Gardens and paintings and short visits

I had a friend come up this weekend from out of town. We spent less than 24 hours together, yet it was filled with a lot of conversation, good food, and good caring about each other. Since she left I've been feeling the void she created by her appearance and then her absence. I usually get like this, especially when I've been spending time with someone I care about and it's been really good. Give me a few days to decompress, to process what we talked about, and I'll be back to where I was before, more or less, "good as new."

My perspective on relationships has changed the last three years. I've seen people come and go, some through my job, some from the nature of moving twice (soon to be three times) in three years, some from just the nature of meeting people and saying goodbye. Until recently, I took saying goodbye much harder, whether it was saying goodbye to my aunt, uncle, and cousins who raised me for two years, to saying goodbye to extended family as a couple generations died off when I was in high school, to going to college and leaving a town in Indiana, to leaving college, to losing parts of innocence.

I used to want to hang on, and couldn't understand why we couldn't. It seemed unfair. I was pissed. I'd jog to try to run away from the pain these losses created, I'd stay in motion so I wouldn't have to face it. The more I wanted to hold on, the more frustrated I got and the more painful and elusive it seemed. It was like going to an art gallery and wanting to take the paintings home and not understanding why the security guards blocked the gate, or going to a garden, picking the flowers only to watch them die a couple days later.

So I accepted it.

I accepted that we meet people, they come in, they go out, and we can either get angry about it or appreciate the days and moments we have with them. That's all we have anyway. We come in alone, and then go out alone. There are people who come with us, but no one the whole way, and much of the trip is like traveling a highway with on ramps and off ramps, and some of our traveling companions are with us for quite a while, and others only briefly. We may appreciate the beauty of a painting in a gallery, but see it for what it is and be glad that we got to experience it and that it's there, without needing to possess it for ourselves. Or we can walk through a garden and find peace and comfort in it without getting upset that this garden isn't ours and we can't take it with us.



"It's really good seeing you and being here," she said.
"Same here."
"I wish it was longer. It really isn't much time, is it?"
"No, it isn't. I wish you could stay longer too."
"I guess too short is better than too long though, huh?"
"Or not at all."
"Yeah." For a few minutes there is silence. The sound of rain striking the leaves and the wind blowing through the branches in the dark and the noise of a siren a few streets over are the only things that fill the space surrounding them. "It doesn't bother you, does it? The silence?"
"Not really. I've gotten used to it. Some days I go almost all day in it. But you're afraid of it?"
"I'm quiet, and am afraid of spending a couple days together and then not having anything to talk about."
"Sometimes we need that space. I need it. You need it. It's okay."
"Yeah, it's comfy. When you can be with someone and not feel like you have to talk, that's some security."
"Yes. I like that."

Too short is better than too long, but I'm not always sure it's better than not at all. I mean it is, but sometimes when the time is too short there's the pain that comes with parting. If the moments didn't come at all we wouldn't know what we were missing. And maybe that's the problem in the midst of it. We wouldn't know the good that comes with it, we'd know we were dying by inches and not know how to do anything about it because we wouldn't know what exactly we were missing; we'd just have that nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right, that something didn't fit but never know how to fix it.