An Ode to Leave-Taking

If you forget me

I want you to know one thing
you know how this is
if I look at the crystal moon
at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window,
If I touch near the fire the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log.
Everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals, or little boats
that sail towards those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well now, if little by little you stop loving me,
I shall stop loving you, little by little.
If suddenly you forget me, do not look for me
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think at long and mad the wind banners that passes through my life
and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots,
remember than on that day, at that hour I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off to seek another land.
But if each day each hour
you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness.
If each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love,
ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda (The Captain’s Verses)

How does one begin to say goodbye? One by one you make the rounds, one by one you begin the process of separating from those you have grown to love, to treasure. Can relationships end neatly, unmessy, without entanglements? What of the deep-rooted connections that has defined you, connections that has become vital to you very existence? It is often with poignant, poetic beauty that we have described the act of leave-taking, set against a backdrop of visually-stunning sceneries with a bravura of violent colors seeped into a haze of maudlin sentimentality, with an elegant tear or two falling seemingly unnoticed. But let me tell you something. Goodbyes can be hell. Not just in the hysterical, holding-on-with-a-death-grip kind of way, but in ways that are often devastating and life-changing. We emerge less ourselves. We come out, if we come out at all, profoundly altered.

How does one begin to say goodbye? Does saying goodbye mean forgetting? But what of memories both moving and endearing, where a trip back to those moments is like a tall, cold, sweet drink in the scorching sun. Should we learn to do without these remembrances that come in tides that well up within us, leaving us breathless, less sure of ourselves, less unhappy? Memories, in the end, are all we have. Each moment a page forever etched with gestures, looks, tastes (although they say we have no memory of taste, so that each flavor comes to us fresh, distinct), textures, sound.

How does one begin to say goodbye, when even the mundane, everyday things you have gotten used to will forever be wiped away? Phone calls, inane conversations, laughter, quiet moments – all these must now be left behind. Somehow you know life will go on – it does. It must. There’ll be other phone calls, there’ll be other inane conversations, and there’ll be other people to meet, to get to know, new friends to laugh with. There’ll be other friends to make with which one can share quiet moments, but somehow you couldn’t imagine it. Somehow you couldn’t concieve that it would ever be possible.

Words will fail. Promises are, at best, lies – consolations to keep the heart from shattering to pieces as to be beyond repair. Leave-takings will always be a breach, some sort of betrayal, but it will not be the only time we will feel the rupture and the pain. There will be goodbyes, and no matter how many times we will go through it, the hurt will not abate. Everytime we experience each agony of separation it is as if we experience it for the first time.