Departure

How is one supposed to feel when someone is walking away, and you know you can't follow them where they're going to? When you know they'll reach a point where they can no longer turn back to wave, when they will have to walk away without turning back?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not melancholy. OK, maybe a little, but just a little. As I expected, this feels more like a warm tug than a twisting stab.

He'd held me goodbye last among the sending-off party - F hinted perhaps that was significant. I hadn't meant to cry at all.

It started to hurt at goodbye, more than I thought it would. I bled on my way home, but just a little. Like neatly done surgical stitching, it will leave a thin, fine semblence of a scar before fading into the memory of my skin.

I don't know what tomorrow will feel like.

Strange. It doesn't really feel like he's entirely gone. One day he'll be, but it doesn't feel like now, even though he's already physically far away and going further every moment.

But in several ways, I'm glad it has turned out this way. I feel a little more whole, now that things have happened the way they have. Another what-if under my belt, but sometimes it's the what-ifs that keep us alive. I hope this has worked out for him in a good way too.

I hope this doesn't hurt you in the way you said you didn't want to at the start. You thanked me. I hope you meant it.

Many go through life never knowing what it is to connect with other people at certain levels, the levels that touch you in deep, new ways. It can come completely unexpectedly, like here and now. It makes your life a little richer for having experienced it.

I did what you asked. I saved that smile for after you were gone.