Death, Life and Goodbyes

With the passing of my father, the sudden and unexpected death of a past partner and the seasonal evolution from autumn to winter, I’ve been thinking a lot about death. Asking for whom the bell tolls? Though I’ve come to realize it’s not really death I’m thinking about, it’s life and saying goodbye.

The number of goodbyes in my life increasing with each new year as I move further into my fifties. With the exception of my mother and a few acquaintances, the adults I knew growing-up have passed. Joining my grandparents, their parents, who I said goodbye to as a child and a young adult.  

My siblings and I are now the next generation who will say goodbye. My nephews and nieces blossoming into amazing adults, some with their own children. The circle of life clear and evident, like the seasons that unfold before us with each rotation around the sun.

I’ve been fortunate, blessed even, that I had the opportunity to say goodbye to those I’ve deeply loved in my life. My father, my grandfather, even my cat. All of them teaching me about love in their own unique and special way. Even if we had one more final goodbye, they knew before they left this world how much I loved them.         

But that’s the crazy thing about life and love, it’s a puzzling paradox of connectivity.

Every goodbye is hello, it really is about perspective. Like the proverbial seed beneath the winters snow, every ending holds the potential for a new beginning. Even when it’s difficult to discern during our parting moments filled with grief, pain and sorrow. The promise of hello is always there if we allow ourselves to be open to it.

As I get older I know my life’s goodbyes, have the potential to overwhelm me. Bidding farewell to friends, family and even familiarity. A melancholy malaise.

There has been only one goodbye in my life I could never run away from and that’s with God. As much as I tried to avoid that relationship, “God was never going to give me up” to paraphrase an eighties pop song. God is never going to say goodbye, God never does. Not to me, not you, not to anyone.

God’s is with you during every goodbye and every hello in your life. Love is always about hello. God is never about goodbyes.

God is with us even when we say goodbye to this world and hello to what is next. Embrace your life’s goodbye’s but keep you heart open to hello. Love is about hello and goodbye and you are loved unconditionally by God.

Donald Harold Young