To live well, we must learn how to say goodbye well

Every hello begins a goodbye. Every well-said goodbye makes possible a new hello. Life is about saying goodbye … and hello. And goodbye. And hello. And so it goes until the day comes when we say goodbye to this life and hello to the mystery over yonder.

So many goodbyes — the experience of loss is in the very fabric of this existence, and it’s more than just the relentless presence of random tragedies, accidents, disease and death. Moments begin and end. Relationships die. Possibilities die. Dreams die. Times and places come and go. To welcome one thing inevitably requires bidding one or more other things farewell.

Saying hello to finger foods for your baby means saying goodbye to the days of tenderness and intimacy at the breast. Choosing a career in medicine means not choosing a career in farming. Saying an exclusive yes to one lover means saying no to all the other potential lovers. Yep. Commitment is a grief issue.

Grief has many forms and movements. Nostalgia is a grieving over a lost-yet-remembered innocence. Despair is the name of the grief we feel when we have lost hope. Longing is grieving a future not yet here. Cynicism is the grief state of no longer risking belief in essential goodness. Guilt is the grief we feel when we abandon our own values.

Grief has many expressions. Some cultures teach and value dramatic, emotional expression. Other cultures teach and value the restraint of emotion, and replace it with narrative and storytelling. Some cultures have elaborate ceremonies and assigned symbols. Still other cultures — mine, for example — teach and value intellectualizing and denying grief.

To grieve honestly and well, we give up some control. We sit quietly with our sadness. We breathe our sadness in. We breathe it out. And sometimes our grief just has a mind of its own. That flat, empty feeling. Quiet stoicism. Lump in the throat. Weeping. Quiet crying. Wailing, shoulders shaking and breath coming in gulps.

Sometimes grief takes you by the arm and drags you unwilling to a place primitive and primordial. It’s beyond reason. You go a little bit crazy. Your legs fail you. You make terrible noises. You lay on the floor and moan, bellow and thrash. The grief possesses your body. Rolls you up into a fetal position, then sends you sprawling onto your back. You pound the carpet. You hold your guts.

It’s a kind of dying. Terrifying, but holy. And, on the faithful human journey, sometimes necessary. Sometimes the only way we can be whole.

Unacknowledged grief turns to poison and malice. Couples who can’t grieve often divorce. People who can’t grieve sometimes kill — themselves or others.

Depressed people often are angry people, and angry people often are sad people. A police officer once described to me the practice of an inner-city gang wherein gang members would tattoo a tear drop on their face to represent every person they had murdered. The irony was compelling. The young gangbanger cannot cry, so he paints his tears on his face. And for every tear that he cannot cry, someone has to die.

To live well, we must learn how to say goodbye well, and often. Well-said goodbyes are conscious and intentional. We give thanks for what was good. We acknowledge and, if appropriate, account for what was bad. We forgive what we can forgive, and allow our goodbye to separate us from the rest.

Healthy goodbyes acknowledge loss. We surrender to grief. Broken hearts don’t kill us. Quite the contrary, it is precisely the denial of our broken heart that can become destructive and lethal.

We don’t heal grief by gritting our teeth. We don’t heal grief by distracting ourselves with drinking, drugging and other “acting out” behavior. We don’t merely let time pass, because it’s not true that time heals wounds. We don’t heal grief with rationalities or bumper stickers or platitudes or optimism or cheap religion.

The only way to heal grief is to grieve.

To love anything is to decide to become vulnerable to loss. Check that — to love anything guarantees the experience of loss. The only alternative is to decide not to love … which, of course, is the worst kind of loss.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@review journal.com.