Goodbye
Sometimes we don't get the chance to say goodbye. How funny is it that we're usually left with the last memory we have of someone, and it's so insignificant compared to the experience of knowing them, yet it's still the last memory we have.
I didn't get the chance to say goodbye when we got evacuated from my site. I'm sure many share my experience. In fact, I know 7000 Peace Corps volunteers all have their own similar COVID 19 evacuation story.
Sometimes we don't get the chance to say goodbye because borders are closing and we need to get going fast. The last picture I took of my favorite place remains stamped in my camera roll, a march 16, but I still recall the streets I drove past in the pickup knowing it was the last time.
Sometimes you don't get the chance to say goodbye and tell people how meaningful they were to you. I'm left with memories of the quick hugs from my host family, thinking I would be back.
But it's been a year now, I think we're all still waiting in the hopes of seeing each other again.
Sometimes we don't get the chance to say goodbye to those who impacted us the most, my students, I haven't really apologized for leaving or my silence of leaving afterwards. I'm sure some of you wondered what happened to me after leaving. I hope to be able to make up for leaving so suddenly and that we get to play soccer in El Campo again, or have picnics at the lake.
Sometimes we don't get the chance to say goodbye, but I wish you would have said goodbye to someone the day you chose to no longer be a part of this world. I remember leaving in a hurry that day you sat at your usual desk cracking jokes and laughing with the rest of your classmates
a 15 year old boy, you were happy, weren't you? What else would you be when I heard the news I couldn't grasp its reality. Your smile kept coming to my mind so vividly. I'm sorry for not noticing your pain. I think many of us were left wondering why. The hardest part is wondering that, if you would have said goodbye to someone, to anyone, would you really be gone? Now
there's that cheesy saying that you don't know the value of a moment until it's gone. It burns a little because it's true. Though, we say goodbye all the time, the last ones are the ones we hold on to the most. Sometimes we don't get the chance to say goodbye because the chance is taken from us, like being evacuated in a moment's notice. Other times, we're in a hurry to get going to the next place, and we don't realize that the school chair will never be filled by the same person again, by the same smile.
Maybe I'll see you again someday in another life that won't have had to have been or lost goodbye. But for now, I'll try to live with making my goodbyes count no matter the circumstances. In memory of you.