On Saying Goodbye

21 Jul 2010 2 Comments

by Marian in musings, tarot

When I was a chipper chipe, which is what my dad calls small kidlets, I remember crying when it was time for him to leave for work. It was so tragic! Mornings with dad were the best thing ever. I would wake up to the sound  his rambling whistle tunes, full of trills — he could even whistle two notes at once! I do not know how. I would stand at the top  of  what seemed to me at the time to be a very large and daunting staircase with my wispy hair sticking up in patches, and call for him to carry me down even though I did know how to come down myself by crawling backwards. He would usually humor me, as he liked to do, and sing “good morning merry sunshine, how do you do today? You chase away the little stars and drive away the rain!” But I didn’t know what “merry” meant and I thought he meant Mary, like Marian reduced to the number of syllables that would fit into the tune. We would eat cornflakes and listen to NPR, and he would twist his hair — a fidgety thing that he did, which made it stand out in a horn which he would then comb down with water and spray with hair spray. I was fidgety too — I liked to do repetitive things like snap a spring pen open and closed over and over again, or tear post-it pads apart one by one, which he let me do because, as my mother said, I was spoiled.

But then inevitably came the time when it was over, our happy breakfast and singing song time. His hair was combed and his tie was tied, and I would not see him for like, forever, or all day which was the same thing to me.

Then mom and I would play peekaboo.

Today I said goodbye for the I-don’t-know-how-many’th time to my lover, who is moving to the East Coast for an internship. I have said goodbye and goodbye and goodbye and goodbye! I said goodbye to him every time he went home to his soon-to-be-ex-apartment in San Jose, and I also said goodbye to him in a pretty big way at the end of January when I decided to call off the girlfriend/boyfriend thing we had going on for eight months. Then, since he decided to start talking to me again last month I wished him well on his trip and said goodbye to him again, and then again on Friday night and again this morning. And that had better be enough, because now I am done. Finished!

I posted the death card (from the Deviant Moon Tarot) to illustrate this post because I think it’s morbidly funny — the smiling pregnant death mother stepping on the head of her pleading child. Maybe she is performing an act of kindness – maybe her child is asking to be killed. Maybe for these skeletezoid deathling creatures, death is just a big game of peekaboo. Hello, goodbye, it’s all the same. Say hello so that you can say goodbye, and say goodbye so that you can say hello. And that is really the thing, I think. The narrator of me doesn’t believe in the permanence/reality of death, goodbye, or separation. It’s just my character that gets all wrapped up in the drama of it. Realistically, though, it would be tiresome if we never said goodbye. I can’t imagine wanting to keep everyone all up in my face all the time. Bleh! Saying goodbye is great because it makes room for more and new stuff, just like killing babies makes room for new babies. Er…

So I wonder then, what is this, this flutter of the heart, this catch in my throat when I say goodbye sometimes? Is my inner three-year-old really stuck on this part of peekaboo, and not trusting that it’s all temporary? Is it a habit of thought, to go into the loss and separation thing? Or maybe I should just think of it as a reminder that I care, and leave it at that. Can’t be all daisies and chipmunks all the time, and what fun would life be if you can’t appreciate a little drama now and then.

And on that note, I will leave you with Barbra Streisand.

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