Beginnings remind me of goodbyes and endings because I’ve lived life long enough to know that—an inescapable cycle.
And my heart swells with every goodbye—the same as what I feel after reading a highly engaging long story—preparing a room to breathe before that final bid of farewell and an exchange of “I miss yous.”
Because no matter how hard one tries to hold onto a moment, it always slips through your hands; a smoke, a shadow.
That’s why, before I part ways with people, I already feel a kind of longing even before we go our separate ways, our separate lives. “I miss you already,” I tell them after we say goodbye. And we’d laugh about it as if we live for eternity.
The truth is, goodbyes make me sad because they are something my father taught me—about how uncertain our futures are. We won’t know if the same moment could be repeated, at least a variation, even if not the same way.
A goodbye is the first thing my father taught me and I always remember it because he died even before I learned what it is, waaaaay before I could say it. He died when I was a month old.
“I miss you already,” I keep telling my friends and my family because I already know what’s next.
And like a cycle, it repeats. . .
Beginnings remind me of goodbyes and endings.
jessa 