Letting Go

I never got to say goodbye to my father. One moment he was, and then he was not, in the space of time it took to write those words. And that event, it seems, was only important to me, for the world didn't even note his passing.

"Here is wisdom: for he that increaseth knwoledge, increaseth sorrow." You probably don't recognize that; if not, go read Ecclesiastes. It's the most beautiful book in the Bible, and a rather surprising inclusion. It is, after all, far from a hopeful work. But it resonates with me on a level that is difficult to explain, for it encapsulates the last lesson my father ever taught me. Whatever comes after this life is neither Heaven nor Hell, but the eternal silence of the grave.

Perhaps that is why there is such a nihilistic streak to my soul, or maybe it's just the frustration of the warrior-poet with no war to fight. Born of haunted blood from a haunted land, the ghosts of my Irish forebears dog my steps and plague my dreams. Show me a lost cause and I'll show you an Irishman in the thick of it, swinging away until the bitter end. When the British took away our own country, we went off and built another, yet never lost that ache in the soul unique to us. An Irishman may be predisposed by blood to never say goodbye, I don't know. But it does seem to be a theme in my life.

There was a girl once, who came into my life just when I needed her the most, who saved me from myself. I never got to say goodbye to her, when she left my life just as suddenly as she had appeared. Moments in time, almost three years of them, preserved forever in memory but never to be again. Whoever said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all was an ass. Better by far to be numb than to live with the exquisite ache of loss, that void that can never be filled.

It's been almost twenty-five years since I last saw my best friend. We didn't part with a goodbye, but with a "see you later," never guessing that later actually meant forever. He saved my life once, too, and how do you repay a debt like that? One moment he, too, was here, and the next he was lost to time and life, a fading whisper in the wind, a ghost of a memory.

A friend of mine died a while ago in the cold, bitter mountains of a distant, bitter land, and the world didn't notice his passing, either. He traveled a long way to die, so it seemed only fitting that I travel a long way to say goodbye. But it was far too late for words, and all I was left with was the crushing knowledge that I should have been there for him, but I was not. The dead have wisdom for us, but we don't want to listen.

I never got to say goodbye to my mother who, like my father, was and then was not. I worked for several years to keep her alive, and the last words I had with her were spoken in anger. I loved her, but I couldn't say it, and I will bear both those burdens on my soul until the day that I, too, am no more. Time wounds all heels, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

In one form or another, I spent my entire adult life helping people, but when I was the one who needed help, I found out just how alone I really was. Poetic justice, I suppose, for a life not worth living. I've known my entire life what I was running from, but never where I was running to, and in the end discovered I was in a head-long rush to nowhere. There's some irony for you.

Letting go is the hardest thing in the world to do, for in a very real sense it means saying goodbye to the things that make you you. The comfort of an immutable past is seductive, safe, but holding on to it blinds you to the future. I can't change my past, yet perhaps I can finally say goodbye to it, for the first time in my life. The man I was is dead, and I'm not sure yet if I'll mourn that fact or not. It may be too late, but perhaps now I can be the man I should have been.