Mournful Bye

It has always puzzled me why parting from friends and those whom one loves is called a "good" bye.  It certainly has never seemed good to me.  Of course, "good" is a generic, generally positive word that my 5th grade teacher instructed me NEVER to use in written English (along with the words "nice" and "a lot"), though the word can be used to modify something generally bad (such as, a "good" skid, a "good" smack, a "good" burp, or a "good" earthquake).  There has never been, for me, a sweetness to the sorrow of a parting, my apologies to Shakespeare.  

 

As the last week (before I leave for a year) winds down, and I find myself continually noting the things that I am doing for the last time, the people that I am seeing for the last time, and the places that I am going for the last time, before I leave--I can postively say there is little that seems "good" about it.  Certainly I can acknowledge the "good," the result of decisions Sheryl and I have made, the result of policies our country is implementing, the result of orders the military has passed down as a result of those policies, all from a macro sense.  However, at the micro level, personally, change is difficult to incorporate, and carries with it a series of stresses unique and unignorable.

 

Semper Fi, Jon G.