I have always hated airports and hospitals. When I was a kid, the reason for this feeling of hatred was unknown, yet I knew it had something to do with my dear ones going away from me. As I grew up, my so-called hatred abated as I realized that these were not the occasions where I had to necessarily say goodbye to someone. In fact, there were so many new entries into my life via these channels.
‘The goodbye phobia,’ however, strengthened inside me at different points of time in my life. This must have happened with most of you as well. The phase of departing from anyone we have known, even for a shorter period, is actually a very painful process. It becomes all the more hurtful when something happens suddenly; hence, we are not mentally prepared for it.
Broadly speaking there are three kinds of goodbyes that we encounter in our daily lives: the first one is when somebody leaves our lives; the second is when somebody leaves the country; and the last one which we all have to confront one day or the other is when somebody very close to us leaves the world.
If we begin to note the after-effects of all these three different kinds of goodbyes, we might be able to realize why departing from people at times captures our soul so awfully.
This world is a place where none of us can survive for long in solitude. It is a known fact that we often succumb to our instincts. We need people to talk to and socialize with. We need people to lend attentive ears to us. When we are happy we want to share our joy with someone. When we are upset, we want to let out our anger; and when we are in the highest state of our emotions, we need someone to understand and appreciate our sentiments. It is this dire need of ours to rely on people and to be trusted by them, which drives us into building relationships. It will just be a virtual denial of our innate requirements to emphasize the fact that we can live as hermits. We know very well that there is much more to living life than just leading it.
Once these relationships are built, it becomes more important to maintain them rather than to indulge in developing new relationships. If it takes fondness and likeness to get into relationships, it also takes a lot of patience, selflessness and perspicuous behaviour to maintain them. Once we call someone a friend or whatever the relation is, there is a natural bond that builds up. It is our insatiable propensity to take people for granted, especially our immediate family, close relatives and friends, because we know they love us so much that they can barely imagine living without us.
If someone cares for us in a particular time period, we expect him or her to remain the same for the rest of their lives, even if we change our affiliation with that person. We tend to forget that someone also needs our attention and deserve our endeavours in maintaining the relationship that we are in. We overlook the fact that without a rapport and consistent compatibility, relationships become insipid and die out.
It is at this time that we encounter the first type of goodbye. When we stop giving our input and only expect a one-way traffic to flow, people opt for stepping out of our lives. This goodbye is not a sudden one, for at the back of our minds, we know we are heading towards it. It is only when we do not want to keep a relationship that this happens. That person, who was once so important in life, is now nothing for us. It is neither time nor fate that has driven us apart, rather our timely attraction towards that person that has now faded or we have realized overtime that we can’t really get along with that person any longer. Now in this immensely huge world, may be in the same country, the same city and even at times the same locality, the two of us would remain and live as strangers, who had never met each other. May be one day, we would confront each other and stop saying hello or may be we would not even care to give a familiar, recognizing look. Who knows?
The second type of goodbye is not really a very painful one in some cases, yet excruciating in others. When we know that the person that we are departing from is going miles away to attain something in life, to achieve a goal, to acquire knowledge, to build up a career or may be just to see the world around, we are prepared to give ourselves some room for separation. Yet, if it is known that the person whom we are now saying farewell to, might not be able to meet us again as in the case of someone moving abroad for good, or going for a treatment of a fatal ailment, we think and rethink of saying goodbye. Such a goodbye is painful, dubious and very difficult to utter.
The third type of a goodbye is the most realistic one. It is the hardest to encounter, yet it is actually the easiest to accept. I am saying it not because I have not met with such a devastating fact in life, but because I have seen it closely. I have lost two of the most important people in my life: my father, when I was only 19 years of age, and my first son who was almost four years old, when I was just 25. I can, therefore, as you can see, relate to this issue.
The rationale that forces us to accept the third type of goodbye, while leaving us shocked for the rest of our lives, is the feeling that no matter how much aghast and agonized we are, no matter how much we cry and sob, nothing in this world can bring them back to us.
Death is inevitable and it often occurs suddenly, though not always. We cannot really imagine people going away from us, so far, where we cannot reach out for them. The provoked indignation and fervid disappointment though ravages us real bad, yet the whole truth is, we just have to face it one day or the other. If things were to happen naturally and go as a rule, then they would be a little easier to absorb. The natural cycle of course persuades us to believe that “whoever comes into the world first, goes first”. Nevertheless, this does not happen in real life.
No doubt, the fact that we will have to say goodbye to our dear ones and near ones in our lives at some point of time, in some or the other form, is a bitter truth, a harsh reality. In all the above-mentioned categories, the one thing that shall remain unchanged is that no matter how far people go away, whether they are out of our lives completely, memories of the times that we spent together can never fade.
