3 - Saying Goodbye: 5 September 2024

In the movies, saying goodbye is often shown as a single event.  You say goodbye once and then the goodbye is finished.

Saying goodbye to Margaret has not been like that at all.  The process has been a jerky, irregular series of events.  First, there was the funeral.  As of today, the funeral was precisely 1 year and 1 complete week ago – plus a few additional hours. How to describe one whole year and one whole week during which I tried my hardest to rebuild a life when the most important part of it had been snatched away from me by a Cruel Cosmic Joke?  How to describe the inability to sleep beyond 4.00 am? How to describe the gut wrenching knowledge of terrible loss? I doubt even Shakespeare would have the words to describe the last year and one week.

Today was another in my series of the jerky, irregular events that have studded the whole process of me saying goodbye.

Having arrived in Dublin just after 12.00 noon on Wednesday; having slept the dismal sleep hours permitted by jet lag, I went on two separate walking tours of Dublin today.  The first was a walking tour of Dublin.  I had never done a walking tour of Dublin before.  We had never needed to.  We had simply walked through unknown streets as the whim had taken us.  Two people in a strange city exploring everywhere we could get to.

I had never realized before today just how much of Dublin we had enjoyed, never realized that without knowing anything about the standard tourist attractions, we had explored many of the tourist attractions that I walked through yet again today.

We had walked down O’Connell Street, laughing at the shiny sleek Millennial Spire tapering its way into the sky; laughing at the joke of it all.  Where the Millennial Spire now soars, there had once been a statue of Lord Nelson, British hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. 

The IRA had blown up the statue of Nelson – and somehow, the Irish Police (the Garda) had been unable to find the culprits.  The Millennial Spire replaced the statue of Nelson and to this day, no one knows who murdered the statue of Nelson.  Margaret and I thought it was a huge joke – and I could hear Margaret laughing all over again as the tour guide related the story to the tour group.

I wanted to cry.  She should have been there with me but she was not.  I told myself I had to say goodbye and get over it.

I kept walking.

The same feeling kept recurring as the tour group walked through the streets on the south side of the River Liffey.  We had walked through these streets – every one of them – and now I had to say goodbye.  Everywhere we walked on the tour, the same thing happened, and every time it happened, I had to say goodbye all over again.  It was not just jerky and irregular, it was overwhelming.  The urge to cry refused to go away, but I didn’t cry; I just got grumpy.

Then I had lunch in Bewleys in Grafton Street – a place where we often went.  On our last visit to Bewleys, Margaret took a photo of the cakes and sent it to Gus.  Gus worked there once and we laughed uproariously at his astonished reaction.

After lunch, I once again visited Trinity College and did a tour of the Book of Kells.  It has changed a lot, but it is still the same.  It has changed a lot because the books are no longer in the Main Hall.  There are only empty shelves there now.  But it has not changed in that Trinity College Dublin still provides a home to one of the most beautiful hand written works of art still in existence.  Once again, I found myself saying goodbye all over again just like I had this morning.  Memories keep coming back.  I want them to come back because I do not want to completely lose you.  I do not want to finally and completely say goodbye.  I know we will meet again, but right now that is no comfort.  How can it be when I cannot hold your hand any more, cannot hear you laugh at me?

I guess all of these feelings are just another aspect of saying goodbye, but how can I say goodbye when I still feel you are not there when I sleep, still feel the emptiness of not being able to make you a coffee?  I cannot say goodbye but I must say goodbye.

It is impossible but I must do it.  So of course I will do it.

I will do it because I made a promise to you on that terrible night when you were taken from me.  I told you that I would be okay, that we were surrounded by a circle of love.  Most of all, I told you that you had suffered enough and that you had my permission to go somewhere where the pain would end.  So you did.  You took me at my word and went to where the pain did not exist.

Now I must keep my promise to you.  I must go on.  I must be okay because I promised you that I would be okay.  So I must say goodbye.  But I do not want to say goodbye.