Finding the Good in Goodbyes!
July 2021, I went to drop off one of my childhood friends at Airport. He was leaving India, for studying and possibly settling down in another country.
Over the course of the evening that began at his home, we packed the trunk of the car with his luggage, watched his mother cry as she hugged him goodbye, and drove 80 minutes during which he talked of how weird and unreal all of this seemed. From the thrill and anxiety of things to come, to missing seeing each other each day. Was it a goodbye? Or a start of something new? Or probably one of many to follow.
Humans forget and live, recover and survive to see another day, no matter what has happened yesterday-week-year. Always ready to muscle with time. Once in a while, we randomly turn back to awe at the path we have traced. How days seemed long but years have gone with the wind. All those years, what do they leave behind for us?
A basket. A basket wherein we place the merry memories among the heartaches and pains which somehow find their way in. A unique kind, however, are the memories of a Goodbye.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Goodbyes. Slow, abrupt, longed, forced, weird, confused and sometimes numb. As you stand within that moment, a fog of emotions rises up and an oblivion-like blanket of thoughts starts to engulf you. There’s only one thing left to ask. “Why?” For life to progress? For change to be the only constant? Because things eventually turn out to be fine, don’t they? Or are we wired to find them this way? To justify the good in a Goodbye.
Sometimes it just seems like we’re threads in a giant web, entangled around each other. Aftermath of an event converging us closer, making us run parallel for a while before another repercussion makes us diverge. Maybe to meet again stronger or weaker, maybe never — for good or for bad. One thing, however, that we’ll always see clearly is that basket — a unique mixture of every shade you’ve seen, every note you’ve heard and every touch you’ve felt. So on days when I’m curious about what more this web holds for me, I find it comforting to look at my basket instead, and embrace what is to come along with what has been.
