March 22nd, 2017 – Last Day

The toughest part of a goodbye isn’t the separation or the gaping echo resounding in the uninhabited place a person once commanded.  It isn’t a memory triggered or a familiar song played.  It is the unknown.  It is navigating this new unchartered ocean into which your once sturdy vessel has been unwittingly blown off course. We all know, or at least we have to keep telling ourselves, that we have said goodbye before and have succeeded, have survived and eventually have thrived. So we breathe, after the tumultuous rising and falling waves have subsided, lost their edge, and now coelesced to an almost still reverberation of the Earth’s gravitational dance with it’s central star.    We breathe and we look out, not to the endless sea surrounding us, void of its once familiar landmarks and guiding stars, but instead we look forward toward that star. The one and only guide whose point is always fixed and unchanging.  We may even chance to stand at the very bow of the boat and step out, duly knowing that we  will fall straight down but will not be lost in the waters endless depths. We will not be submerged long.  We will rise as we have always done.  And, if we release our control a little more, we may even rise above, stepping out onto the glassy surface of a new morning’s ocean.  We may begin walking a new journey, never fathomed.  

So goodbye.  Thank you for this chance, this opportunity to step out and allow the unknown to become not my anxiety but my annexation.  Goodbye.