saying our goodbyes properly: 6th week easter tuesday 2012

Togetherness and the desire for each other’s presence is as human as death.  Even in the penal code, death is the greatest form of punishment for it is as it is called a departure, albeit a forced departure from everything we hold dear including being in the presence of and being with the people we love.  The next greater form of punishment is solitary confinement – again a deprivation of human company, frustrating one’s basic desire for togetherness.  This desire is the reason why homecomings and Christmases become sentimental events in life, why kundimans and love songs are composed, why airports are emotionally charged places, and why marriage and graduation ceremonies are ceremonies of mixed emotions. 

Most of our grieving comes from parting, most of our pains come from being deprived of meaningful presences, and most of our sadness comes from that unfulfilled and never can be fulfilled desire of being together forever.  Someway, somehow, somewhere along, we have to part, and part we must. 

Today Jesus is teaching his disciples to say goodbye properly.  There are things we can’t hold forever.  There are persons we cannot cling to perpetually no matter how much we love them and how tightly we embrace them.  There are attitudes we have to let go as we grow older, there are mindsets we cannot carry on for so long, there are experiences and even memories we just have to learn discard in order to get along with life.  To say goodbye properly - a lot we have to contend with in a world and a humanity that is not and can never be permanent.  That is why grieving is very much a part of our life.  Like the disciples confronting the parting of Jesus we are also overcome with grief when partings like these cone to us.

Some practical points I am trying to learn myself:

First, When you cut, cut cleanly.  There are people who remain undecided until they die.  Twenty years after sang iya pagkasoltero, nagasinoltero man gihapon bisan may asawa na.  Ma graduate na sa college, high school man gihapon ang batasan, bantayan mo pa, sawayon mo pa, sugoon mo pa, mapapukaw pa, patun-on mo pa – waay pa ka say goodbye sa iya pagka-high school.  Mapari sia kuno pero mangaluyag pa, ano na ya.  Learn to say goodbye to attitudes, mindsets, mentalities, and even to people.  Cut and cut clean.

Second, the little goodbyes that we do daily prepare us for that one big goodbye that you will have to make only once – death, and it will come whether we like it or not.  When it’s hard for us to say goodbye to a thing, if it’s hard for us to say goodbye to an attitude, if it is hard for us to say goodbye to a person and if we cannot part even with 20 pesos, or ice cream, it would be harder still to say goodbye in death.  When you have learned to say goodbye to the little things that are asked of you daily, remember it is a practice, a practice that will make it a lot easier to confront death, wherein we have to say goodbye to everything.

Remember, only one thing is permanent - Jesus, only Jesus.  As the world passes by and we are confronted daily by impermanence and change, it is good to be rooted to Jesus in his word and in prayer.