Our Longing for Community
The prompt I chose out of the bowl this morning is “Saying Goodbye.” This is a hard one to write. I can think of so many times I’ve said goodbye and it hurt tremendously. Part of my heart walked away permanently when I sent my older daughter to college. Later, when I dropped my younger daughter off at the airport and she was going to live with my ex-husband, I cried for weeks, particularly when I heard songs we had sung together on the radio. It was hard to imagine that the hurt would stop. It’s a symptom of our times; people scatter and live their lives thousands of miles apart.
I was sitting with some of the elderly people I help care for on the porch of the old folk’s home, and we were talking about our children and where they were. Seattle, Santa Cruz, Austin, South Dakota: it’s incredible how they all move away. My mother was upset at me for years when I moved away at 23. At the time it seemed like she was just being stubborn, but now I understand the pull of wanting your kids to stay close, even as adults. We certainly are a restless people, we Americans.
Moving away takes such a toll on the emotions. I grew up in Colorado, and I’ve moved back after spending 25 years in California. I still feel impermanent, even after 4 years here. It’s hard to get to know people as an adult. When I was in my late teens I had a large circle of friends and it was easy. One friend led to another and I found myself in concentric circles of friends and acquaintances. I went to boarding school and getting to know people at that age was easy.
Then I moved away, and I found that new work friends stayed at work. On weekends I spent time with my husband. I had a longing for my friends back home, but many of them had moved away as well. We visited, but it took long airplane rides to reunite. The easy, drop-in times were over.
Maybe saying goodbye is part of being an adult and living in the times we do. I remember learning that Medieval peasants in England might have seen 60 or so people in their entire lifetimes. People of their class didn’t simply uproot themselves and move. I can imagine it was stifling as well as secure for those peasants, being with the same people permanently, people who defined who they were and knew their history and personality as a matter of course. Our cultural idea of personal change and growth was probably not a part of their lives. You just were who you were.
Today there are places we exist in community, in religious life, in public meetings and debate, as we gather around the same media and talk about it around the water cooler. We keep up with each other by text and social media, but as you probably know, it falls short of actual human contact. I have friends who choose to live in co-housing, where they make a commitment to community by sharing their lives with each other.
I have a great longing to be held by people who know me well. It’s hard to see the old folks where I work, uprooted from their homes, living in isolation even when they’re living in close quarters with others. When I retire, if and when that ever occurs, I hope to live in community with people who know me. Then when my last goodbye comes, I hope I’ll be saying it to those who love me, who will remember me when I’m gone.
