On the eve of yet another departure, I find myself wondering about the ceremonies of departure. In moments of leave-taking, what are the appropriate gestures? What is the etiquette of farewell? Even with Wikipedia's help, I am unable to come up with anything other than the lyrics to a Moody Blues song. And so I wonder: why aren't there any ritualized gestures to say good-bye?
In my family, taking someone to the airport is never a casual affair. We would never think of a drive-by drop-off at the curb in which hasty embraces are foreshortened by impatient taxis carrying desperately late travelers or minivans full of Senegalese soccer players. In the pre-9/11 days, our passenger would always be accompanied to the gate by the entire family and attended to till they disappeared into the plane. Even after, we could still be seen hopping up and down hysterically, waving and screaming: "WE LOVE YOU! SEE YOU SOON! CALL AS SOON AS YOU GET IN! WE MISS YOU ALREADY!" just in case we could still be heard or our pilgrim might want to run out for an extra hug (which would not-that-rarely happen).
But I have had enough fights with enough boyfriends to know that this is not traditional. Even so, my heart never fails to sink when the moment of departure is treated lightly. For me, at the moment of the backward glance, I need to see someone standing there, seeing me off - I need a physicality to ground me emotionally as the plane lifts off. I need that moment to be witnessed - that through this departure, I am being splintered, fragmented and reformed.
Rituals, just like superstitions, are meant to comfort us when confronted with the unknown. A departure is the promise of an exponentialization, a parallel world beginning as your old world continues without you. Just because it happens so frequently in our increasingly-globalized world does not mean that a departure is no less deserving a sacrament than a baptism or marriage or funeral. In all of those other occasions, we are aware of and sensitive to the transitional nature of our lives, the reality that our positions and self-definitions can shift with acrobatic ease.
So far, the most comforting thing that I have learned about departures is the Bengali phrase for good-bye, which is "I am coming."
4 comments:
how moving that the blogosphere re-entry is so beautifully converses with with the language and emotion of departure. A steamy mix.
And I knew u could always see my lips pressed smudgily to the glass and my arc-ing arms moving to pinpoint me in the expanding geography. And just so u know I will always be there to drop off and pick up with the ceremony befitting geographical movements in life (and all the others:)
i will witness you coming back in b-ton tomorrow!
One of the gifts of Facebook has been to find you and your writings. So beautiful and inspiring, so much depth, and thought in things that happen everyday, and so many of us take for granted. I had never thought of departures in such a way, I never make a big deal of arrivals or departures. I have never lived in a city or a house for too long, maybe I have never had that sense of belonging. And maybe just until now, I realized that most people do not live the way I do.....there has always been the same backdrop in their lives. Hmmmm your words inspire so many thoughts and feelings.... Have a wonderful return "home".
such a great piece of writing it has made me forget the horrors of the man eating badgers of Basra
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