Good Bye

"What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain 'till you see their specks dispersing? —it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." - Jack Kerouac, On the Road




I love this quote and it got me thinking about the fact that I've said "goodbye" so many times over the past two years, that you’d think I’d be good at it by now. It never gets any easier.

I will never forget the feeling as we pulled out of my parents’ driveway that hazy August morning. In my rear view mirror, I saw them standing on the porch; my Dad’s arm tight around my Mother’s shoulder. They were waving nervously and forcing smiles. The lump in my throat nearly suffocated me and my eyes overflowed as we set off on our south-bound journey. Molly sat shivering in my lap as I cried all the way to Kentucky. All of the ‘goodbyes’ we had said over the past week were running through my head and I wondered when we would have ‘hellos’ again. Just as we crossed over the state line, the sun came out and “Two of Us” by The Beatles came on the radio. “You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead... We're on our way home...We're going home...” I turned up the volume and rolled my windows down. Monte and I were in separate cars and we got on our walkie-talkies and sang as loud as we could. At that moment I was overcome with a sense of hope, and my tears flowed from happiness this time. Fear turned into excitement and anxiety became exhilaration. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that I had nothing waiting for me in Florida. I knew there would be no one there to hug me ‘hello;’ there were no friends to visit; there was no job waiting for me on Monday, but I didn’t care. As we drove into the unknown, I was comforted by the only thing in my life that was certain: Monte and I were together. I realized that the only way to look was ahead, and home would be wherever the two of us ended up. I also learned how to see the "good" in goodbye.