Please Stay

How do you say goodbye?  It's not painful when you know you will see that person again; it's just a little pinch to the heart.  It burns inside of you when you realize that it's likely a longstanding separation.  It lingers and aches when you know you will never see that person again.  Saying farewell is admitting that you are about to lose someone or something that is important.  Hence the difficulty that many of us have with monumental changes in our lives.
The Year of Magical Thinking is an outstanding example of the difficulty of accepting loss.  Anyone who has experienced the loss of a beloved person can identify with the author's expectation of seeing that individual occupying their usual place at the table or couch.  Accepting that the person is gone forever, is another loss.  Blue Nights is a different book of loss.  This is the anger. The inability to believe that a young person could be taken away.  Joan Didion shares the loss of her daughter and begins the process of acceptance while reminding us that the inevitable continuation of living our lives does not mean forgetting about what we've lost.
Beth Howard's book, Making Piece, about the loss of her young husband is a study in guilt.  Throughout their short married life, they experienced long periods of separation due to his employment and her unwillingness to move or live abroad.  On the day of his death, her husband was on the way to the lawyer's office to sign their divorce papers.  This was the second time they had attempted to go through the process.  Tragically, he died of a heart attack prior to signing the papers.  The author is convinced that she caused the death of her young husband.  She works through her grief and guilt by taking her hobby of making pie and sharing the love of that experience with others.





Goodbye is loss and starting anew.  Smashed by Koren Zailkckas, chronicles the author's struggles with the seductive power of alcohol which had been her social crutch for years.  She will have to give up the one thing she thinks she loves in order to connect with the real world.  In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls tells her tragic story through the rose tinted glasses of childhood.  Life is an unpredictable adventure with her eccentric parents.  As an adult, she comes to realize that she must separate from her parents to find happiness and stability.  Nicholas Sparks' Three Weeks With My Brother is a window into the heart and soul of brotherly love.  Though they are on the travel adventure of a lifetime, the brothers spend time sharing the joys and woes of their childhood memories and mourning the death of their beloved sister.
As we move from summer to fall, perhaps now is the best time to pick up a "goodbye book".  Fall in Wisconsin is a lovely time of year.  We live for the Packers and the local football teams.  The foliage entices visitors to drive "up north".  We put away our boats, docks and swimsuits and unpack our winter coats, snowmobiles, snow blowers, and skis.  The kids head off to school, and mourn the end of their freedom.  We live in a state of quiet anticipation while we watch everything slowly go still and dormant around us.  Summer will return but unlike the reliability of the seasons, our lives may take drastic turns and we are left wondering how long we will be saying our goodbyes before we are able to move on.