Passing Afternoon

Shakespeare must have had little experience with parting when he made Juliet utter the phrase "Parting is such Sweet Sorrow". And so he is credited to have 'invented' humanity.

Yet there is nothing sweet about goodbyes. There is only sorrow, only pain, loss, and overwhelming grief. How does one say goodbye knowing that this might be the very last, the final utterance before the curtain closes? How do we say goodbye when all we want is to say forever? How do we say goodbye to yesterday knowing what we leave behind is a moment so previous in our lives? How do we say goodbye to happiness? How do we say goodbye to love?

I do not know... I never did know... But I have uttered these words... and with it spoken, I have never seen some of the dearest persons in my life ever again.

Parting is death. It is not like death - it is death itself. And the grief we feel with that loss is the self-same grief we pour when the life of a loved one ends and we know with all certainty that we will never speak to, hold, nor feel the warmth of this person in this mortal life again... There will only be silence, darkness, and the familiar cold.

Goodbye. Death.

I can't bear to say goodbye but I must. For I know it is only then that there can be life again.

And so we hope that this goodbye isn't the last. That moments will pass but not the memories. That time may wither but not the love.

To you... Goodbye... And I know love will bring us around again. Someday.

Passing Afternoon
"There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon
Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon
And she chose a yard to burn but the ground remembers her
Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

There are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
And she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings
Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

There are sailing ships that pass all our bodies in the grass
Springtime calls her children 'till she let's them go at last
And she's chosen where to be, though she's lost her wedding ring
Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds

There are things we can't recall, blind as night that finds us all
Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
But my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

There are names across the sea, only now I do believe
Sometimes, with the windows closed, she'll sit and think of me
But she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know
A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone"



Goodbye...