6/7/2023 0 Comments Your chronicle endingsI certainly believe that the art of attending to, practicing, ritualizing, and developing a language for leave-taking in the most ordinary moments and settings augurs well for taking on the more extraordinary exits that life is sure to serve up. I think that there must be some relationship between our developing the habit of small goodbyes and our ability to master and mark the larger farewells, a connection between the micro and the macro that somehow makes the latter smoother and more bearable because one has successfully accomplished the former. I have been just as intrigued by the ordinary exits that punctuate our days-goodbyes at the door as our children leave for school each morning (I would always stand at the window secretly watching the backs of my young children to see if they were determined and tall if their postures tilted forward, if in their exits I could see the strength they would need to take on the world), hugs at the airport as we leave to go on a trip, farewells to our students at the end of the school term-as I am about the leave-takings that become the major markers of our lives: the rupture of a long friendship the dissolution of a marriage the death of a parent the departure of our children for college the decision to leave a lifelong career the abrupt firing of a veteran employee the exits from the “closet,” the priesthood, our countries of origin. Those that go unnoticed and underappreciated and those that are accompanied by elaborate rituals and splendid ceremony. My curiosity includes exits big and small, those goodbyes that are embroidered into the habits of our everyday encounters as well as those that are forever memorable and rock our worlds. I have always been fascinated by exits, endings, leave-takings-by the ways in which we say goodbye to one another, to the lives we’ve led, to the families we’ve been part of, to the children we’ve nurtured, to the organizations we’ve worked for, to the communities where we’ve belonged, to the identities that have defined us, to the roles that have given us purpose and status.
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