A good goodbye
“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
"How do you do it?" she asked me.
"How do you mean?"
We sat huddled on a couch against a far wall in somebody's house. Everyone else at the party was chit chatting away. So were we, her and me. Just, away from everyone else. As if we were having a secret conversation.
"How do you spend so much time with them? You know they're going to leave."
She was talking about most of the other people in the room. They were international students, students who had come from around the world to UC San Diego for a number of reasons: the American experience, school, because they were bored, because they wanted to party.
I was a part of a fellowship that arranged events to hang out with these international exchange students. She, was a visitor. An American, but a visitor in this context, nevertheless.
And she was right. All of these students were going to leave. Most, by the end of the quarter.
I didn't have to dig very deep into my American, youthful idealistic back pocket to give her an answer. It was a stock answer, an answer that I honestly wasn't sure if I actually believed back then. But I do believe it now. I really believe it now.
Why spend time with people when you know your time is limited?
"You never know how much time you have with anyone," I said.
She chewed on that answer for a few moments. She knew it was true. I knew it was true. But in the moment, that answer was probably nothing more than a deflection while I sat on my high horse.
She and I hardly spoke after that. I don't actually remember her name. I'm terrible.
“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”
Dude.
Dude. What's up, dude?
Oh you know, just dreaming about bean juice. You interested?
So goes a very short IM chat with a guy I'll call Bobby. He reminds me a lot of a childhood friend. You know, the kind where you run up to each other's house just to see if they're home and want to go outside and play catch. The kind where you get to high school and IM each other for no reason except to say 'hi.' The difference is that Bobby and I were never childhood friends. In fact we only knew each other in the most grown-up arena possible: the office.
"I got us today," he says, pulling out his wallet and flashing a credit card. "I've got my shiny new card."
He means the two lattes we order at the local coffee shop next door, Milstead. We have some unsaid rhythm where he buys coffee one day, I buy the next, and we just alternate forever. I'm not sure either of us actually keeps track.
"You know what'd be funny," I start, "is if your new card got declined, and then I had to pay for you."
"That would be really sad," he says, handing his card to the cashier.
She smiles sweetly. "I've seen that happen a few times. It's a great way to get people to pay for you." She swipes the card, and then her eyes cast a shadow of concern. "Um..., your card actually did get declined."
"Wait, really?" Bobby says.
"Yeah...I'm sorry...I'm not joking..."
I barely contain my laughter as I pull out my wallet. I once caught him ordering the cheapest thing on a menu, and since then there's a reoccurring joke I make to him that felt oddly appropriate at the moment: "Do you need money?"
He tries to look offended with the sharpest glare he could give me, but there's no bite to the look. And eventually he breaks down, smiles and says, "I'll get the next one."
And there will be a next coffee. And one after that.
These are the good old days. I'm grateful that I recognize them as such, before they end. And I recognize that they someday will end. Sure, it makes me sad at times, knowing that our daily banter and kid-like friendship would end.
But in other ways, that's exactly why I appreciate it so much. I soak in the moments, knowing that a friend is always on the other side and we can just run out together and grab a drink, and enjoy it for what it was. For what it still is.
Because damn if you're lucky to get a childhood friend once. You've won the lottery if you grow up and still get a second shot at it. I mean how often, in the same day, do you get the same conversation twice?
Dude. Coffee?
Sure. It has to be a quick one though.
K. Starbucks?
Let's do Milstead. I went back home.
Okay cool. I have no working card though :-(
Do you need money? Just kidding, I got you.
“We have three types of friends in life: Friends for a reason, friends for a season, and friends for a lifetime.”
I actually think this quote is kind of bullshit. Mostly because I don't believe in friends for a lifetime. That probably sounds bad so I better explain.
All friends are friends for a reason or a season. The only thing that makes a friend a friend for a lifetime is that they actively will seek you out even if that reason/season is over. They text or call just to say 'hi,' or randomly mail you a gift because they saw something and thought of you. Or they fly thousands of miles across the world to spend one week with you. Those are special people. Don't ever let go of them, for sure.
That still doesn't mean that they will be around forever. And to be honest, I'm not sure we should want them to be around forever.
I can't help but feel that not only do all good things come to an end, some of the best things are good because they come to an end. Knowing that something will end is precisely what often pushes people to pursue their dreams with every ounce of their being, to enjoy their life with such vigor that no other force can match.
Sometimes I wonder if that's why we became such good friends. Because for the four years we've known each other, I was always threatening to pack my bags and leave Seattle.
I never really understood why he called me every few days, just to talk, when we lived in the same city. Or why he liked to tag along with me while running errands at Target and joking about the prices of things while imagining the back story of whoever the hell Nate Berkus was. Or why he always wanted to hug me in the strangest way possible.
Everything with us always felt intense. Not in a romantic way, which makes me shudder just to think about as I write the phrase, but in the sense that whatever we did mattered.
Like when he came back from a short trip to Japan earlier this year, and we took a slow evening stroll along the water with the wind blowing past, me eating my way-too-expensive hipster ice cream, and bikers clanging their bells as they passed.
"On your left!" someone yelled as they rode past. I laughed, thinking of the Captain America movie, a movie we saw together and had talked about for hours.
Coincidentally, he happened to have seen Civil War in Japan, in some fancy "4D" theatre where the seats move and they shoot water in your face. He loved telling me about this. And about the other 1,000 amazing things that he saw, did, and experienced in Japan. For the next mile and back along the Burke-Gilman trail, that's all we did. Talk about Japan.
I'm usually weary of giving outright advice. I'm afraid to have responsibility for other people's decisions. But this was one of the few times I felt like I had the whole puzzle put together, and I finally decided to resurrect an old thought and jump right in.
"I'm going to interrupt you," I said, doing just that and putting an end to Japan this and Japan that. "I know I've mentioned this before, but..." I paused, to be sure that this is what I wanted to say, "why don't you just move to Japan?"
He rarely, if ever, is left speechless, or dumbfounded. I knew I had hit something. So I kept going.
"What's stopping you?"
He texted me the next morning: I talked with my parents. They're totally supportive. I think I'm going to do it.
We laughed about the irony of the situation later over a fancy-ish home-cooked dinner of pasta, mushrooms, shrimp, and kahlua and milk in lieu of the fact that I forgot to buy wine. Like I said, everything with this guy is intense.
"Every year, Dan," he said, in between bites, "I had to prepare myself for when you were going to leave. Every year, Dan."
He wasn't wrong. Like I said, I was the one always threatening to leave Seattle, year after year. Everything that we did mattered, because it could be one of the last times we did it.
"And yet here we are, you're the one taking off."
"I know. Man..." his voice drifted off.
We talked for hours. Went through all the possibilities of why he should or shouldn't go. That what he had in Seattle was good and he wasn't sure if he wanted to leave. That if he did go to Japan that this would be temporary. And that he didn't want to leave me behind.
"You know you're not coming back here, yeah?" I said very firmly, almost relishing in my newfound love for just speaking my mind.
"I know," he resigned, "I just don't want it to be true. I don't think I can accept it."
I told him that I would be fine. That all of us he was leaving behind, would be fine.
That life is about pursuit—pursuit of dreams, people, God, whatever. And that if we must say goodbye to each other, then let's make it a good goodbye; a goodbye where we say the words not because of conflict, but simply because in the pursuit of the things that give each of us life, sometimes we must go off in different directions. And no matter how good our friendship is, why would any of us want to hold our friends back from something even better?
And so that's what we did when he dropped me off at the airport in Chicago. He tried to give me one of those awkward hugs that he gives. And this was one of the few times where I let him.
"Take care of yourself," I said. "See you in Japan."
I could tell he was holding back tears. Which of course he texted me later to tell me that was the case.
And that was it. Another goodbye to add to the list. Because I believe we all must continue to do the things we love, the things we're called to, and the roles we must play.
And when we're lucky, we run into other cool people along the way. At least until we go our separate paths again.
Because whether a friend is pursuing a future in Japan, or leaving the company we worked at together, or returning to their home country after school, moving to be with his wife's family, or sadly even death, at some point we must all say goodbye.
And if we have to say goodbye, good goodbyes are the best way to go. The only way to go.
“Dan, you’re always looking to get rid of your friends. You always make them leave you.”
It was a joke. She meant it as a joke. But honestly, it's kind of true.
That's the risk of knowing me. The risk of letting me know you. I will push you. Challenge you. And expect you to do the same.
Which means that as we pursue our lives with everything we've got, it might mean we have to say goodbye to each other. But in the mean time, I guarantee you that the time we spend together will be great.
And in that sense, 'goodbye' might be the best words we can ever say. Because if what we have is so good, and we choose to leave that behind, how much better is the future?