My First Goodbye: Eggshells Revisited

Tonight, I am having my first goodbye dinner as I prepare to leave Chicago. Over wine and soup and the constant tendings of a well trained waiter with ill timing and a penchant for taking the plate before you are done, I will say goodbye to someone I have come to know, care about and love and I will eat salmon in a leek and wine reduction. As the reality of this dinner's theme hits me, I am flooded with feelings. All the feelings come to the surface, that I had cleverly kept at bay with concern for Inkey, a smashed hand, the chaos of everyday obligations and a mixture of shock, denial and numbness. I think of all the people I love and all the fertile hope that I had for what my life in Chicago would be and how little of that hope was realized. Unexpected tears arrive, I lift my fingers to my wet face surprised at the depth of the storm. Tonight, there will most certainly be dessert and a second glass of wine.

I didn't know that I was so sad. But as I tried to make sense of the tears I took a quick inventory that proved these feelings were previously present. I realized that I have not been eating much or sleeping much and I really don't care that much about shoes and am not thinking much about Paris. The omniscience of hindsight makes the diagnosis clear. Unable to tolerate my grief, I began to Google for a poem that matched my feelings, as I can not write poetry and that my raw feelings are word-free and are usually expressed in monosyllablic utterances like an emotive cave woman, "me, sad." After trying on some ill-fitting poems that itched and scratched and pinched in the wrong places, I found the one that hug to the contours of my consciousness like a pair of well worn jeans. I share it with you in a lieu of more whining and complaining. I hope it doesn't make you cry, like it did me.

You who already were lost

by Rilke, and translated by Elizabeth Knies

You who already
were lost, beloved, never to arrive,
I don’t even know what melodies you like.
I don’t look for you anymore, don’t hope to find you
in time to come. All the immense
images in me of distant landscapes,
cities and towers and bridges and un-
foreseen turns in the road
and that realm where the gods dwell
rise up in me to mean
that you will always elude me.

Ah, you are the gardens,
ah, I saw you with such
hope. An open window
in a country house—
and you stepped out,
pensive, nearby. I found streets
where you had just been,
and sometimes a mirror in a shop
still dizzy from you, that startled,
reflected my abrupt appearance.
—Who knows if the same
bird didn’t sing for us
yesterday, separately, in the evening?

Picture courtesy of Over Hard: Eggs and Infertility.