The Good-byes are SO Hard

It feels like all of my life I have been saying good-bye to people I love.  It's always been hard but not like this.  I left home after college and Florida to California was so far away.  I cried because of the distance and the feeling of helplessness if "anything happened."  The unnamed anything was always lurking about.  And it involved everyone - my parents, my friends, my siblings, even my grandfather.  I cried every time, every time I left.  Then the kids came and the business of them enveloped me and the sad good-byes found their place in the mess.  There was so little time to think about where I was in the world or where everyone else was.  Time marched on.  Once the generational aging began the sadness returned.  I returned to Florida or Iowa and said my good-byes but something new took the place of the sadness.  It was gratitude and what if.  Thank you for this time together.  If it's the last time I see these loved ones, I will hold it in my heart forever.  What if I never see them again?  Life carried on.  The kids grew up.  Grandchildren came.  The grandparents passed on as they are expected to and things seemed right.  I had adjusted to leaving Florida and returning and leaving again.  My parents were healthy and everything seemed fine.  Now I find myself back in Florida which feels right in part of my life but now the California piece of my life is floating about and I can't seem to grasp it.  And that California piece is huge - both wide and deep.  It is friends, it is my children, it is my grandchildren, it is the feeling of home. These are big chunks of my heart - the kinds of chunks that if they were removed, I would die.  I have left California 4 times in the last 2 months and each time got harder.  I can barely speak the day of my departure for fear that I will melt into tears.  And one thing that my family did not need lately is one more person falling apart.  So my feelings are left unsaid.  I leave with a smile so that those left behind will know that I love them and that I'm OK.  But I'm not OK.  I am sad.  I am sad for days.  I am left with an emptiness because all this love is left inside of me instead of inside of my children and grandchildren.  Everyone says, "Oh I know.  The good-byes are hard."  But I don't think they do.  I'm not sure about the value of saying "I know.."  No one can know this pain, this feeling of dis-ease.  What you can know is how deeply I love these people in my life and that maybe, just maybe the sadness will find its place and that it will start to get easier one day.