The Memories of Goodbyes

I'm the selfish one, I'm not meant to be the one who says goodbye.

I remember the first time I remember saying goodbye. I was three, and it was Grandpa. I remember being sad because Dad was sad even though I hadn't known my grandpa that well and have very few memories of him. Besides, I was told I had another grandpa, so I figured there wasn't any reason to be so sad since there was a backup. I've come a long way from that little girl, and I've learned a thing or two about goodbyes.

Just like almost everything else in life, saying goodbye has different seasons. There are the warm and sunny ones, promising new possibilities. There are the autumns, the goodbyes that mark the transformations of friendships into deeper, richer tones of colour. There are the cold, wintry ones. There are those ones that leave you with a pang, leave you wanting, hoping that summer comes early. And there are those ones you’re never given the chance to say… I’ve had so many seasons, a whole lot of them, and yes, I sure have learned a great deal.

There was the season when I was always watching people leave. Well, that thing called life happened and I wove goodbye to one member of my family after the other. I didn't mind because by then, I'd been smart enough to learn how to live in my head and not mind having my own company. I guess I grew up a lot in those years, and weirdly, they are some of the really best ones of my life. I learned a few hard lessons then, learned a few deep truths about myself and I can say those were my defining years. I remember saying goodbye to my best friend in JSS3 and how we swore to be BFFs forever, but we never quite got around to it. Life again, I guess. I once asked a friend (as he was leaving, of course) why I was always saying goodbye. He told me, " This isn't goodbye, it’s see you later." Sweetheart that he was, he either really believed that, or he was just trying to protect my naïve heart from harsh reality. One thing I've come to realize is this: goodbyes are always goodbyes, and most times, they are forever. People always leave. That was Peyton Sawyer’s line in One Tree Hill, and I quite agree with her. Whether they want to or plan to, whether they tell you or just slink off, whether they keep their promises to be back or not, people leave, and I kept wondering when it would be my turn to leave. Even Brownie, one of the numerous pets Dad kept while we were growing up, did. Sometimes, thinking back over the years, I feel quite like I'm standing on a platform at King's Cross, and the crowd is bustling around me, coming and going. I feel like the solitary still object in a time-lapse clip. People come, and people go. It's the circle of life, and I sometimes feel like a confused girl on that crowded platform, wondering if I should be going somewhere, too, wondering where I should be going.

And then came that season when I learned just the sort of coward I was...I didn't get to say goodbye to Detayo before she left, and sometimes, even now, it still hits me like a blow, and I’m left with my head reeling, wondering what happened. I'll never be able to put the shock, the horror, the unreality of it all, the numbness, the piercing pain, the anger, the rage, the disbelief, the guilt, the raw fear of what you don't even know, the incredulity, the deep-seated sorrow, the loss, all of it into words. I know that was when this coward was born. That was the first time death came calling real close to home and I knew I couldn't do it again, I knew I didn't have it in me to go through that again cos really, you never fully recover from a goodbye and each time leaves you just a tad more vulnerable than the last. I learned to be selfish cos that's how best I know to survive. I've become the selfish one cos I failed at dealing with grief. I've put up the walls of indifference because I am the weakling who does not know how to be generous with grief; I take it all in, in full dozes, hoarding it all to myself. I'm quite like Humpty, who never quite gets put together again. So I decided never to know grief, never to say goodbye. Let someone else say the farewells, pick up the pieces, try to make them heal up in the right places. Let someone else live with that hole that never gets filled, relive sweet memories with the bitter taste of longing and wanting in their mouth. Yes, let someone else deal with it, someone else stronger, not a coward like me...

Alas, there have been many more after that: goodbyes at airports and train stations, goodbyes during the calls that never came, the ones that came in a lousy Skype message, the ones at the cemeteries...I said a lot of them this year, even though I swore to be the selfish one, even though I figured those doing the leaving had it easier. You don't know nothing about a broken heart if you're doing the breaking, you don't know squat about living without someone if you're doing the dying.  I've lost too many people along the way, and now I'm just wondering when the tables turned on my resolution, and I'm the one left to be the not-coward, picking up the pieces. I really wish there was a recipe for dealing with the loss of a loved one, just like I wish one could bottle happiness along with the jam.

Needless to say, I hate goodbyes, and I guess that for you to hate goodbyes, that must mean you love someone or something enough to not want to say goodbye to them. I said too many this year, especially the ones that really mattered, to loved ones who have passed on. Well, maybe it's not such a bad thing that with your passing, you took a part of me with you cause that means this cowardly heart loved you enough to be incomplete without you and that way, you'll always have your place in it, and maybe, just maybe my friend was right, and this isn't goodbye...

 ...with my love,

Fadeke Junaid, Mariam Adio, Uncle Derin, Gran (btw, I don't have another one stashed away somewhere), Dupe Wickliffe Lajubutu