This is goodbye

My son has gone missing again, no phone again, no other contacts, no clue how to reach out to him.  The depression, the addiction, the holidays it seems have swallowed him up, again. My mind so easily goes to thinking and believing this is the time, this is goodbye.

My mother's health is quickly deteriorating. Is this the time, is it time for hospice?   My mind easily thinks and believes I am returning to see her and  this is goodbye.

My mind is lost in the goodbyes, the gasps of breath, the fall of tears, the heaviness in my heart.  My mind has just said goodbye to my son, to my mother, goodbye to hope, goodbye to anything other than sorrow. I have said goodbye to possibility.  Perhaps it is really saying goodbye to possibility that hurts the most. Yes, I think that is it. Lost in grief, I say goodbye to the awareness of love in the mix too.  This I have found to be the most painful, not the circumstances necessarily but the goodbye to Love itself that awaits my awareness of it, again. 

What if it is not goodbye?  What if it is hello?  I bring my mind to that question, and it says hello to the invitation.  Hello.  Without this suffocating and exhausting limp into goodbye, the hello's begin:

Hello breath, hello opening heart to love itself, to the presence of a deeper love and intention to feel it and live it even amidst the grief.  Hello to the possibility of healing - my mother's, my son's, my own.  Hello to that!  Hello to not knowing, not playing god - always a welcomed and comforting hello to that! There is comfort and possibility in simply not knowing, the inability to now know, and to be with the conditions of life now, knowing love finds me, holds me, moves me, continues on, remains.  Hello to that! 

This is hello.  Hello to loving now, from the deepest and wisest most connected parts of me and imagining the heart to heart connection, the energy of love shared through time and space.  Hello to it filling my heart, circulating and bursting out in its lightness, in the light of love. This is hello in this day, and any day.  Hello to that!  

This is hello to more surrender and choice to accept that which I can not change.  And a hello to the next part of that ... It is what it is, for now, and now what can I do? A hello to what is possible, to what I can do, and within my ability.  It is a hello to some challenging times and, therefore, a hello to knowing the deep healing work that invites me, has so abundantly been shared for me along the way, through time, with such special people.  Hello gratitude! 

This is hello to sharing time, love, and peace with my mother who miraculously is growing stronger.  This is hello to creating the inner peace within me this day to share with my son wherever he may be, in whatever condition.  The energy of love, of peace has no concept of time and space, it travels deep and far.  This is hello to do what I can to return to that peace.  This is hello to the wisdom that anything else is a goodbye to a truer connection to love. The very thing that will always hurt, the goodbye to it that is the little bell, even the loud gong, that reminds me to turn the goodbye into a hello.  

Love does not leave, it is I who say goodbye to it when in fear and the imagined fearsome future, when believing thoughts even for brief moments that would shadow all the various ways love can and will say hello. 

If there are to be goodbyes, the hellos are there too.  Can I know for sure that it is goodbye.  No, no I can't.  Even in the earthly goodbyes, the hellos will present themselves, if I say hello back.  Yes, there is grief, and simultaneously the hello enters in.  Hello Compassion.  Hello Peace.  Hello Gratitude.  Hello Love.

To all the possibilities of "this is hello". 

Joanne Richards
​1/8/22