That Stephen. Today I read yet another blog post from Mr Stephen Fry. I wouldn’t say it was one of my favourites, but it certainly wasn’t one of my least favourites. It seems overly simplistic dividing anything into my favourites and not favourites, but unfortunately this tends to be how I categorise so very much; films, music, pets. The truth is, almost anything written by Stephen Fry almost automatically becomes categorised as something among the greatest things I have read, not solely because I have read great deal of rubbish over the last 19 years, but because he is such a gifted writer. To further illustrate this, I direct you to his letter to his 16 year old self.
My intention for this post was not to further pontificate (I wrote pontificate?) about the splendiferous figure of astuteness and eloquence that is Mr Stephen Fry. Today, this evening would be more accurate, was a friend of mine(@Nat_Browning on Twitter)‘s farewell meal before she enters the hotbed of arrested development and necessary maturity that is university. There were tears, hysteria (false and exaggerated on my part), hugs and an underlying current of sadness. My question is this, why the sadness? Why the hysteria, false hysteria and tears? Which goodbyes necessitate the aforementioned reactions?
There are loads of different types of goodbyes; adios, au revoir, adeus, auf wiedersehen. Not ju
st those of the linguistic variety, but the very nature of the goodbye itself. There’s the simple goodbye, also known as the see you next time goodbye. It’s the kind of good bye that you say when believe it is almost certain that you’ll see the other person again. In this case you could be saying, “See you next time/tomorrow/later”. There’s the epic farewell, such as that of a young maiden saying farewell to her lover as he sails off into the distance where she is unsure if he’ll survive the journey. There’s the “giving away”; a father walking his child down the aisle into another stage of her life, the good bye is not to her, but his role as her primary male protector. Finally we have the more permanent of goodbyes, the kind of goodbye where people adorn black suits and it is certain that one person will not be able to bid anyone farewell. Surely, there are more goodbyes, I simply cannot be asked to list them all, and, I cannot think of them all.
So there we have it, a cross-section of goodbyes, the first would by no means warrant tears or any particularly strong emotions. The next, yeah, pretty much, what with the possibility of death n’ all. The next, probably, the father is in a sense giving his daughter away. The last, yes, what with the death n’ all. But where does the long absence as a result of going to university fall in this? It’s not quite see you next time, nor the epic farewell, it’s not the “giving her away” (as none of us own Miss @Nat_Browning) and it certainly isn’t the last one. I’d say it’s:
So does it warrant tears? It’s somewhere between a casual good bye and an indefinite one. Of course it does? Why wouldn’t it? It’s deserving of hugs, hysteria, tears, snot, sadness; the entire crying experience. But why no tears from yours truly? And why a whole blog post before coming to this conclusion. Maybe it’s because of my hermit ways. But that’s something for another blog post.
