​NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
No one says goodbye anymore like we used to. The only real goodbye is at death. Time and distance have different destinations. In many ways, they do not exist.      Robert Barr
 
Of the many changes that have swept through the human family, I imagine the one that has had the most profound impact has been the redefinition of what it means to say “goodbye.”  While it is true that many languages use an aspirational greeting for departure (the French say au revoir, “until we see again”, Hebrew’s l’hitra’ot means “to see each other again”), the fact is that for most of human history, saying a true goodbye was likely a final separation.  I don’t mean the kind of goodbye you say when leaving a dinner party or going home from a day’s work.  I mean I’m-moving-to-another-city goodbye, or I’m-off-to-college goodbye, or I’m-going-to-explore-a-route-to-India goodbye.  When people took leave of loved ones and familiar faces, it was more often than not the last time they would see each other.
 
I learned this truth from Bob Barr (NOT the Member of Congress – though he tried!), who has thought a lot about the subject.  He is a humanistic rabbi whose congregation was based in the internet long before the pandemic made that a usual thing.  In today’s world, no goodbye is permanent except for death.  My nephew moved from Chicago to Jerusalem and, but for covid restrictions, spends time with his parents every few months.  He sees them every few days on his mobile phone.  His kids bake with my sister-in-law on tablets in each of their kitchens.  That level of contact was prohibitively expensive in my lifetime and next to impossible a century ago.  And while Facetime is not a hug, the loss and longing would have been a fact of everyday life before that.
 
What does it mean to lose the meaning of goodbye?  First of all, it makes us noncomprehending of the meaning of the word.  I don’t mean its origins; I mean its permanence.  When we say goodbye today, we put no more stock in it than in seeing Wile E. Coyote flattened by an Acme anvil.  That’s not say we do not feel sad when we are separated, but we reassure ourselves and each other of the temporary nature of “goodbye.”
 
I also think it changes our understanding of death.  We have no practice in loss.  Its arrival comes as much more of a shock to the system than we understand.  I don’t think people in earlier times were any less sad when a death occurred.  Perhaps they were a little more philosophical about it.  But they had practice with its permanence and responded to its familiarity.
 
Today we rush from death, almost with alacrity.  I am, of course, most familiar with Jewish tradition, which has a lengthy and elaborate set of rituals to ease people into and out of consuming grief.  The length of ritualized mourning – seven days of separation from everyday life, a full month (for a parent, a full year) of thrice-daily prayers of remembrance and affirmation, refraining from social pleasures, and marking annual remembrances – is viewed as a burden rather than a process of honoring the dead and healing the survivor.  Death is being denied, not as a fact, but as a force.
 
The genuine blessings of global and instantaneous communications and rapid travel in affordable conveyances have enabled so much that is good and desirable in our world.  In many ways, the technology of connection has preserved our lives during the restrictions of a viral virus.  Our celebration of and dependence on transport has never been more apparent than in its slowdown.  I would never advocate for turning back the clock, digital or analog, on these advancements.
 
Rather, I hope we can find a way to learn with intention what our not-so-distant ancestors learned by increment: the loss of people near and dear to us is inevitable.  The ability to say goodbye and adjust to a minute hope of reunion is practice for the ultimate leave-taking.  Some people hope to reconnect in a realm beyond the physical, but even the deepest believer in the afterlife knows that there is a qualitative difference between this world and any world-to-come.
 
Barr correctly observes that time and distance almost no longer exist for the human family.  That means they are no longer the proving grounds for separation, and we are unprepared -- not intellectually, but viscerally – to let go.  Until there is no choice in the matter, we never can say goodbye.

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