They Always Leave..... Or on saying Good Bye.

I spend a great deal of my life waiting for people. I wait for them to leave. It seems, during my lifetime, they always do. And they seem to do so with a sense of permanency. My mother passed away when I was a small child. I was reared in a household headed by my 65 year old grand grand and 40 plus year old aunt. Our immediate family during that time consisted of my great grand's siblings. All of their children were adults, who either had no children or their children were well into adulthood, who of course had children of their own who were college age. By the time I was 11, I had lost most of the family I was most familiar. My sister and I started our lives a new, with my grand and my aunts (my mother's three siblings). Whom, we knew little of. My great-grand instilled in my sister and I, despite our fathers presence and participation in our rearing, her constant message, "..... your sister is all you have" until the day of her death. And to this day, is something that resounds to a chill at my very core. I remember when she left during my junior year in undergrad. She and her husband were moving to California. Not only did I cry every day for nearly a month, I felt incomplete. I did not feel whole again until the day she returned to Texas. I told her I resented her leaving and how it impacted me a couple of years ago during one of our sister lunches.
During my adolescence I befriended the military brats. The ones whose parent was on special assignment and wouldn't be stationed at the base for very long. Or the ones who had that far away look in their eyes. Who had parents who were gypsy like and they never stayed anywhere for very long. It was simply my way of coping. I had experienced many loses in my life. You see, "they" were always going to leave, so knowing that made it easy for me to wake up one day and hear: "My dad is being stationed in Guam, Korea, or Germany. My dad got a job in Houston so we're moving. My mom has to go away so I'm going to live with my grandmother in.." And in Undergrad? All my friends were from South America, and after Graduation they were either going back home, moving New York, DC, Los Angeles, etc."
I've never really had to say goodbye. I always knew they were going so it became my norm. My way of life. What I called temporary or situational friendships. And for the most part, I lived my life and based most "friendships" on this simple premise "they always leave."
Until The Neo-Soul family...And now, I'm struggling. I'm struggling with the need to say goodbye. See I never thought of this cat as someone whom I'd have to bid farewell to. I know that he has the potential to do great things if given the opportunity, focus and support. Just never believed he would change his home base to accomplish it. Believed that he would use the family and Nationals as a way of making a name for himself.
He will not hear these words from me. He knows why. It is because more than anyone I've ever known, he is my pain and my struggle. We are that much alike in the battle we engage in daily with our demons. He knows that I believe in him, and that while I have a healthy fear of his choice, I would rather be silent than to negate or squash, the courage he has managed to put forth and follow his dream. He knows what I know, that it has to be in our own way. Brother, where ever I lay my head, you have a place to call home. Relentle... baby boy. I love you. Be safe on your journey. Words and deeds are mightier than any sword. And those battles which are fought in darkness will be won in the light of intelligent courage. Be intelligent. Be courageously brave.
That would make a great line in a poem.....
i love you. thir13teen