Do It, So You Can Feel It

A Ritual for Saying Goodbye

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash

For several years, I had a hard time saying goodbye to my daughter after spending even just a weekend together. I wrote somewhere else that it gave me a Dementor episode, as if all the joy of the world was gone.

It happened once that we spent a week’s vacation in Italy. On the last day, I dropped her at the railway station in Bologna, where she was taking a train to visit friends in Verona. I was driving back home straight afterwards, to Northern Germany, where I was living back then. A full-day drive.

I was crushed by the familiar goodbye-depression, and even cried while driving out of the city, and all the way through the Trentino region. But then, crossing the border to Austria, and soon to Germany, something happened. The Italian vacation felt already like a memory enclosed in a jar. The further I was driving through familiar territory, with German village names and traffic signs, the stronger my feeling of gaining back my balance. When I saw the sign to the familiar motorway hub in central Germany on the north-south route, it felt like coming home.

I observed this change of mood, and wondered: could we offer ourselves, or our coachees, a hands-on experience that might replicate, and this way, push its emotional counterpart? When we need to come to terms with a goodbye, for example, maybe we could actually walk away and leave a stage set behind. Gaining distance in physical space might help gain distance in our minds.

Do it, so you can feel it.

I’ve actually done that on purpose twice already. Of course, it’s no everyday tactic; you have to be ready for it to work.

So I wrote a story of what it might look like. It’s based on real life, but of course, details have been adapted.

Enjoy it!

---

She opens her eyes and checks in with her surroundings. Remembers where she is, and why. Remembers.

Today I’m leaving home, but you’re staying here, Peter!

I thought I’d sleep longer, or at least take it slow this morning. The train’s only at eleven. Plenty of time.

But I’ve got to do it, now that I woke up thinking of it.

This week here I felt I was free of you; past with the past, the fjords with the present. And then, out of the blue, I’m talking to you again. But only to take you to the place to say goodbye. It must be just the final step.

I’ll get up and pack everything right now, no time to waste. And then I’m taking you to the harbour.

I’ll have one more coffee there, watching the ships and the fjord, and then I’ll be off to the station. Catch the train to Oslo, tomorrow the flight back home.

I’m going back home, but you’re staying here.

This time, it’s going to work. It’s going to be a real goodbye, not one I just speak out, for lack of options.

I’ll be physically leaving you behind and walking away.

There’s not much to pack; I’ll be done in a minute.

Just brushing my teeth, and taking a brisk shower. Shove the last items in the upper flap of the rucksack. Done.

Check out. Get out on the street. Fresh air. To the harbour.

You’ve been with me for too long.

It’s been ten months since that first chat on the dating site. Two months now since I evicted you from my contact list.

I only got to see your face in the selfies you sent over instead of real kisses. In the two or three video calls you felt safe enough to make.

A lover without a face, without a skin to touch. A lover with irresistible texts instead, and a mesmerising voice.

I talked to you in my notes, in my diary, in the video messages that I was planning to send you some time. You were a ghost in my phone.

I wrote:

I am shutting you out.

I’ll be missing the sound of your messages coming in after midnight, or at dawn.

But now I must shut you out. I need a real face, or a clean cut.   

You listened each time, and found the right words to show you understood. Or so I thought. You always came back. Sooner or later, there was another sweet message on my phone.

The nights we spent in messaging, until the darkness next to me in bed almost took shape, whispering in my ears with your voice!

The Quixote in me, who tirelessly created you!

I have this habit of inventing the people I’m falling in love with.

You never took shape. Not even for a casual coffee in some nameless railway station, no commitment, no date, just saying hello, stranger.

I’ll take this coffee now on the pier, and give you a few more minutes before I go.

This town did me good. I’ve had a lovely time, filling my life back with something real. The harshness and the almost unbearable beauty of these fjords — it was exactly what I needed. Far enough from home to get a fresh perspective, but close enough to who I am to find where I must go from here.

Now I can see: it was the faraway place to entrust the ghosts and get back from, healed.

You also fabricated yourself, acting out what you were missing out on. You longed for romance? You created one, in the virtual space of your phone.

Your legit life, the distance, the commitments: reasons to invent, reasons to back off, but get back and ask for more next time.

I just won’t think about what you may have wanted to create out of me. I might have been too real already. If anything, you might have wanted to de-create me into a hologram.

But I won’t go over that again. I’m here on this pier because it’s all gone, and I’m about to go, too.

Now you stay here, Peter, and I’ll get up and head for the station.

It feels real, not just to say goodbye, but to literally walk away. It feels right to leave you in a place where I loved being.

I take another look at the fjord and the houses huddled up on the mountain lap. I turn around and start walking. I’m aware of what’s behind, but I don’t look back. That’s the way to do this.

I get off the pier, make my way through the morning crowd, dump the empty coffee cup in the bin, and keep walking across the street, across the park, all the way to the station. The distance is growing with every step.

The train to Oslo leaves on time from platform three.