I’ve never been very good at saying goodbye. Short and temporary ones are no problem, the “see you later mate!” and “catch you on the flipside boss!” moments are easy enough to deal with but the proper, deep, final goodbye moments are something i’ve never really been able to handle. That’s the real heavy stuff man, as the hippies would say, the deep shit that requires some serious emotional effort and control.
Of course in seriousness its not really ever been a problem. I mean, how many genuine proper goodbyes do we really have to go through in life? At the end of the day you can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times you will have a proper, heavy, “Here’s lookin’ at you kid” type goodbye in this world. Even then you can pretty much count on the fact that you’re going to fuck it up - i mean, final goodbyes of all kinds are big things. They require planning, finesse and timing to get truly right. Get it wrong and you’ll just end up looking bloody stupid.
There are moments, however, when it really hits home just how important it can be at times to properly say goodbye to someone, even more so when you are living in a foreign country, a thousand miles away from your immediate family, friends and anyone else that you love. Moments when events and distance conspire to remind you that no matter how hard you are at saying “goodbye”, at conveying that one simple word with real truth and meaning, that occasionally it is necessary to try nonetheless.
And so tonight when i found out that, four thousand miles away from where i sit right now, the last (and probably closest) of my grandparents - my grandmother - passed away, i resolved not to sit there and cry. i decided not to shed one single tear over the fact that i couldn’t be there to utter that one crucial word because, when all is said and done, it is exactly that - just a word. One that conveys a whole lot of meaning, for sure, but a word nonetheless and actions - as we all know - can speak a hell of a lot louder than words.
So instead i decided to see goodbye to her in a way that means something to me. In a way that, i’ve a feeling, she’d chuckle at and appreciate (though many of those who thought they new her would consider “out of character”) as a proper goodbye.
Katie McAndrew, of Swinford, County Mayo, at 6:30pm EST on the night of the 30th of March you shuffled off this mortal coil. From 8:30pm EST thirty or so people that you would never meet, the regular drinkers in your grandson’s local - a small New York Irish bar that you would never visit, partied like an absolute bastard in your memory.
You would have been proud.
Good luck and God bless. May you have been in heaven thirty minutes before the devil knew that you were dead.
Love and best wishes,
Your dearest grandson.