At my twelfth grade graduation, I was sandwiched in between two very funny and fun girls. And we clowned around a whole night, laughing, poking fun at the graduation, shmoozing, and generally waiting for this king of all the boring classes we had to sit through in high school finally come to an end, releasing us to the freedom of---hmmm.

Releasing us to the freedom of what?

But forget about that for now. It's the fact that graduation was pretty much as boring as my high school years were and I could not wait to leave. I don't even remember if anybody from my family came. I am sure they did, but I am not sure why. There were some girls who skipped graduation altogether, an idea that sounded right up my alley, but despite being as non-conformist as I am, that type of statement sounded a little too extreme for me. What if one day I would regret not showing up at my graduation?

I needn't have worried, because I doubt I would care today had I gone to my graduation or not.

But my daughter?

Her graduation was the highlight of four fabulous high school years. She listened attentively to all the speeches, respectful of this momentous day (evening?), thrilled to share this extraordinary culmination of four years well spent with the people most important in her life (namely, her parents and grandparents and cousins). And get this. As she went over to her teachers after the ceremony, she bawled non stop saying her goodbyes. And this a daughter that has never cried about anything for as long as I can remember. Her personality is so sunny, that whichever way she faces, the sun is shining on her. But leaving high school, saying goodbye was heart-wrenching for her.

So what's the deal with saying goodbye? What's the story with why it feels so lousy to some people and so great to others?

Let me tell you this:

Maybe, despite being an excellent student and having tons of friends, I skipped out of the school building at the end of each school year without a backwards glance, the only feeling on the last day of school being one of utter relief and bliss; on the other hand, the last day of camp always left me miserable.

Those last days each summer of camp left me with a pit in my stomach, a horrible wave of homesickness for the sky and grass and camp friends I would miss, and a desperate longing to hide in the bunkhouses until everyone left and go into hibernation until everyone would return again the next summer. I did not want to leave.

We all know that when someone dies, saying goodbye is part of the grief process of losing that loved one. Well, there are losses we must grieve for that are not always about death.

There are other losses.

We can lose a beloved object. That blankie when we are two years old, your grandmother's present, a favorite book.

We can lose a friendship. She dropped you, or moved to Israel, or got married.

We can lose a time in our life that can never return. Chanukah when we were in elementary school seemed so much more wonderful than those in high school when we want to be with friends more than with grandparents. A home we moved away from. A bungalow colony that closed down. A camp that went out of business. The years before our siblings married and the dynamics of our Shabbos meals changed so much.

Lost objects, times, friendships, experiences are all losses. And we grieve for them. Saying goodbye is part of our grief process.

And sometimes, the grief is compounded with regret. Saying good bye to something you feel you didn't appreciate at all, or even well enough; regret saying goodbye knowing of lost opportunities that cannot return is even harder.

Leaving high school was a joyous event because I was not losing anything; on the contrary, I was only gaining by leaving to camp and then onto seminary.

For my daughter, leaving high school was a loss because she had so much fun with friends that she would not have again in a school setting; they were all separating in their plans for the year after. She would miss her friends. She would miss the teachers. She would miss the things she learned. All the things I had not had when I was in high school so there was nothing to miss, nothing to mourn.

But when I left camp, I mourned something terrible. Each year.

I loved my camp friends and knew that during the school year I would hardly get to see them, or they lived too far away to remain in contact, or they would find new friends and forget about me. I loved sports and the grass and the pool. I loved the smells and sounds of nature, of the woods, of the dew in the stillness of morning, of the endless cawing of birds that circled overhead. There was none of that in the city where I lived.

So what is it like for you at the end of the school year?

Relief at leaving all that pressure behind? Sadness for the good time that you can't bottle and keep always?

Slamming the door behind you so you can get on with stuff you really love to do?

A little bit of both? Knowing you will miss school and your school friends, excited—maybe a little nervous about heading off to camp, not sure how things have changed over the year—to move ahead into the summer months? Maybe even moving off into your seminary year? Into your post-twelfth grade year that holds a job, post-high school trainings and opportunities, maybe even shidduchim (yikes!)? Scary, excited, butterflies-in-your-stomach or cool-as-a-cucumber, relaxed, and happy?

This year, what does saying goodbye mean to you?

If it makes you feel sad, allow yourself to process that sadness. What you are saying goodbye to, how you will miss those times, people, and places. And then try to allow yourself to look ahead at where you are going and how those will be the new good times, people, and places. Allow yourself to talk about this with friends and come up with ideas of how to keep your wonderful times in a bottle for always. A scrapbook. A PowerPoint. A time capsule you can put together. It won't change the fact that you must say goodbye, but it will help you cope. And it will help you move on and embrace the new experiences that will inevitably occur.

The nutty thing is that we need to experience losses our whole life in order to grow as people!

As a tiny kid, we need to experience the loss of our baby carriage in order to be independent walkers. Nobody wants to be pushed in a wheelchair when they are in high school, but even if you don't remember, look at how little kids, beginning to walk, fight to get back into their carriages. You want to let them know that even though walking seems hard right now, not walking is so much harder! And life holds so many rich opportunities for you when you can walk. Like mountain climbing. Rappelling cliffs. Laser tag. Walking to school with friends.

With every loss, a person moves onto a more exciting stage in life. Kindergarten is definitely a step up from lying in a bouncer waiting to get fed and changed every three hours, but don't you think high school is even better? And even if you do NOT think high school in an improvement over kindergarten (like me!), would you rather still be in kindergarten? Nope, right? Because you know better things are out there.

So now, as you either bawl your head off about graduating, or fly out the door of your high school, take a minute to stop your tears, to look once more behind you.

And say goodbye.

And then you can round the corner of the very new life waiting ahead...of camp, of jobs, of a Europe tour, of seminary, of shidduchim and face it all with a huge HELLO. Because you have been released into the freedom of a whole new experience that will be so wonderful that you will be even sadder then to say goodbye.

Aren't you glad you arrived?

originally published in Binah Magazine

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