, at the end of that week during my mother-in-laws service, I simultaneously said goodbye to a beautiful lady I expected to die but hated to lose, along with hundreds of strangers I never met yet somehow felt a connected, unexpected loss.
I totally get your vulnerability. Consider yourself ‘told’ too and maybe a cheek slobbered on a little. {{{{Huggies}}}}
I was Fuzz then but the words I spoke then are the same today. Bless you as well.
Thank you everyone.