Saying Goodbye

by Tim Scifres

It gets harder to say goodbye after saying the hardest goodbye.

One of the seemingly unlimited things that has been hard to wrap my mind around is the fact that my first hello to Charles was the same time as my last goodbye. I am grateful for the time Jess and I got to spend with his body together in the hospital. I am grateful I had enough strength to sit in a wheelchair while getting rolled down to Jess’ delivery room after she labored and delivered our boy. That day and those moments changed seemingly everything about my life. One of those things that changed was how I say and feel goodbyes, especially forever goodbyes.

It doesn’t much matter if I am saying goodbye or if it is someone else’s goodbye. It doesn’t really matter where a goodbye happens…on a TV show, in a movie, someone in my life experiencing loss, or even stories of loss I hear about. My heart breaks as I picture my precious time with Charles saying goodbye while seeing or hearing about other people going through a hard goodbye. I can identify with the pain and hurt being experienced by these people. I do not know specifically what they are going through as each person’s grief and loss story is specific to them. However, I can imagine the amount of pain, the heaviness of the grief, the complexities with so many basic feelings and emotions their loss is bringing them. I can picture feeling so much pain that it doesn’t even hurt anymore. I can feel the numbness of being lost in a darkness like the darkness of a cave with no light where you literally cannot see your hand right in front of your face. I can feel those times where I almost feel like normal again, then feel the guilt for that. Goodbyes can bring it all back.

Sometimes it is a different loss or goodbye than someone dying. These feelings hit me today watching a movie where someone was driving a race car and had a big wreck. The driver’s parents were watching on TV and had to watch the wreck. The mother’s desperate cries for the possibility of losing her son brought right back to holding Charles. Thankfully, everything worked out in the movie. It is even hard for me to see people who might have to say goodbye. The chance of losing a person or a dream can bring up feelings like I lost Charles yesterday.

Like many feelings and emotions of grief and loss there are two opposing sides enveloping you simultaneously, on the one hand I don’t want to keep hurting at every goodbye. However, on the other hand I don’t want to stop hurting as that will make me feel like I have truly lost Charles again, along with the hopes and dreams that are ever present in my heart and mind for him. I know so many things in this journey will just be hard. One of the hard things is how saying goodbye is harder now that I have said the hardest goodbye.