GOODBYES

It is easier to go than to stay. I would know too little about staying, for it is me who always goes leaving everyone behind. Today it was different - it was my turn to stay. I sent off Roxanne, my friend, also a volunteer at our Yellow House. She left after a four months mission service home to Delaware in the US.

When you go you are filled with the change while the place you leave will suffer without you. For you were a part of the place and it hurt when it saw you go and it will miss you and all the people you were a part of will miss you too.

So now we have a rehabilitation home that needs recovery together with its patients . Ironic.

When Roxanne was (re)packing her things this morning I sat on her empty bed and thought of my parents. It must have been hard for them to have let me go like that. I said I left for good and had no idea if or when I would return. Yet they did not try to stop me, instead they sent me off with encouraging words. My father, a massage therapist by profession, even gave me a foot massage for the journey: “For you to be able to walk further!” he said.

Today (again) I learned that goodbyes are painful. Yet they are always there - in every greeting there is a parting. I myself cannot stay much longer than the first days of June. Just like Roxanne I will leave. Yet unlike Roxanne I won´t have any idea where I will be going or who I will be meeting on the road. Noone will know I am coming as I appear on the footsteps of one or the other place, or be able to guess how long I will be staying - myself least of all.

Nonetheless I already know it is going to be easier for me to go than for them to stay.

When David dropped Roxanne off at the airport I asked him where he would drop me off when I go.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Towards the horizon..." I replied.