Saying Goodbye | Pursuit

Saying Goodbye

“Goodbye, a 16^th century contraction of “God be with you,” is spoken as a concluding remark or gesture when someone takes leave of someone else. But that’s where simple stops and complicated begins!

Goodbye, like ice cream, comes in so many flavors. We have a parting word for about every taste. There is a flavor whose message is:

—good riddance, and don’t come back, as in Covid, a case of shingles, or Cousin Eddie

—letting go, by finding the courage to turn loose of what you cannot change. This may

test one’s strength to the limit.

—goodbye, so I may forget, with grace and generosity, those who choose not to love me,

who reject my friendship with dismissiveness and treat me with contempt.

—the crippling wounds (seldom mortal, always painful) that come with

the loss of someone incalculably precious.

—the cost of obedience to a higher calling, which frequently is the most

difficult of all goodbyes due to the commitment required.

There are times when we can’t wait to say goodbye to something distasteful, like an illness, a long-standing debt, or Cousin Eddie showing up on Christmas Eve in his Winnebago, uninvited and unwanted. But sometimes saying it keeps us from ruining the fine day ahead of us and not wasting a perfectly good fret over a really bad yesterday.

At other times we can’t bear saying goodbye. We postpone it, we try pushback, or we ignore it as long as possible. What anxious parent can forget the near panic when the bus hauls off her first grader to that first day of class, when that final hug, or four, made the driver honk? What adoring dad can forget the joyful-mournful strains of Mendelssohn’s’ Wedding March as he gives his priceless daughter away to a worthless bum, who later produces the finest grandchildren on the planet; that handing her hand over to the waiting hand of another and the sad-glad goodbye that change things, and us, forever.

Whether you spell it goodby, good-by, or goodbye, as I do, it’s the final thing one says after he says “hello” and conversation runs aground, or one wishes to part company.

In 1976 the Beatles released a popular tune about opposites, Hello, Goodbye, to poke playful fun at duality, one of the themes of our universe. They sang, “you say goodbye; I say hello.” Consider how many other opposites there are: high and low, everything and nothing, stop and go. . . .and yes, “hello” and “goodbye.”

Goodbye is simply hello with no place left to go, as when the whistle blows and there is no time left on the clock. Grief resembles goodbye in so many ways; what is grief if not love that has no place to go? The word takes us places we would never go in a million years, nor would we wish to.

We are all of us like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s immortal tale in which she falls down a rabbit hole that takes her into a world we can scarcely imagine, one in which she bumps into surprising, often delightful, creatures. We know we’re eventually going to bump into goodbye and its requisite pain, which never leaves us unaffected and changes us forever.

In our Wonderland we will bump into things in the aftermath of saying goodbye, like the sensations which wash over us when we feel the aftershocks of an earthquake. Sometimes the creature we bump into is sorrow, or an empty feeling of loneliness; sometimes, not irreverently, we bump into an amazing sense of relief when we are freed from exhausting caregiving.

What an exhilarating word “hello” can be. It kicks down the door to an unimaginable, uncharted world of adventure and possibility: new love, new relationships, new journeys, new places to explore, new thrills of discovery. . .like falling down our own rabbit hole. Consider how many words describe it: joyous, arousing, gladdening, intoxicating, energizing, and alluring.

What an exasperating word “goodbye” can be. It slams shut every door that “hello” opens, and often marks the chilling end to relationships, to love, and sometimes to life itself. It has the explosive power to blast our surpassingly happy world to kingdom come. Consider how many words describe it: vexing, maddening, irksome, disturbing, tormenting, and frustrating.

So, why do we have such a difficult time saying such a simple word? Let me suggest four likely reasons.

Goodbye seems almost invariably to have pain attached to it, a searing awareness of the loss of someone precious. It’s the acute sense that ‘I’m losing someone who cannot come back and can never be replaced.’ Their loss leaves a gaping hole, an empty place in our heart that cannot be filled. No substitute ever made satisfies the longing, the unending, unstoppable ache, left by such a loss. Who has not seen the photo of a dove standing helplessly over the body of his lost mate? Or the shepherd dog who sleeps on the grave of his missing master and refuses to leave?

Second, goodbye rudely confronts us with our mortality, our frailty, our vulnerability; it whispers in our ear the words of John Donne we may wish not to hear, “The bell tolls for thee.” We’re faced with the harsh reality that we’re not going to live forever, that a day most certainly will come when the valediction we hear will be said to us. Those fresh footprints “on the sands of time” are ours.

In a single breath, one final heartbeat, the one we love steps right into eternity, leaving us, like a man standing on the tarmac as the plane leaves, with an unwelcome truth: we are stuck here on the planet with relationships that will forever remain unfinished. We can angrily protest: “Not yet! We weren’t done!” We feel our lives have been burglarized, our pockets picked. What we could have said and should have said, and did not say, what we could have done and should have done, and did not do, comes back to haunt us.

Hours, days, years. . .moments of sublime happiness, magnificent achievement, indescribable glory. . .all slip through our fingers. Trying to hold onto them is as futile as tightly gripping a handful of fine sand on a seashore.

In the movie Patton, George C. Scott concludes the story with a sobering reflection:

For over 1,000 years Roman conquerors returning from the wars

enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the parade came

trumpeters, and musicians and strange animals from the conquered

territories, together with carts laden with treasures and captured

armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphant chariot, the dazed

prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children

robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode trace horses.

A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown, and

whispering in his ear a solemn warning. . .that all glory is fleeting.

Third, “goodbye” is hard to say because it carries the image of death, of the loss of someone. It means the revisiting of earlier goodbyes that are forever indelible in our memories, said to other people whom we have loved more than life itself. We never say it to just one person, but rather to layer upon layer of farewells said to others important to us. It’s those other farewells that act on the stage of our memory. . .face after face of those we have loved and lost, names we cannot summon without emotion. Saying goodbye has a way of tormenting us by reopening wounds which never quite healed, so that at any given moment we can re-live those happy-turned-sad memories of others we still cherish.

And finally, a meaningful goodbye needs to be personalized and customized, but the words don’t seem to form when we most need them. Attempts to lighten the intensity of the moment run the high risk of being cheesy, tasteless, or downright awful, as in: “See you later, alligator,” or, “Catch you on the flip side.”

If the reader doubts saying goodbye is difficult, then why does one find dozens of synonyms for it and in many languages? Why is it so hard to find the perfect word that has the right meaning and sets the right tone? We want our final word to be like an after-dinner mint that leaves the right aftertaste. But how does one say goodbye when goodbye isn’t enough?

Our euphemisms to avoid saying farewell can be as inane as they are endless: “Hang in there.” “More power to you.” How we love to tiptoe around the awkward moment when it’s time to say farewell! Sometimes we combine hello and goodbye when we pass a person, as in, “Have a good one!”. The truth is there’s no one-size-fits-all, foolproof way to say it.

Goodbye is the price we pay when we say that first hello that leads to a relationship, because in every promising greeting the seeds of an inevitable farewell are already planted. These mostly wonderful things we call life and love will bring with them the sweet and bitter, the loving and losing, the hellos and goodbyes.

Tennyson, the most famous poet of England’s Victorian era, probably said it best in his In Memorium:

“. . .’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Would we tamper with our choice to love deeply despite the unavoidable risks? Probably not, not if we are wise. Not if we are fortunate enough to have tasted that depth of affection.

In the wonderful movie Shadowlands, C. S. Lewis is walking on a snow-packed path with his brother Warnie shortly after the death of his wife, Joy. Warnie asks Lewis about his decision to marry Joy: “Do you wish you’d chosen differently?”. Lewis cryptically responds, “No.”

The point seems clear: as heart-breaking as saying goodbye is, to have never said the hello that opened the door to an endearing relationship is infinitely worse.

Maybe “hello” and “goodbye” are meant to be the bookends of our lives. . .of relationships, of everything and everyone we value, of who we are and whose we are.

They certainly represent the bookends of the author’s life—the “hello” and “goodbye” that opened and closed the relationship with the love of his life.

“Hello” happened that fine spring day in 1962 in the hallway of Travis Avenue Baptist Church, Fort Worth.

I cannot imagine the tragedy of not saying “hello” to that classy, feisty, brown-eyed beauty named Helen who attended TCU. . .wearing that stunning form-fitting white dress that fit her form in a way I should not speak of. . .the short-sleeved one, the one with pretty polka dots of gentle colors: lavender, pink, yellow. But who pays attention to silly details like those, or to expressive eyes and an effortless smile in which I could lose myself—the math major who could slam-dunk abstract algebra but couldn’t balance a checkbook—the one whose elegant hand slipped so perfectly into mine?

Love came softly and quietly for us, a gentle Camelot-thing, without pyrotechnics and loud noises. But it came quickly and effortlessly and gained the force of a locomotive in an idyllic dream that overnight became 56 years.

“Goodbye” came as dawn broke that crisp Sunday morning just before Christmas 2019, in a room at Brookhaven in Norman, Oklahoma. Cancer had gotten a head start on us five months earlier, and we never had a chance to catch up; we were beaten before we started. The battle we waged was fast and fierce and deadly, and we lost. In our joy-filled years together H and I never found the bottom to our love, just as I have not found the bottom to my sorrow. I had no idea grief could dive so deeply.

Maybe we who want to be wholly devoted followers of Christ should imitate the woman who insisted she be buried with a fork in her hand. Asked why, she replied with a twinkle in her eye: ‘Because we haven’t had dessert yet!’

Life has sent me on this unwanted journey to figure out how to do life without Helen, to breathe without oxygen, to engage the pain and at the same time seize the joy and hope of Jesus’ solemn promise that some glad day there will be a blissful reunion. Dessert, if you will. . .

So, why this article?

It’s the author’s attempt, as a Christ-follower, to do battle with the pain of some of the goodbyes he, like everyone on our tiny planet, has had to say, to sort out the clashing emotions that accompany crippling loss.

For the Christian the word goodbye can be as full of life-giving hope as it is of unbearable pain, in the same strange way we laugh and cry at the same time. We can shed bitter tears and yet be filled with hope and promise. . .just like goodbye and hello.

Goodbye carries its own meaning because of what Christ said: “I will come again. . .I will see you again.” (I Thess. 4:13-18) For the Christian, goodbye is seen in the light of Christ’s resurrection, and the promised, soon-coming resurrection of all believers. . .so that it means parting only for a little while. We will soon meet again.

Goodbye. . .God be with you because I can’t be.

Goodbye. . .until I see you once more.

Goodbye. . .but only for a little while.

For many, including new or immature Christians, the separation from a loved one brings great difficulty. We are left with our heart in our hands, asking: what do I do now? How do I come to terms with my loss? Our heart and head can offer very different, sometimes confusing, and often contradictory answers. To what do I turn for help that helps?

Some men turn to reason, to try and figure it all out, to get a sensible answer to the staggering question: “Why?”. We all of us share a desperate need for things to just make sense, but often that question swallows us whole. Human reason is vital for our survival, serves us wonderfully, and does enormous good; but it always disappoints us in the end because it makes promises it cannot keep. No reason, no rational explanation ever offered, can slake the thirst of the human heart.

Some men erupt in rage. . .at God, at life, at others, at the innocent, and at self. Some lash out, “I will not speak to a God who allows such tragedies to happen!” Anger has many close relatives who gladly consume every ounce of our emotional energy: bitterness, cynicism, pessimism, withdrawal, denial, sarcasm, hostility, and sometimes cruelty. All these shrivel the soul, drive away the people who reach out to us, and alienate those whom we most need. When our fury is spent, we sadly self-destruct.

Where then can we turn? Is there a way out of the dark place I’m in?

The writer did not discover the way; the way discovered him. It is the way of the grateful heart, the thankful one. It is the discovery that gratitude, more than any one other thing, drives away anxiety, sorrow, confusion, and doubt. It is the thankful heart that is the happy heart; and happy hearts heal. Thankful for what?

for our families, for children and grands, for good friends and even Cousin Eddie
for the sheer joy of tasting love and friendship
that life is pure gift.
for hope, the one thing every Christian has that sadly no unbeliever has.
for God’s unconditional love, and that happy day we became a believer.
for God’s Word, the bottomless aquifer of truth and comfort from which we drink.
for Christian friends, those little colonies of heaven scattered all over the place.
for the privilege of growing old
. .. (supply your own)

On what is this “grateful heart” based if not an unshakeable belief in a sovereign God who is surpassingly gracious and compassionate, supremely good, kind, forgiving, and just.

We all of us are going to be saying “goodbye” to something or someone as long as we live. . .be it pets, homes, friends, dreams, and relationships no longer possible. But for the believer, goodbye is simply the prelude to the best hello we can ever imagine.

Thank you, Henry VanDyke, for uplifting us:

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her

white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She

is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at

length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and

sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, “There, she is gone.” Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull

and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able

to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished

size is in me—not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, ‘There, she is gone,’

there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to

take up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes!’

And that is death. . . . .”