The Roads We Part On: Until Our Roads Cross Again

For: All of our bittersweet goodbyes.

There are souls whose absence is not just a deafening silence. It is more of a haunting hymn. This hymn lingers in the chambers of our hearts.

Do you have a similar sized hole humming within your heart?

This is not just about those whose journeys have ended, but those who simply take a different path than us.

Forever, forking the road we traveled with them.

This essay is dedicated to the ones who are gone in one way or another. Less of a reflection, and more of a tribute to the toil of togetherness.

Summer is here, and yet winter is always near.

As summer stretches wide beneath the sun, I find myself considering the warm comfort found in shared purpose. Especially as the evenings already feel like the first winds of autumn.

For soon the leaves will turn and drop to the ground, followed by snowfall. Such is the circle of life, a cycle to be experienced. Change also comes with challenges, even when it is positive.

As Winnie-the-Pooh says:
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” – A.A. Milne

I am indeed fortunate, because I have had so many that I desperately did not want to say goodbye to. They were wonderful coworkers. The rare kind, those few who are more than colleagues. Cohorts and companions alongside us in both a professional and personal capacity. Their functions can be filled, but the hole in the heart always heals slower.

It is like the loved ones we have lost, though their scars take even longer still.

While we are alive, we are in action. Life is motion. It is the same while we are actively employed too. This is what guarantees that change is coming.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens.”

– Ecclesiastes 3:1

All the little things start to matter so little once the end comes. There is what has happened, fixed and unchanging. There is the endless what could have happened, which so easily haunts us. Then finally, and perhaps most importantly, for those left in the wake of change’s wave: What is our next step? How do we move ahead?

As I think about recent losses, I am remembering not to take a single soul or second for granted. Nothing subject to change can last forever. As the saying goes, all good things can come to an end.

And I would add, forever is not so far away.