Saying goodbye, saying hello.

During Christmas break at my house, it’s time for the old vinyl record player to come out. Simon and Garfunkel is in heavy rotation, and the other day I heard these words reverberate through the house: “Hello Hello Hello Hello … Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye … that’s all there is.”

It made me remember a time lately when I found myself bawling on an airplane next to strangers while reading a short story. The main character in this story, having suffered several recent losses, sees only more losses ahead. She concludes that this is what the rest of her life is going to feel like: “Goodbye and goodbye and goodbye.”

Sometimes it can feel like that to me. Goodbye, my little kids who are no longer little kids. Goodbye to all the people and relationships I’ve lost, and to all the losses that are sure to come. Goodbye to the body I used to have that could do a bunch of stuff it can’t do anymore, and to much more of that ahead. Goodbye in the future, eventually, to any body at all.

But also, I have to remember, it’s like Simon and Garfunkel say-there is also hello. Hello to whatever is out there, beyond what I can imagine. Hello to the adults my kids will become. Hello to new loves and new relationships that I can’t even picture and that I have no words for. Hello to being older and older, and to whoever that person is. Hello even to illness and death. Hello to whatever it is that’s beyond having this body.

I believe that this world gives us a spectacular amount of chances to love. I also believe it gives us an amazing number of opportunities to circle back around and try things again. To say hello over and over and over.

A dear friend of mine told me a story that has stuck with me for many years. He was a college administrator during his career, and gave wonderful emotional support to the students he encountered for decades. However, for whatever reason, and much to his regret, he wasn’t able to be very emotionally or physically present for his own children.

By the time I knew him, he had long since retired. His kids had their own kids, and even some grandkids, and lived their own lives far from where he lived. He decided, in the last decade of his life, to move near them and to try to re-establish some of the connection they had lost.

After a sincere attempt, he decided that the emotional distance between him and his kids was too great to bridge into any real intimacy. But, one night, he had a revelation of sorts.

He was sitting in his living room, talking with a young exchange student he and his wife were hosting. This young woman needed someone patient, consistent and kind to help her practice her English and to encourage her at this point in her life. Most of all, she just needed somebody to show up for her over and over again.

“I couldn’t be there for my kids when they were young,” my friend told me.” Nothing can happen that can bring me back to that time. But I can be here, for this young woman, right now.”

As Zen philosophy would say, time flies like an arrow and only in one direction. Behind us there are a lot of goodbyes. We may not be able to make things right with people from our past or in the ways that we might prefer.

But we can take what we have with us and let it fly into the future. We can trust that our intentions will find a home and a purpose, even if it might not be exactly what we’d planned, and even if we can’t envision it yet. We can trust that there will always be chances for love and connection, and that love will travel beyond us into the future.

Even in wintertime, even in darkness, even in the face of illness and death-even in times like these, we can still be surprised. And we can still surprise others. Even as we get older, and even as we lose more and more, there will always be something more to say hello to.

Whatever your faith and holiday traditions, I wish you a peaceful turning into 2018, and a year full of goodbyes and hellos.

— Elizabeth Fitterer is an islander and a member of the Puget Sound Zen Center.