Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Goodbye is for everything, everyone.

In the end of everything, there must be goodbyes. I am counting the days to say goodbye to things that have been so familiar to me this past two years. And not just things, but off course, people too. For example, all the trams and their bell sound, train, pathways, streets, buildings, trees. Or some people from the early days, whom I couldn't be in contact with anymore for some classic reasons: busy. Or people from the second period, it is the distance that hindered me to meet them. For the next and the last ones, contacts are still pretty well maintained.

Soon I should say goodbye to everything, everyone, here.

I have learned to manage the bad feeling of saying goodbye since I were a small kid. When the cats and the dogs you loved were gone for various reason, you just have to continue your life. I mean, you would wake up in the morning, realizing that you wouldn't hear their voices again, or see them again, not even the tail or the grin you have been familiar with. They've just gone. Don't exist anymore in your sights. But then you have school lessons to think of, other friends to play with, your papers and pencil colors to play with, problems to solve, etc. Always there is something else come after that, that you need to wok it out. Therefore the goodbye is bearable, and naturally, absorbed in time. Some wisemen say, 'time heals', and I can't agree more.

Or, when brothers and sisters and me myself must be separated for studying in other island. Either they left you, or you left them, is as difficult to bear. But then days come and go. You learned to manage the sense of loss in the first days or weks. But then you started to step the ground realistically: there's not so much you can do about it: they left, you left, what can you do about these facts? Only one: focusing on things forward, and not backward.

That is, consequently bring me again to what I called the importance of perspective, as I mentioned earlier in previous post about why I enjoy elevations. I recall everytime I move from one city to another, from one place to another, the hardest and the most important moments are when the plane is taking off and starting to fly. When I see the city from such elevation. I usually notice a building, or paddyfield, or sea, or trees I recognized. They are getting smaller..and smaller..and smaller..until they vanished from my sights. Then the stewardees start to announce about the elevation, the meals, the entertainment, etc. Then I start to think about the new place I will come to and what I should do. Then I feel better. Hardly there is regret about what have been left behind. Because I believe time cannot be moved backward. It is moving forward. And whatever hard I cry or regret, nothing will ever ever change.

When someone dies, it is the hardest thing to manage. Because, you know, when they're dead, it means you will never see them again in the real life. Death is a no no separator. No one can jump over the barrier between the deaths and the alives, unless God Himself. So when you look at the face of the loved one for the last time, it is really really hard to manage the feeling that you'll never be able to look them again that way in this life. Thanks God, His promise, is the only thing I can hold on to in this situation: that all of us will meet again in the land, a better land than this Earth. It is in His land, it is in His House, the eternal house for our spirits where there is no more goodbye, where there is no more sorrow, where there is no more tears, where there is no more deaths, where there is no more concept of 'time' as we know.

Then I suddenly remember this song that has strengthen us so much when we had to say goodbye forever to my father:


There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blessed;
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

To our bountiful Father above,
We will offer our tribute of praise
For the glorious gift of His love
And the blessings that hallow our days.

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore

Words: Sanford F. Bennett
Music: Joseph P. Webster

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