The title launched a poem my wife wrote to our college-bound son long ago. The words ring louder today amid rising refrains of goodbyes to family and friends as well as to jobs and to former homes.
Hospice caregivers are constantly saying goodbye. They teach us that passings need not be melancholic, especially as the "bitter" in "bittersweet" yields to "sweet."
Departed jobs and long ago companions are ships lighting the way to islands of memories.
Former American Poet Laureate Billy Collins (left) is among the most delightful writers of our generation (I rarely use poet's line breaks because they scare away readers.)
Note Collin's whimsy about the dead in his poem of the same name. "The dead are always looking down on us, they say,/ while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,, they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven/ as they row themselves slowly through eternity.../"
Does this change your feelings of the death to which we are all headed? He continues, "...They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,/ and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,/ drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,/ they think we are looking back at them,..."/
"....which makes them lift their oars and fall silent/ and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes."
What a soft coda.
Aging floods us with goodbyes. How much could Collins' poetry enrich your days?
-Erie Chapman
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