No one is exempt from loss. We experience loss with the knowledge of an imminent end to our relationships, friendships, and lives. We watch our grandparents and parents slowly deteriorate – aware of our own eventual deterioration and mortality – and slowly, as time passes, we begin saying goodbye. We prepare.
It is the same for relationships. The friendship that is less stable over time, with greater investment and a lover who appears more distant and distracted. Eventually, there’s a loss in intimacy, companionship and trust. Although it is painful, these inevitable events can be avoided. It takes a lot of preparation and ritualistic self-preservation to be able say “goodbye”.
There are other times, far fewer in life if you are lucky, where there is no slow degradation, of the person or of a relationship’s promises. In an instant, everything and everyone is gone. A cold, slow, agonizing instant. This could be due to suicide, accident or sudden medical emergencies. Yet we also lose people like this in life, relationships that have lasted for years suddenly interrupted by ghosting – which is hardly limited to hook-up apps.
It ends abruptly when the lover leaves. A friend of many decades suddenly stops responding to all communications. There isn’t the sting of death, but the inability to say goodbye in all of these circumstances leaves an open wound of heartbreak that never heals without some lasting damage, some psychic scar on our hearts and minds.
This is because we are removing this trust, our relationship, from all parts of ourselves. This isn’t the slow, meticulous, and surgical process of a long goodbye, anchored by time and understanding. This is the quick, violent amputation of someone who has become a piece of us, and the remaining wound is jagged, slow to heal, and forever a haunting reminder – a reminder of what we might have done wrong, what we might have said, or whether anything could have been done to preserve the relationship. We will never stop asking these questions.
The usual parameters of how we lose our long-term and fast versions have changed during the pandemic. This has created new, and more severe, norms in our lives, and in our hearts. The pandemic has given families new reasons to leave their children, parents and siblings. Medical moralizing suddenly makes it possible to sacrifice relationships. All relationships are in decline: friendships and romantic.
Worse, what often would have been a slow death, a death far off in time, or one where there could be a presence – essential to the healing and processing of grief – for the dying as well as those who love the dying, has been denied. It could be due to the disease or something worse. The public health system and the people responsible for it have been hampered. Many of these officials had to ban the visits of their loved ones who were dying, as they are often constrained by one-sided protocols. The dying were not allowed to spend their last moments with the ones they loved, to provide the comfort they need and to allow them to share the love and closure they feel they want to others who are grieving.
If this wasn’t horror enough, we denied the grieving even more. The dead not only died without dignity; they were buried without it – oftentimes while those imposing such devastating restrictions on those in grave sorrow played and flaunted their own rules.
We’ve prevented the need to say goodbye. Goodbyes give us comfort and peace, which help us to heal. After the loss of a loved one or relationship is over, goodbyes can leave behind memories that we can enjoy with some contentment. The memories will be forever stained by the effects of these unexpected losses.
With a mix of guilt and anger, we will forever remember our lost grandparents or parents. The dropped friendship, even, remaining with us as we wonder what could have broken such a strong bond without explanation, how we’ve lost something so dear and precious to us.
That’s why, as we go into the New Year, I am imploring you to look forward with an understanding of how much we each need goodbyes. These goodbyes are essential in both life and death. We can still give them to other people while we’re alive. If a relationship has to end as it does naturally, you can still love them enough or recall the feelings that you shared with them once. You can give that person the gift of closure and of closure. A friendship that will one day bring joy. There have been so many goodbyes. Let’s strive to not take them away from anyone else.
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