Why saying goodbye is important

Because of how he left his life, because of how he ended up saying goodbye, dramatically impacts my ultimate experience of him. It just seems to be a deep human truth. What is true with Robin and how he left, I think has significant overlap with how we say goodbye in smaller transitions and of course the ultimate transition, death.

On the other hand, if that same person leaves, and is celebrated, it is such a powerful blessing to the person and to the church, because it is explicitly saying you matter and people matter. It only affirms people and strengthens ties when we say goodbye well.

I trust you are starting to get the point here. When the goodbye has gone poorly, it is simply painful. All the good times start to be called in the question, because the ending was so inconsistent with the friendship.

And of course this applies to work as well. But, if the organization really works to create a meaningful and special goodbye, it can be such a blessing to all parties, especially the one leaving. After showing up a number of times to truly let the disciples and others know that he had risen from the dead, just before he leaves he tells his disciples he has a super important job for them to do make disciples , and then he says goodbye by saying the words that resonate deep in our hearts even today….

What a beautiful way to say goodbye. It had to come down to this. All rights reserved. There is no doubt that the most spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically difficult thing for one human being to do with another is to say goodbye. At some level, saying goodbye has a variety of meanings, and all of which implies that one will soon be gone, and you will not see me or talk to me. People from various backgrounds and religious traditions have differing perspectives on this issue.

Being consciously aware that saying goodbye because we are going to die is a peculiar experience. Most of us construct a reality of living that equates to the idea that tomorrow is yet another day.

However, if the idea of the emanate arrival of our death is realized, the concept of saying goodbye takes on a very different set of meanings and experiences. And herein lies the dilemma for most of us. Over time, the individual who we care about, perhaps deeply care about and even love, will fade or dim as a part of our everyday reality. And therein lies the emotional difficulty of grieving and the conflict that it implies as we struggle to combine both the memories of our prior relationship, with the harsh reality of the loss of the physical presence of that person in our life.

Realization of the need to say goodbye is a wholly unique experience for most human beings. While the idea of goodbye maybe just a formality or even a theatrical experience, for some the actual reality of the need is apparent.

Exceptions to the theatrics include a variety of groups of human beings including those who suffer from a medical diagnosis in which death is a certain outcome or endpoint. This does not, however, include those who suffer death in an accidental manner or as a result of political or social conflict or even mental illness or advanced age. Saying goodbye is important for the most obvious cases of a human health condition leading toward death such as incurable forms of cancer.

Depending upon a vast number of health variables, some cancers are not yet curable or even controllable with various forms of treatment including surgery and chemotherapy. While most health providers are competently careful to diagnose the stages of the cancer and to establish a treatment protocol built around those stages, some cancers are just not yet curable, and death is likely within a certain set of parameters.

Thus, the need for saying goodbye generally falls onto those individuals who face the certainty of death within the context of the treatment plan and the medical evidence that supports the plan. Goodbye implies relationships with others. It represents a major task which we must recognize if we are to travel the journey from living to dying in a way that is healthful for ourselves and for those others in our psychological community. Inherent to our relationships within this community are commonly understood as forms of love and caring which provide the basis and the motivation to execute the process and achieve the goal of saying goodbye.

It took a while for my mind to catch up with what my heart was telling me. I now know that the reason for this disconnect is because I did not get to say goodbye. The second time, my world was turned upside down by the death of my daughter.

It was a sudden and tragic death. She was only 20 years old. I could go on and on about her but I will save my thoughts and feelings about the loss of a child for another day. When my daughter died, it was a cold January day in Iowa. I remember sitting at the funeral home, knowing she was there in another room. Many choices were made and many tears were shed. We were trying to decide what would be the best way to honor her life and help all of her family and friends be able to say goodbye.

I knew in my heart that I did not want to put my sweet daughter in the cold January ground. I wanted to have her with me in death even as she was in life. So again, the choice was made to cremate my daughter just as we had cremated my father nine years before. But, there was a difference. When my dad died, I would describe his service as a direct cremation. Nothing else was done to allow for a visitation or time spent with him.

The funeral director never asked or gave us any other alternatives. I knew that would not be right for my daughter, and the funeral director also knew it would not be right for us. So, she told me that our family would be welcome at the funeral home all day that Saturday.