The Season of Good-byes

By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor

I’m sitting at my kitchen table making a grocery list when I notice the sugar bowl is empty. It is empty because I have been saying good-bye for days. Whenever someone stops to say good-bye — to leave for the winter, for school, for another job — we share some sweet sun tea. It is that reason — sweet tea and sad good-byes. The contradictions we live. The days are still hot enough and long enough for the tea to steep and be chilled for visitors, but the season is changing even as I write this. The company from California have caught their plane home; my relatives have driven back to Chicago.
And I am thinking about good-byes.
Recently, I attended two gatherings for young people going away to college. I watched their confident faces. Though there were tears, I knew that the old cliche sticks because it is mostly true — for them good-bye is a beginning, not an ending. I realize they don’t know what good-bye means in the way we do when we are older, watching them leave. Though they will learn it, I believe we are left with the greater sadness. Many young friends leave, pulled ahead of themselves, living already in different places and times, looking toward the new life even as they tenderly kiss their farewells. I remember my mother accused me of not understanding her sadness when I finally left for college. I didn’t believe her, but she was right. We learn the depth of good-byes from age and experience.
Other good-byes come back. This year, in order to pursue long-time dreams, two beloved friends have left for the opposite side of the planet. They are full of hope, and I wish them Godspeed, but now, in the emptiness they leave, I miss them and rattle around for days until I finally pick up the pen and start writing, easing them good-bye with the news of our everyday life.
Many of us are so pained by good-byes, we can barely speak of them. A close friend, confiding to me about saying good-bye to his son when he moved to a far-away city, confessed that he could not cry. When I asked why, he said, “If I would have let myself begin, it never would have stopped.” So, he told his son he loved him, but left dry-eyed.
Sometimes we learn the depth good-byes can assume when we say them for the last time. In this year, my family said good-bye to a beloved sister/aunt who was dying. She was the first of my dad’s siblings to die, and it was difficult for all of us. We were forced to realize those we have looked to for so long are changing their seasons too. There is no good-bye more painful, more necessary. Sadly, we have also had to say good-bye to those who died unexpectedly, who had no time to respond, and that one is harder still in these small communities where we have known each other through many winters.
However, the cynical good-byes we share with summer people are not so painful. After the joy and intensity of the summer experience, these friends leave us to go back to their other lives, but we know they’ll be back. Their good-byes feel more like rituals, ceremonies of leaving matched by the ceremonies of returning in the spring. And their leaving is the true harbinger of a new season. Though I will miss the bustle and energy and pleasure of summer friends, I will be the first to say I cherish walking in the quieter woods and on the empty beaches. When John and Celeste, Ben and Kristin, Ruthie, Betsy, or Pauline point their cars home, David and I stand in the driveway and wave, filled with the mix of lonesomeness and gratitude for these rich friendships. Then we do the laundry, clean the fridge, and stretch back into our places.
Our summer friends’ leaving signals the end of a season, and I am aware of what will be missed — shared grocery lists, sweetened tea, picnics on the beach. And what will be gained. I sit at my kitchen table, realizing I won’t have to buy sugar because I don’t bake much when there’s no company. And it will be quieter around here, a delicious gift. There will be the September swims for just the two of us, the golden October walks, the late garden harvest. But when beloved people leave, they often take a little sweetness with them. We learn about the small emptiness like my sugar bowl, a bit of hollow pewter with a sticky spoon.