Those long goodbyes

by: Kate Carraway

March 03, 2010 11:00 AM

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Throwing a goodbye party for yourself may be an exercise in forced sentimentality — but in their own way, the little goodbyes help prepare for when you have to say the big ones

There are few greater expressions of solipsism than throwing a goodbye party for yourself. People like a good reason to drink aggressively, but sending out an invitation to an event that explicitly celebrates you and your vacation is less “I’ll miss you!” and more “You’ll miss me while I am somewhere else, probably somewhere better!” So, just before I left for a long working holiday, I wrote a sheepish email to the 10 per cent of my friends that I felt OK demanding attention from, and there was a small party for me at a terrible pub near the office.

The collective goodbye was pretty great: since I was running off somewhere hot and easy, there were a lot of happy jealousies and no hysterical warnings. (My previous goodbye party teemed with inappropriate stories about Central American murders.) Ceremonial goodbyes — in my echelon expressed by cocktail drinking and slow-hugging departures — are totally unco-optable by the internet. Secretly morbid and fearful humans, even those with non-stop Twitter feeds, really like to look each other in the eyes one last time. “I have to see you before you leave,” we say, even though these parties are usually rushed and disorderly, friendship-confirming rather than friendship-building.

The well-meaning platitudes of a goodbye (“God be with you,” is what we’re saying, which is sort of dark) get awkward when conflicting emotional tones fuck it up, or when that thing happens where you start to walk away and realize that you and your dismissed companion are going in the same direction. After my party, I had sad goodbyes with two of my closest friends, and then before I left I ended up seeing both of them randomly: we said goodbye a third time with a third less enthusiasm. “Yeah, later,” basically, no different than the relieved or pissy goodbyes after a too-long visit home or before an early flight. The most shambolic farewells must be the ones meant to sever two people forever, but mostly I forget those, retaining just a detail, like the bejeaned knee of one finished love who was tearing my heart open on a picnic table; the stubbly profile of another saying he’d miss me.

Death is different than goodbye; understanding death comes after it happens, but sometimes, goodbye happens first. When my dog Scout was just 11 but bleeding from her brain, out of her nose and onto the carpet in my parents’ new bungalow, I sat numbed through on the train ride home with Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” (our buddy song, a maybe-weird thing for non-dog people) on repeat. I whispered fervent reassurances and apologies and goodbyes into Scout’s soft black fur while she slept on my bed, then again silently while I was waiting for her to be euthanized. My dad cut the moment by smacking his hand on his head after realizing that he’d put on two watches that morning in a fog of grief. After that, after I threw up in the parking lot, I felt like I had, at least, properly let go of Scout, the runt of her litter, who I called King of Dogs, who escaped with me to the yard or the park or the country every time I needed to, which was a lot.

The loss of something that’s all ambient love was accompanied by a sadness that was unforgiving but easy enough to make sense of. On the B-side of Scout’s very sudden death and of every one of my motivations and movements is preparation for another goodbye, one that will inevitably strike me down so much harder, to my father, who is my life’s only stalwart, a tough anti-hero as much as a champion and demi-god. My sisters make fun of me for caring so much about what my dad thinks and says, but really, it’s because he has always been there, and has always been oldish or old, grey-haired, a death-denying and death-obsessed man who has made me constantly aware of his impending end of days. I’ll get through it when it happens because to not would be the ultimate affront to his character.

There’s no other choice than to say goodbye a little bit at a time, by finding some life in the promise of death and loss and absence. Whether or not I have this dumb party, or press my puffy North Face coat into the puffy North Face coats of my friends in a huggy succession at 3am on Yonge Street, days before I leave; whether or not we look into each other’s eyes and say goodbye, anything could happen, to any of us, at any time. So that’s a good enough reason to do it.

» How do you say goodbye? Email kcarraway@eyeweekly.com or tweet @katecarraway. Follow EYE WEEKLY on Twitter.

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My Life, My Fault

Those long goodbyes

Kate Carraway