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Quite a few years ago I had read Joan Didion's lucid and emotive essay "Goodbye to all that." I had shared an excerpt from it back then and recently Facebook memories showed me that excerpt again. I could see why I must have shared it; it captured the sense of longing, self-knowledge and fickleness that I possessed then, and do now still to a degree. What has changed though are my feelings toward relationships. This piece is not about the essay, but just my own walk into some relationships I have recently had to say goodbye to.
There's no dearth of poetry, songs, books and essays on love. Especially romantic love. And I think I've happily taken them in during the joys and sorrows of my many relationships. But as I have been mourning the end of quite a few long-time friendships, I find the silence a little loud and wish for songs and books and poetry, which speak about the heartbreak and realizations that the end of friendships can bring.
Sometime last year, I started remembering a once-dear friend of mine. She and I had been close, best friends, if I would use that term at 28. But perhaps there was always some fundamental difference in how we perceived each other and the world and no matter how deep the feelings of love and care, things frayed and came to their inevitable end. I would be lying if I said that the ending was unforeseeable. After it ended, I missed her of course. I tried reaching out a couple of times and from her unresponsiveness, let it be. I felt relief that the relationship was done with and I could move on in life with my memories. But memories are of course teachers. I found myself looking back and gleaning more than I had while we were friends. Sometimes I would remember a moment and long to step into it, pat her on the head and say, here, now I see it as you saw it. But that was of course not possible.
While I was missing her and realizing from time to time an altered perception of our relationship, she reached out. The contact angered me. I wanted to be left alone to my understanding, to the silence I had grown accustomed to and to my memories of her and not her the person, least of all her showing concern after more than a year of disappearance. My curtness and eventual oversharing of materials to read and listen to, as opposed to anything personal or of note was met with her disappearance again. Farewell, friend.
The cascade continued over the next year as I realized again, after many years, how easy it is to lose friends. The clearer the lines around me, the more certainly I tried expressing myself, the easier friends fell off from my life. Were they friends at all, I wondered. After ten years of friendship, all it needed was a little push, a push as little as saying I felt unheard in the relationship. Like little scabs, one by one, old friends, friends who I had seen through many many life events and who had been by my side for quite a few significant moments, fell off. Where was my literature and poetry?
Not finding anything, I decided to go back to old photographs and write little eulogies to them as they had been in our relationships. I felt a lot of anger and grief, and of course sometimes crippling loneliness. But it was buoyed by the realization that what needed to happen was happening and on the other side, some day there would be friends again. Both for them and me. I couldn't have found the openness in my heart as soon as I did without chancing upon one poem that arrived beautifully right on time to me. Yesterday, as I was finishing "To Bless the Space Between Us" I came across a blessing, a poem for friendships ending. I'll end it here and hope that the blessing passes to those I've chosen to leave behind and vice-versa.
For lost friends
As twilight makes a rainbow robe
From the concealed colors of day
In order for time to stay alive
Within the dark weight of night,
May we lose no one we love
From the shelter of our hearts.
When we love another heart
And allow it to love us,
We journey deep below time
Into that eternal weave
Where nothing unravels.
May we have the grace to see
Despite the hurt of rupture,
The searing of anger,
And the empty disappointment,
That whoever we have loved,
Such love can never quench.
Though a door may have closed,
Closed between us,
May we be able to view
Our lost friends with eyes
Wise with calming grace;
Forgive them the damage
We were left to inherit;
Free ourselves from the chains
Of forlorn resentment;
Bring warmth again to
Where the heart has frozen
In order that beyond the walls
Of our cherished hurt
And chosen distance
We may be able to
Celebrate the gifts they brought,
Learn and grow from the pain,
And prosper into difference,
Wishing them the peace
Where spirit can summon
Beauty from wounded space.
~ John O'Donohue ~
(To Bless the Space Between Us)
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