Reflections on Farewells

[Posted by Melanie]

One of my very earliest memories – from the time when I was three or four – is of going to a friend’s Beauty and the Beast-themed birthday party.  She was my best friend, I remember that.  But I can’t even remember her name anymore, because one of my other earliest memories is of going to her going-away party.  She moved away, I stayed behind, and soon I forgot everything except the vague memories of her party, kept alive by the Beast pin in my drawer.

After that, life was pretty stable until I entered second grade.  I homeschooled during the week.  I had my two best friends at church, Jill and Jeanne.  I was comfortable and happy.

In the following eleven years, from the start of second grade until the beginning of college, I had best friends move away and/or graduate and move on nine times, including Jill and Jeanne.  In one of the remaining years, I had no best friends.  My only stable years – the second-plus year of the same best friend – were fifth grade and tenth grade.  Well, sort of eighth and ninth grade, if you count my regular access in junior high to my best friend of ninth and tenth grade while we were riding the bus together.  But since she was in high school, she couldn’t eat lunch with me, so I had my “lunch best friends” and my real best friend separately.

Anyway, I hardly ever got two consecutive years with the same friend.  Saying good-bye became a constant theme of my life.  I’ve never moved, but the people I most loved regularly did.  It never stopped hurting, either.  It’s probably the single thing I most hate in life, saying good-bye, not knowing when I’ll see them again or if it will ever be the same.  I know:  sometimes you see them again and it’s as if no time at all has passed, and you can laugh and talk and be happy together just like old times; but other times, you see them again and everything has changed, and you can’t seem to talk to each other anymore.  The old happiness is gone.

I did, of course, get fairly good at dealing with that particular variety of pain.  Still, the summers after those farewells inevitably stank.

Then I entered college, and there was Francis.

Francis, the most vibrant community of friends I ever had.  Francis, the friends where I never had to go home at the end of the day and say good-bye even for a few hours.  Francis, the friends I did life with.  For three years, I lived, ate, did homework, went to classes, went to parties, discussed the most important parts of my life, and generally did life with the beloved members of Francis.

The next year I went to USC, and that was hard.  It was another horrible good-bye, not seeing you every day.  But you were still there.  Francis was still there, doing life together, and I knew I could visit when things got rough.  And I did.  And I had prepared myself for the good-bye for so long.  I knew what the farewell would be like; I’ve done it so many times before.

But it turns out I haven’t done a farewell like this before.  Not like this.  Not after four years of such close friendships.  Not so many people I love all at once.

This is the eleventh time I have said good-bye to my best friends in my twenty-two years.  Eleven times, but I find that none of the first ten fully prepared me for this.  It's impossible to get used to this feeling.

Hurray for cars and cell phones and Internet; in that, at least, this farewell is the easiest of the eleven.  But not even those things can make this easy.

I miss you, my friends.



In high school, a staple part of saying good-bye was that in the months immediately before and after the farewell, I would start writing sad poetry.  It helps a little, at least.

Today I recognized that it was time to revive that little tradition, to mourn in the way I’m used to.  So here’s the hasty little poem-like thing I wrote up today: 

There is salt in the cool air that blows in my window 
There is salt in the water that runs down my face 
I never saw such a beautiful August 
‘Tis a joy to be alive 
‘Tis a joy to be here 
Or would be if you were not gone.