“Love give me strength, and strength will help me through. Goodbye, dear father.” William Shakespeare
Reflections: Goodbyes Are Never Easy…
“Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn’t work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves and then we have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.” Snoopy
Even as many celebrate that special memory or share moments of delight spent in the company of a living parent, there are a great number who hold bittersweet memories of a departed dad; especially those of us who weren’t able to say a proper goodbye. Death came swiftly, in the early hours of a cool Wednesday morning, for my dad. I was told he got up, turned the radio to BBC news, lay down again to listen to it and passed away. Twenty plus years later and the story is revisited again and again…
Although, back then, we gathered with friends and family and went through the motions of planning, organizing and executing a celebration of his life and a funeral to match, our time with him on that final leg to his resting place still felt incomplete; abbreviated. How do we say goodbye to those we love and hold in high esteem? Never. How do we say goodbye when the last memory was of a cherished phone-call in which the first and final words were “Hello!”? Goodbyes are never easy, under most circumstances, and Father’s Day often brings such thoughts and memories front and center. More below
