As the editor in chief of my community college newspaper, I am involved with the hiring and firing capabilities. This year, we fired one reporter, two volunteers graduated, and two staff members quit. (One of which was my Co-editor, the other side of an awesome two-person team) Sometimes I see these people, sometimes they stop in and say hi, but they are no longer the same presences that would sit and chat in the office with me. They are just shadows now, flittering by and passing through. And truth be told, I miss them, well most of them. I miss the jokes, the air hockey games, the company. Yes, we hired three new staff members, and they are getting along well, but deep down I know that sometime, I will have to say goodbye to them as well. We everntually have to say goodbye to everyone, whether it be for a day or for a lifetime. Some people are meant to stay in our lives for our lifetime, and others are meant to be only a flickering ray of sunlight, just passing through. Some stay for a long time, others for a short time. It is what we do with that time before the goodbye that matters.
Do we cherish every moment with the people in our lives? Do we say goodbye with the slam of a door? Or with a hug and a kiss? And what if we did say goodbye with a frustrated phrase and a slam of a door, only to find out a few hours later that that loved one had died in an accident. When we say goodbye, do we think that those words could be the last we ever say to a person? When my parents hang up the phone without saying "I love you" do they hope they will get another chance to say it, or do they take my mortality for granted?
More significant rhetorical questions, I suppose. But as I get ready for the move from community college to a four-year university, I wonder how it will be to say goodbye to the home I have spent 18 years in. To have college be my permanent home for the next few years and my house be my temporary home. To have to share a room with another person, share an apartment with three other people. One of them likes screamo music and Miley Cyrus, one of them is from Texas, and the other one has not added me on Facebook, so I find it hard to Facebook stalk her. What an adventure it will be to truly be on my own. What an adventure to have to bid farewell to everything familiar to me. And my school? How will it be to say goodbye to this campus I have known and loved for two years? The newspaper office that has been my second home? The backroads, sidetrails and shortcuts; the events, the clam chowder every Friday and the falling down bulletin boards? What will I do without all these things? With a new campus with new things to discover?
What is it going to be to have to say goodbye.
It saddens me to remember all the goodbyes I have had to say in my lifetime, how many deaths, breakups, and fall outs I have endured. Now I must not only say goodbye to people, but to places. I know this place by heart, and I must let it go and embrace a new one. It saddens me even more to think that everyone else who is graduating is going through these same feelings right now. And remembering that reminds me of my resolve to be kinder and to lift other's spirits the way they lift mine. Hopefully I can be a part of helping this goodbye not be quite as sad.
