Sunday, March 19, 2006

I don't say goodbye.

I don't like goodbyes. Really, they're the worst thing ever. They're so final. So sad. I just dont feel as though they're appropriate for any time.

When I was, I think, a sophomore, maybe a junior, my great-grandmother died. She'd get pnemonia every winter and that year, she told my grandma, her daughter, that she wasn't coming home from the hospital this time. She was done.

I got to see her before she died and it was so sad. I think it was only the third time I'd ever seen my father cry. First, when his dad died. Second, when my grandma's next husband died. And then when she died. Great Grandma Shephard. Pearl. With her secret-recipe bananna bread, her sweet pineapple cookies, her pink carpeted sitting room, olive green living room, her beautiful afghans and endless potholders, her polyester shorts, her permed hair... all the wonderful things I miss about her...

In her last days at the hospital, she started telling my Grandma what she wanted done with her stuff, her money, her house. She told her secret ingredient for her fantastical bananna bread. She was so peaceful and calm about everything.

The last time I saw Great Grandma was one of the saddest moments of my life. We visited in the ICU and she was barely making sense. My beautiful grandmother, who went to college in her 50s and became a teacher, who lost her husband years before she died, who took care of her own elderly mother until she died at 102, maybe 103, was dying. My dad cried as we said our goodbyes... only she woudln't let us. She just kept telling us it isn't goodbye, it's until we meet again. She wouldn't let us say goodbye. She made us say until we meet again.....

And that's why I hate goodbyes.