On Goodbyes

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster

The thing about goodbyes is that they aren't just one goodbye--they embody in themselves all leavings and losings and separations and absences. And really, these didn't exist before the fall. But I suppose, as St. John of the Cross shows us, they must occur in order for us to be restored:

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

Sin caused division, but healing for sin comes from further divisions. Saying goodbye, then, could be both the result of and a sort of penance for sin.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.