Forgetting farewell

I was just catching up on some back issues of the "newspaper" (seems like a better word would be the “newsdigitalrendition,” since it’s not paper at all) and came across a column by Frank Bruni. The title intrigued me, “Time, Distance and Clarity,” and the tagline, “Revisiting the past with a renewed sense of appreciation.”

This started me thinking. As I have aged, I’ve often thought about how experiences disappeared in my rearview mirror while I wasn't paying attention. I realize that I didn't think to bid them farewell. Sort of like failing to say goodbye to a friend, thank them for a lovely time. When I left these experiences behind, I didn’t even reflect on the likelihood that I wouldn’t be back. I guess it was that sense of perpetual life, perpetual youth that catches most of us in our young, invulnerable years—at least it certainly caught me. Whatever the reason, I walked away without noticing that I wouldn’t be returning, and I didn't say goodbye. 

As time and age have slipped into my days, so many experiences I took for granted simply aren’t possible any more. Like backpacking to a remote mountain lake. Of course, half of the lakes that were a full-day hike with a heavy pack before are now a short stroll in flip-flops from a paved parking lot. I could go there, but it wouldn’t be going in the same way and it wouldn’t be there at all. To quote GertrudeStein, “There is no there there.”* Metaphorically, that backpack trip stands for many things: late night conversations with friends that left me invigorated instead of exhausted, bike trips where the dawn and I were greeted by a sea of columbines on a mountain pass, the thrill of a being brand new to my career, the certainty that all medical problems would be healed and I would be, as they say, “good as new.” The simple confidence that I had decades ahead.

All of those “theres” are simply not there now.

This is not at all a morose feeling. I’m not bemoaning these changes. I’m simply aware that didn’t think to say goodbye. I missed an opportunity as I left these experiences behind, oblivious to the finality of it.

 

I’m not sure what I would have done differently if I had realized that I would regret this oversight. Maybe I would have stopped before they vanished to take in the sights, the smells, the air, the sounds of the place. Maybe whisper “goodbye” to the experience, thank it for sharing time with me. Maybe I would have sat on that crest a little longer, looked over that lake one more time, taken an on-my-knees look at one more alpine forget-me-not. Maybe I would have invited a friend for one more all-night philosophy session while we still had time and energy, stopped to be grateful to that early-career thrill for welcoming me to adulthood, thanked my healthy body for all it did for me before it wore out.

 

Maybe I would have glanced in that rearview mirror as I left and smiled. 

 

This sense of having missed the farewell moment doesn’t feel sad. It's sometimes accompanied  by a touch of melancholy—which isn’t a bad feeling at all, at least for me.

So, as I was musing on these things, the title of a book came to mind: “Time and the River Flowing.” It’s a phrase I often think of when I’m contemplating how time moves on, changing the landscape, changing us. Slowly, so we don’t exactly know it’s happened. This experience I’m trying to describe is simply noticing one stream of the flow of aging.

 

Some things are just gone. And I wish I'd known to say goodbye. 

 

 

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* Stein was referring to her childhood home, which she went to visit only to discover that it was no longer there. Perfect.