Goodbye

So, Happy Easter.

I'm not entirely sure how to put into words what today was like for me.

This morning a small cadre of friends gathered in Sunnyside, Queens, and loaded our beloved Lagemæ onto a U-Haul truck. Now I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to find that I've been a little sad today, because of that, but I have to admit to having been taken aback by how I reacted once I gave Kevin and Kirsten their final hugs and scooted out of their apartment building.

I barely managed to keep from sobbing like a baby when I got onto the elevator and on my walk to the train, and I -- yeah, I'll admit it -- cried on the train all the way home.   I haven't cried like that for quite some time.  I didn't even cry like that over losing Gavan.  Even in the worst parts of my life since my brother Bill died in 1975, I haven't cried like that. Honest-to-God unabashed crying in public.  I got some pretty weird looks on the train back to Brooklyn, as I snuffled and sniffled and wept and struggled to hold it together.

I've been sitting here wondering why that should be, when I'm going to be seeing them in a little more than a month, and I'll be spending the next five months in the city they just moved to...

Well, you know how sometimes you think you're crying about one thing but you're really upset about a whole host of things?  It wasn't until much later in the day, when I was sitting down to enjoy a little Take Out Chinese Easter repast with Topher that I understood more fully what was going on.  Toph is such an insightful person, and managed to put into words what I was going through.

It wasn't, he suggested, that I was so much mourning the Lagemæ leaving -- though that was a big part of it -- but that I was affected by how it was emblematic of the bigger transformation that my life has seemed to be hovering near for a while.   Topher is convinced that I want some sort of transformation in my life, but that I'm not entirely sure what form it will take, and the loss I feel at the departure of Kevin and Kirsten (and the relatively imminent departure of Ken Bolden, and maybe even Topher himself) is merely an expression at the larger uncertainty I'm feeling these days.

As you know, I went through a rather bleak period at the end of last year, and in many ways am still coming out of it (what Topher -- who was instrumental in helping me through it -- likes to call "the dark night of my soul"), and still searching for that transformation.

The good news is that, uncertain of what's to come and a little frightened of what could either be wonderful or disastrous, I'm eager for it, and ready to meet it with what has, for me, been a traditionally natural optimism.

So, Happy Easter.