Today I said goodbye. Again. It was my last day at Denver Health Outpatient PT, and once again I found myself cleaning out my things, tying up loose ends, making sure everything was in its place (or delightfully out of place), and saying goodbye.
As I walked out of the clinic, I looked around at the quiet, still room that is usually so full of life and energy. The room where I have spent the majority of my time for the past 3 months. The room where I have shared in my patients' frustrations and fears, their joys and successes, however big or small. So many special moments exist in the energy of that room, still palpable even after everyone was gone. Memories of patients long passed through, on to bigger things and new lives. How many patients have had their lives changed by one of the therapists there throughout the years- and vice versa?
Goodbyes. I digress. As I stopped in the loo on my way out of the hospital, I reminisced on all the goodbyes I have said in the last few years. College is full of goodbyes. It's funny, I've only been out of college 4 years and I don't even know anyone who lives in Fort Collins anymore. My last friend there committed suicide over a year ago now. I guess everyone leaves in one way or another. I don't go back much now, although my favorite mountain biking trail in the world is up there. Funny how I had so many friends in college and now I only keep in touch with three of them. Was I sad to leave and let go of college and all the fun I had? No, I was ready to move on.
The past three years have been full of goodbyes, some more difficult than others. Goodbyes of all types. Doing clinical internships bring on most of them. Saying goodbye to my patients at the end of my internships before they are ready to move on is hard. I feel a responsibility to them to help them and do my best for them, and leaving before they are ready to go is difficult for me, even though I know they are in the caring and capable hands of my clinical instructors. Saying goodbye to my coworkers who become my friends, while still bringing a twinge of sadness, is something I have gotten used to. Saying goodbye to my classmates, some of who have become my closest friends, will be a little harder. Those are the people I have spent most the hours of most my days with for the last 3 years... 36 months... 9 semesters. It has gone so quickly, and now the time has nearly come to say goodbyes again. I wonder how many friends I will take away from this period in my life? I am curious to find out.
The act of saying goodbye always gives that twinge of sadness and nostalgia for me, but at the same time I know it is time, every time. No person, no experience stays in one's life forever. Everyone and everything I come into significant contact with plays a part in shaping my life, in carving the inner structure of who I am, and they are always with me, even if they are no longer in my life and even if I only think of them occasionally, when there is a faint special smell that comes in on a western breeze or I come across a certain leaf blowing a curious way on the sidewalk or beer bottle cap bent just so, that will remind me of someone long buried in my past, and it will inspire a brief moment, maybe even a smile, as I remember that certain person and how they have touched me. Even now I remember a tidbit long forgotten about someone still in my life as I smile at my run-on sentence that has somehow turned into a paragraph. Little things... memories I don't even remember I have, stored somewhere in one or two of the billion cells in my body. What an amazing existence we have!
An author/philosopher who I once read likened people to a huge, blue, expansive sky; and the people, things, and experiences in one's life to the clouds that float through it. Some clouds are pretty and light, some are dark and ominous. Some stay for a long time, building on themselves and on others. Some float through quickly on a high wind. However, all clouds eventually pass through. None of them stay. All that is left is the sky, blue and clear, in the end, and that is just how life is. It's not worth fighting the natural flow of things to keep them around, because they are not meant to stay any longer than they do.
In the beginning, when I was born, it was just me coming into the world alone. When I die, it will be just me again, alone, passing through. I myself am merely a cloud in the earth's big sky. Too many people today cannot sit quietly in a room by themselves. They do not like the company they keep. Too many people count on others for their happiness and don't want to be alone with what they see when they look within. True, most of us would not be happy in a vacuum. However, throughout the years I have discovered much greater satisfaction and contentment when I have not tried to hold on to things and people who were never meant to stay. I recognize and treasure these experiences for what they are and how they have touched me, and I let them go. I have found peace with goodbye.
3 comments:
that was sweet. oh ya and i just started a blog. its url is http://openingshutdoors.blogspot.com call me :)
Sometimes saying good-bye means that you get to say "hello" to someone or something new :)
-Brittany
I still won't post my blog on myspace. Mostly because I hate it. Also, you keep changing your headline or whatever that thing is called, but not updating! Silly Moose.
Mine.
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