Saturday, December 08, 2007

goodbye?

How do you say goodbye to someone you were just starting to get to know? Does "I will miss you," even mean anything? Are these the hardest or easiest goodbyes? Hard because there's no certainty that a friendship will continue, hard because you're saying goodbye not just to a person, but to potential. Easy because their presence in your life was brief enough to be easily filled once its gone.

So, should you even say goodbye? Maybe "good luck" would be more appropriate, but those two simple words completely ignore what is being lost, even when you don't completely know what you're losing.

4 comments:

Martha Elaine Belden said...

i'm so sorry you are even having to ask these questions. good bye is such a hard thing for me to say.

Ben said...

Lord knows I've wrestled with this one and failed entirely to come up with any sort of answer.

"Goodbye" is underrated, though, I think. It started off, after all, as "God be with you [until we meet again]."

German and French kept the "until we meet again" (auf Wiedersehen and au revoir, respectively), and English and Spanish kept the "God be with you" as "goodbye" and adiĆ³s.

Not such a bad way to part.

crackers and cheese said...

Thanks for your empathy and insight :) BTW, it's finals week, and I'm still enjoying reading everyone's blogs, I just haven't taken the time to comment yet.

The Pensive Poet said...

this is poetic.

i love how inuit has no word for goodbye.