Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Good-Bye Girl


July was the month of good-byes and each one took a piece of me with it as it left.

The first is my friend Rachel did move away to Texas as I predicted. We spent a night packing, drinking wine and having a good evening together. Even while we packed her grandmother’s china we did not mention us parting. We ignored the lone star of Texas hovering over us. We did not cry until I left, until I had to let her go on to the next stage in life and I into mine, both on our own.

The second good-bye came when I took my grandmother’s ashes to bury them in the ground with her brother. During her life my grandmother was my biggest fan, my confidante and my mentor. She taught me about loving life, giving back more than you took and to remember what is important to me. I promised her I would bury her with the only family that did not reject her; the brother that loved her and took care of her when she was little. In July I finally had the courage to let her go and made good on that promise. Bringing her out to a graveyard 500 miles from my home felt like more of a good-bye than when she died. Having her ashes I could still hold her close, I could include her in the goings on in the house, she was still a part of my life. Putting her in the ground in a place I will probably never see again tore the covering off of the grief I’ve held in check. I didn’t want to say good-bye again, but I made a promise and it was the last loving thing I could do for her.

The third is the strangest. I said good-bye to a piece of my life that no longer should have carried any weight, but it did. I emptied out a box filled with paperwork from my divorce 16 years ago. Buried in the back of a shed were the legal documents relating to child custody, all of my personal journals, notes and other assorted items reflecting me and my thoughts for that tumultuous part of my life. I read the letters I wrote, but never mailed, so deeply filled with anger and pain. All of those items I kept to ensure my little girl would never be taken from me I could finally release. My baby is turning 18 in two weeks and the threat is gone yet I was reluctant to let them go. For so long I held on to those papers like an anchor keeping me from crashing against the rocks and even though they no longer mattered the familiar fear washed over me. My hand held them over the recycling bin only to draw them back. I read them again and again. Ever a memory keeper I wasn’t entirely convinced they needed purging or was that just an excuse? The person in the words no longer exists, that life no longer exists and my little girl is a fiercely independent woman I no longer need to worry about losing. I had to make a choice: stay tied to a past so blackened with misery or let go of the rope and left the waves take me to better shores. I chose to float.