There was a death in my extended family. This one a thousand miles away. He lived a long life, and had just about anything any man could want in his life. It was his time to pass on and he did. There is not a lot else to say about him.
There is an understanding with them, and those in his position, or at least it seems. We both know that this time when we see each other may be the last. When we last said goodbye we both knew it would likely be the last time we may ever speak, hug, or shake hands. In situations like this when we live so far apart, usually on the last hours of visiting, there comes a unspoken acknowledgment that the next time I see one of them it may as they lay in their coffin.
I don’t know if these last hours of every visit become more real, take on more meaning or just happen on a more mature level. Maybe it is all these things happening together. If anything is between us or there is anything that needs to be said, it has to be said in those last few hours. After that, as is the situation now, anything being said is a one way conversation.
My end of the conversation has always been quite open. In any conversation there are always levels of closeness that we can approach. Usually in those last time I may see you conversations, we end up trading feelings over our lives and about each other. Perhaps the conversation is a little stylized, or formal, but it seems everything that can be said, is said.
I do not know how I will be when I am one the one who will be leaving first, but the generation of those going now in my family are tough people. They had a hard childhood, and they had a hard life, even when life was easy, it is hard for them. They did not have a lot of the support systems we enjoy. They are not comfortable with their feelings, much of the time unless those feelings are in the realm of anger. Anger was always the easiest feeling for them to express. I think if someone was not initiated into their world, would not know, that many times anger is their highest expression of love for one another. It was all they have, or all they can comfortably express.
Conversations are usually pretty straight forward. They will say something to make me know they may never see me again. I say something acknowledging that I too know I may never see them again alive. Then they something about something in their life, and how I must have felt about it. That is the catch in the conversation. It puts both our feelings at a time and place of something that happened probably years earlier. My answer for whatever they have brought up as an example, is my expression of how I really feel about them, their life, and I how I feel about how they lived their life.
This repeats usually two or three times, each time a different event of the time we spent a part of our lives together. I get to live in their life for those seconds, and they are giving me an opportunity to let hem know how I really feel about how they lived their life. Usually they soften up for a few minutes, and remind me of special times they remember about me, which is their way of letting me know how they really feel, as if I didn’t know already.
That is usually all there is, as there is not much more to be said. Everything is right between us, and we both know that if we never see each other again, that it is okay. We each have said our piece. I bring my bags out to the car, say my final goodbyes, hug them goodbye, and head down the street.
Usually up until now I see them again. But as in all things, that time passes, and these days it seems saying goodbye is really saying goodbye.
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