Saying goodbyes to people exiting our lives.

The Package Rarely Gets Wrapped Neatly

             By Aubrey Hammack

When I came across the above lines recently, I realized that this was an article that I needed to write. When we lose someone, it is rare not to have loose ends or unfinished business, or to put it more plainly, things that we needed to say to that person. This happens in other situations not just when we are dealing with death.

 In the past year, I experienced this kind of loss when someone that I had been very close to in the past was tragically killed in an auto accident. There were things that I felt like needed saying at the time, but it was not possible to say them. Now it is too late. Although I realize that as a therapist, I have advised what we call the empty chair response where we pretend the person is there and we tell them what we feel we need to. This is one way to say what we need to say for healing. There are others. If there is unfinished business between you and someone who is alive, my advice would be try your best to deal with it with that person.

Now not being able to say our goodbyes can complicate the grieving process. For example, if you are in love with someone and you have an argument and before you have had the chance to patch things up, this person dies for whatever reason or suddenly moves away, then you are apt to have some guilty feelings that could be troublesome for you. This kind of loss has sent plenty of people to a therapist and I shudder to think of those that needed to go but never made it.

I remember in 1992 when my dad was dying. I was aware that he might not have but a few hours. His death was impending. I was able to say to him, “Dad please don’t die. I need you to be here with me and I love you”. When he died, I then felt guilt that I didn’t tell him exactly how I felt. I would have liked to have said I am so glad I have had you for my father, and I appreciate so very much every thing you have done for me and that I love you so much that words can’t describe. These would have been a few of the things I would have liked to have told him. In this case with my father, there had been no kind of disagreement or argument between us, but still there were things that needed saying.

A friend of mine in the 70s had checked into the hospital for some minor surgery and died evidently due to an allergic reaction to a drug he was given. Now the suddenness of his death threw me big time. No, we did not have any kind of issues that needed working out, but I had just talked with him briefly before his death, and of course had I known this was going to happen, I would have said goodbye and how much I appreciated his friendship.

As mentioned in the second paragraph, sometimes this happens in relationships when a person moves away from us. We didn’t get closure for whatever reason and this leaves us with a void that is hard to fill.

 Sometimes in the dating relationship someone might feel the need to suddenly break it off and the other person is left wounded and unable to cope with what has happened. This did happen to me when I was a senior in high school. After dating this girl through my junior and senior years, she abruptly broke up with me with no explanation and I was devastated and it took me a good year to deal with it. Finally, I just accepted the fact that I didn’t know what happened but my life must continue. Even as I write this, I realize that I would still like an explanation about what happened.

 Closure is always a good thing to have. I realize it is not always possible, but we should always strive for it. This is another article within itself. We seem to feel like there will always be time to tell these precious people how we feel or that we mean to tell them these things. I do believe in most cases they someway, somehow know we love them, but I still think it is so important if we can speak those words.

 So this package rarely gets wrapped neatly for most of us. Will we do a better job of preparing ourselves for the losses we will know in the days ahead? I don’t know but I do plan to try.