If there is anything I’ve done a lot in my lifetime it’s letting go… And it’s HARD.
My first recollection of letting go was my grandfather’s passing when I was in the second grade. I was close to my Zaida (grandfather) and loved when he’d show up singing The Ice Cream song (“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream”) after dinner and drive us across town to his favourite ice cream parlour for a treat. He was the life of the party always and when he died suddenly, I was devastated. But what 2nd grader knows how to mourn? So, I really didn’t ever completely “let go” of my Zaida. I imagined him as a little figurine sitting on my shoulder, always looking out for me. And to this day, I still feel his presence in the same way I did as a child.
I spent my 10th grade year in Israel on a kibbutz, studying with other 10th graders from around the globe. We lived and worked on Kibbutz together for a year, at the tender and very impressionable age of 15 & 16 without our families. We bonded over shared experiences and being each other’s support systems through all the adventures of the year. When it came time to disband the group and make our respective ways home, the letting go was again, devastating. How could I leave my brothers and sisters? My roommate and I were closer than I’d ever been to my sister. To this day she and I remain the closest of friends. That letting go almost numbed me completely to goodbyes. They were too hard, so I vowed not to again get so attached that a goodbye would be hard. Ah… the infinite wisdom of a 16-year-old thinking that I might be able to shut down human connection!
Over the years I’ve had to say many a goodbye of course. Goodbye to high-school & college years …. Goodbye to the city I grew up in when I moved to another province…. Goodbye to lost friends and family members who were taken too early… goodbye to towns and homes I lived in… goodbye to miscarried babies… goodbye to a first marriage that wasn’t meant to be… goodbye to a beautiful pet who was killed at the tender age of 3 by a car… goodbye to workmates and companies through turbulent times of layoffs… goodbye to the city I so loved living in to move back to my hometown… goodbye to lifelong friends who slipped away… goodbye to relationships that have shifted and caused distance that wasn’t there before, and the harshest goodbye of all – the one when my Mom passed away a couple of years ago.
Parenthood is full of goodbyes as we watch our children’s transitions over time. The first day at school and that letting go… the day they get their driver’s license and you give them the car solo … the day they leave home for college… the day they find their partner in life and begin to navigate their own lives with in-laws and children of their own.
This favourite Khalil Gibran poem (from The Prophet) on children helped my perspective through those parental g’byes.:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Here’s what I know for a fact. The goodbyes won’t end… I have an 8-year-old Golden Retriever who I will outlive… my dad is almost 90, so I anticipate that goodbye to come. And of course, there will be more.
“How, ever you still standing?!”, I often get asked.
Lessons Learned:
Feel ALL the feels with each goodbye – the deep sadness (and sometimes an anger) over the loss, the anxiety that accompanies the change in status resulting from the loss, the fear of what life will be like in the aftermath of the loss. But don’t dwell in those emotions. Learn how to compartmentalize over time. Give yourself permission to feel all the feels, but then recognize the need to always put one foot in front of another and keep pushing forward.
Letting go is often accompanied by a vast emptiness. One needs to shift and allow space for the emptiness to be filled with other things. There is a desire to hold onto what was, and keep holding that empty space as the memory. But that leaves little room for joy.
Biggest Lesson Learned:
Ensure you have created balance in your life (My recipe includes a balance between Family, Health, Work, Play & Spirit – a belief in something bigger than oneself).
When there is loss in one area, allow other aspects of your life to gently come in and figure more prominently.
It will help ease the pain of whatever you need to let go of and allow space for joy to remain/return.
Letting go is hard but it does NOT have to be debilitating.