The beauty in goodbye

Some people are drawn to beginnings and others to endings. I am an endings kinda human. The endings of cycles have always felt familiar to me in an odd sort of way. I feel more certain at the end than the beginning almost 99% of the time. My belief is that you either achieve a strange joy by opening a fresh condiment bottle or that same joy arrives only when you are able to finish the bottle and toss it in the recycle bin. Finishing a condiment can actually make my entire day.

This is a funny way to consider death but here we are. Death is an idea that I am well acquainted with and really wouldn't want it any other way. Some people live their entire lives dodging death. Truly, isn’t that the message we are fed daily? If we eat right, exercise, work hard and sleep well, then we can live forever. It feels like an unhealthy dose of avoidance to me.

I firmly believe we all need to become intimate with death to begin to live our most authentic lives. Death is as much a part of life as anything else. We experience little deaths daily, weekly, monthly and annually. The cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth is nearly a constant for each of us if we are paying attention.

If you live in a climate that has seasons, you can witness how important death is annually. Without the dropping away of leaves, the trees may not stay intact through the winter storms. It is only by the small death of each leaf that the tree is able to have the energy to grow new buds and shoots the next spring. A beautiful cycle of death and rebirth each year to remind us of our own inner seasons we must travel. We do not have leaves to drop or places to hibernate, but our bodies will traverse the seasons in their own way.

Death is not something to be feared when it is viewed as the ending that will allow a new beginning. Each goodbye we speak can in a sense become a little death. Every goodbye can be the ending of a chapter to allow the turning of the page to start a new one. The last few weeks were filled with many little deaths for me and they could not have been more beautiful.

I am no stranger to goodbyes. I have made many in my short lifetime, some permanent and many more temporary. Over the past few months, I began the process of saying goodbye to the people and places I love in Colorado. I made my final goodbyes less than a week ago and I haven't stopped thinking about the space right before death since.

There is a certain type of softness that arrives before death that I have been struggling to comprehend. The leaves and flowers gently wilt. The animals grow pudgy and frail. Even the sun softens right before it leaves the horizon. If you have met someone near the end of their life, it’s possible you noticed an ease in their nature as soon as they surrendered to death being near. I do not know if this space has a name but it felt so incredibly soft and sweet to me.

Every time I said goodbye it felt like I was able to expose my most raw and vulnerable self for just a moment. As if the knowing of the ending made everything sweeter for the smallest bit of time. Since I have been preparing for this move for several months, I have had the pleasure to sit in this soft and sweet space for so long.

As I softened, so did everyone around me. Little things mattered less and presence became more potent. Joy and connection felt palpable to the point where little else felt relevant. Perhaps that is the purpose of this soft space. To create a deep bond between two souls that is sustainable through time and space. A bond that even death cannot break. Whether that death is a quick goodbye or a seemingly permanent one. There will always be the sweet and soft space before death to come home to.

This space is what is sustaining me now. The connections I made, the way my soul was filled with so much love, will carry me through the ending of this cycle. As so many parts of me experience death during this transition, I am fully prepared to witness the beauty that is to come in the rebirth.

I am more comfortable in the ending but I know there is equal importance in the beginning. The birth of a new journey, the beginning of a new chapter is waiting for me. In a way, I can sense the softness in this liminal space too.

When we begin to understand that everything is cyclical, the fear of death lessens. The rewilding is in the remembering of the true purpose of death; to allow rebirth. Without goodbyes and death, hello's and rebirth may never have an opportunity to happen. So instead of running away from death, perhaps we lean into that soft space that precedes it. Let it cradle us through the uncertainty that inevitably makes it way into our being.

Have you ever felt the softness before an ending?