Three Rules For Goodbyes

1. You cannot say it only once, or it doesn’t count. In fact, you must say it at least thirty-four times, but never to her. Say it in a letter you won’t send. Say it at a bus stop under your breath. Say it as a question, and then, when this goes poorly, say, It was only a question. Say it to overhead birds, to the lone log floating in the river, to the stone you toss over that log and into the water. Hear that stone go plunk. Watch it spit up a tiny foam, then disappear, just as easily as you hoped it would.

2. Don’t ever actually say goodbye. When the time comes, talk instead about t-shirts, about unpaid bills, about the half-finished carton of egg nog in the fridge. Talk about all of these things, then put them in a box or a bag and carry them out the door you will never pass through again. You will want to say goodbye, or good luck, or I will always love you. You won’t. There are rules.

3. You know the third rule. And really, it’s not so much a rule as a ritual, a daily practice, or maybe an hourly one. For the rest of your life, it is. Opening boxes and doors. Opening lips and closing them. Tossing that stone into the river, day after day, and waiting for some sign that it’s hit bottom.

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Brian Benson grew up just outside a Wisconsin town with three bars and no stoplights, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches creative nonfiction at the Attic Institute and facilitates free Write Around Portland workshops in schools, treatment centers, and affordable housing. His short nonfiction has been published in Entropy, Hippocampus, Off Assignment, Five Minutes, and the Sun, and he’s the author of Going Somewhere (Plume), and co-author, with Richard Brown, of This Is Not For You (OSU Press).