Last week I said goodbye to Kate, before I left for vacation, in front of the parking lot outside the office. It was a simple but very vivid event in my memory. You know you have had a good friend by the inner-gravity you felt in a farewell moment like this. It was another indescribable feeling I had when departing from a good friend. So I have to examine it this time.
We have experienced countless goodbyes in our life. Some are memorable and some are just stored in the short-term memory. I am sure you know what I mean. I always remember the memorable farewells in my life with the color mood associated with the events: with Kezia in gray metallic telephone booth the first time we had to leave each other, with my mom and bibi in the yellow living room, with my sister Ling in the red airport, with Amy in my last night wandering around in Shanghai; and the one that started it all (and responsible for making me a melancholic wanderer until today) was my farewell with Angeline at the airport when she was leaving for Melbourne.
I would say that a memorable farewell is state of feeling. It is a type of emotional feeling that you experience for a duration of time, just like joy, sadness, eating, sex, anger, etc. There is usually a slow anticipation of someone (or yourself) departing from the loved ones. This could range from a few days to a few months. Then there is a duration after the goodbye, when you feel a sense of loss conjured up with optimism. It is an optimism from knowing that you have created a meaningful relationship and that person will carry with him or her a piece of yourself (the memory) to the new place.
It is the constant switching between this sense of loss and optimism that creates a memorable farewell feeling or a feeling I would call a “bright sadness” (Charlie Hall’s song). This “bright sadness” will plateau for a while and then slowly recede down. That’s when friendship will end. I don’t like to hear the tongue-and-cheek ‘friendship forever’ thing. For me friendship is like a dashed line, with irregular length of lines and gaps. It is not always continuous and I am okay with that.