Farewells, goodbyes and the distant wish teletransportation was real!

The first time I ever said goodbye to someone I loved I was one and a half years old. My grandmother suffered from an aggressive form of breast cancer that was already invading the rest of her body and painfully weakening her bones. The legend goes that one particular day, when she was once more taken to the hospital - something that had become wretchedly familiar to all of us - I cried my lungs out! This one time, this afternoon seemingly similar to many others that had been, I decided to cry for my grandmother, screaming for her not to leave. It turned out to be the last time she went to the hospital. She would die there a couple of days later, much to the relieved and painful sadness of her loved ones. 

I don't quite remember this episode of my life, nor I remember what did I feel when someone so dear to me disappeared, so early, from my very young life. My dad, the son of that once lively, caring and vibrant woman, tried to take me with kindness to the subject of loss. After all I was just a tiny little girl, barely knowing how to put phrases together. He told me my grandmother had passed away and had been laid to rest so she could now become a beautiful flower or a wonderful tree in someone else's garden. To this day this sounds to me like the most charming dark tale and it is one that never stopped making sense in my mind.  

As an adult, I struggled to keep positive when I started saying goodbye to friends that were somehow leaving. I had a hard time accepting that I would no longer be part of their daily life, their routines, their coffee runs, their parties, their break-ups, their joys and their tears. I had even a harder time when that distance came, not only physically but also emotionally... I faced the reality that some people, once part of almost every 24 hours of my day for an important period time, were now estranged from me. We either slowly grew apart or life, surprisingly - for me, at least -  got us to break our once strong and significant bond. Accepting these separations, these damages, came with big scars that I had to learn to heal and avoid. It all came with time and with some confused hours reminiscing about where loss had brought me in life.

Just as Lavoisier once said, and just like the image of my grandmother turning into a beautiful plant, "nothing in nature is lost, everything changes". The people passing us by are never truly lost. They changed, themselves, life, us and they will keep on transforming the world long past their time with us. They affect the way we view life, our dreams, fears and hopes, the way we talk and laugh, our sense of humor. They leave behind the marks of their quirks, their long smiles and their wounds. We won't ever be untransformed by them and they will take part of us with them too... onto their next journey.  

These thoughts never made saying goodbye any easier. I don't think it will ever become easy. Suddenly airports aren't as magical as they were when I was a teenager. They became, not only the entrance gate to new worlds and adventures, but also the exit gate for beloved friends that life can unexpectedly make disappear. However, I can now be at peace with loss and exercise my soul to transport myself from the disruptive grief, that would make me anguishly and childishly cry, to the kind vision of colorful flowers and luxuriant trees embellishing someone else's garden. And even if a tear still lurks within, I can gently keep my smile while imagining such wonderful image.



"Tide will rise and fall along the bay
but I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going anywhere.
People come and go and walk away
But I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going anywhere."

                                                                    Keren Ann

If life was the movie playing in my head.

Let's stay in tonight, chomp on sunflower seeds, watch the aquarium go insane when we feed the fish, clasp our hands together and dream about our own "Garden Sate".

Days of our lives.

And then one day it was not like children playing anymore.

Love was out... in its most shattering, exciting, stormiest way. We were grown-ups for the years that rested behind, but we faced life like the teenagers we wished we could still be! Here and now there were real lives at stake though... hearts yet to be broken, unstained feelings, innocence to be lost, newfound connections of the brain and of the spirit! There was no playground love anymore... It was beyond kiss and tell, a whole set of unconfessed stories breaking down existing walls, tearing down the past and making the future unexpectedly unforgivable!

It was amazing how suddenly the friend next to me was not an innocent little girl anymore... my friend was a woman, a man, with a job, baggage turned into a whole backpack of stones, complicated loads of unnamed reflections. Surprisingly, people around me had this incredible aura of an experienced person with a life of encyclopedic tales turned soap operas…. Secrets, tangled stories, friends that were no more, love crooked into despair, longing feelings of times forever lost in a different chapter of some other novel. All an existence crushed into this dense movie, a reality tv-show of some sorts, all part of an unreal life that was my very own after all. 

This was my only chance at this show... Eventually it all seemed real… Devastatingly real!

But we're just kids on the run.

Elegy to a love that never was.

I miss you dear friend, dear lover, dear enemy... 

I miss you drinking your beer next to me. 

I miss your wisdom, your advice, your certainty balancing my doubts, calming the storm of my anxiety and appeasing what's inside of me.

I miss your baklava and the sound you made chomping on sunflower seeds. 

I miss your strong arms around my body, your warm embrace and the space there wasn't between us...  Your words written in long letters that promised eternity to the feelings we shared.

I miss seeing you walking towards me. 

Your jig, your brown bag crossed over your body and your big smile, smiling at me.


I miss your hand in mine.

Walking together through the little park in front of the church. Our hands clasped so tight wishing to be assured that it was all real, tangible and possible. 


I miss going to the petshop with you. 

Pet the rabbits, awe at the tarantulas. Beg you for a cat, or ask you for a bearded dragon I could name myself. You never asked but I would have named him Falcor... Like the dragon in the never-ending story.

I do miss your pets. 

I miss lazy nights and quiet weekends. 

Gazing at the aquarium and reading in your couch. The brown sofa with the white and blue flowery cover. I miss that cover... And the pillow you loved with the hippo! Laying there with my feet up singing along to some random song on your ipod.


I miss late Sunday lunches in the balcony. 

Ommelete the way your mom got you used to like, with feta cheese and fresh tomatoes... I loved cooking it for you. 


I miss the sunsets lounging outside.

The glasses of margaritas sitting half empty in the tiled heavy table, while we talked of a future that never came to be.

I miss your eyes on me while I put on my make up... 

You sitting on the floor and looking at me with a dreamy gaze. What were you dreaming about? I always wondered and never asked.

I miss wondering about your thoughts. 

I miss the morning after the parties. 

Waking up before you and making strong, black coffee. The empty bottles of beer all throughout the house. You liked to try the small breweries and the bitter, the better.

I miss tasting that bitterness in your mouth. 


I miss the blue camping chairs outside.

The chairs where you would end our late nights, your hoodie on, all curled up, with the sun already rising and the last beer in your hand.

I used to hate those chairs, how can I miss them now?

I miss the sunny afternoons in the hammock. 

The dogs around us, licking our faces and making us laugh. Smiling wide and your eyes glimmering with happiness, really brown, really big, really beautiful. 

There was an aura of a beautiful story to come. It was all painted with those bright, hazy colors unique  to dreams and good memories. 

I miss the little china plates on the big bookshelf by the entrance. 

We found them with your mom in the big thrift store downtown... The one where we spent countless Sunday afternoons looking for hidden treasures before going to roam around the 2nd hand bookshop.

I miss your big brown eyes piercing my own. 

Staring deep into what I had wanted to carefully hide. Without a blink. Only your arms holding my body against yours and my name coming out of your lips, followed by an eager 'I love you'.


I miss your music. 

Sharing songs and lyrics with you... laying my head on your shoulder and listening to the music we loved. 

I will miss you forever in all the concerts we won't ever share. 


I miss finding love in each move of yours.

Going out with you, have fun, laugh and dance the night away... All my happiness in your laughter, your joy, your pleasure.

I haven't heard you laugh in so long now... Will I ever hear it again?

I miss your Mickey t-shirt and your jeans rolled up when you biked. 

I miss the beginning when it was all uneasy and uncertain.The excitment, the hope... even the fear. We were two explorers finding each other in ways that no words can explain. 

It was all to come. All ahead. 

Now it is all behind as we counted the days there were numbered for us to share. 

All of them.

I miss you dear friend, dear lover, dear enemy... I miss you but I don't want you no more. 

For you were never mine to have.

The park in front of the church still has a green lawn... but your hand is not on mine anymore.

The balcony is there, lonely now, without the camping chairs, the tiled table or us.

I still put on my make-up in front of the mirror but as I glance over my shoulder I can't see you sitting on the floor.
The china plates ended up shattered, in a thousand broken pieces, on the ground... and the bookshelf is now empty of everything… of you & I.

Your thoughts may belong to someone else and are not mine to wonder about no more.

You have your pets, your music, your beautiful eyes, but your life is no longer part of mine.

The memories got tainted and the dreams never came to be.

Now I am the 2nd hand book waiting for someone to find me on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

For love is only eternal while it lasts.




"Miss your teeth dug in my shoulder,

As we rolled in early morning, 

Miss your arm dying beneath me,

As I lay there simply yawning.


Please forget me, you were right dear,

I am cold and self-involved

And though I'll miss you, recent lover

I am weak and therefore fold."


                              Keaton Henson

If life was the movie playing in my head.

Let's stay in tonight, push the furniture out of our way, practice some judo moves and laugh the night away. 

Telling Tales - The boy with a patchwork heart.

In a promised land filled with palm trees and sunsets of the most orange colors, lived the boy with a patchwork heart. He was a seemingly happy boy but had this big black heart covered with loneliness and filled with sorrow.

Why he got this heart of his is for some other time and some other story...it doesn't belong here and now.

The boy with a patchwork heart realized one day that whenever he helped someone, in this really selfless and kind way, a colorful patch would be sewn on a piece of the big black heart of his... whenever he found a way to care for people, to truly take interest in their stories, whenever he truly felt for others and eased their minds and souls, he could add another colorful patch of joy to the broken heart he possessed.

But life has this strange way of wanting to show how delicate and fragile kindness can be and, the same way, patchwork is beautiful but it is just sewn together with lines that can easily break... the darkness was merely concealed by this frail mantle of the brightest colors! 
The boy with the patchwork heart had to work constantly, incessantly, every day of his life, to keep the shining patches well attached to each other. He worked hard to prove kindness as a lasting quality so he could keep the darkness well hidden away. 
He knew, deep down in his gloomy heart, it would be too hard to find someone that would follow him into the dark. He knew what darkness can do… it scares people, it scares love, it scares life away. Kindness, on the other hand, as delicate as it is, is able to give life to a tired spirit and ease the most melancholic thoughts.

And the boy with the patchwork heart kept sewing his patches forever, everyday, while watching the red sun go down behind the palm trees.



"No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I will follow you into the dark."
                                                   Ben Gibbard

Reminiscing...

What life-changing means.
How much it mattered.
How much it troubles.
How much it cost me.
How much he lost me.
And his words.
And his smile.