A graceful exit

The kid's first off-campus abode. Summer 2010.

I've been lying, not laying, in bed (yes, Dad would be proud; even at the very end of his life when his caregivers would say, "We're going to lay you down now," he'd snap, "You will not lay me down! I am not a piece of paper!"

... where was I?

Oh, yes. Lying in bed. Not as in telling untruths, but reclining in a horizontal, supine state. And in this position, pondering.

I did a lot of that after my Christmas Break last year. Pondering. While supine.

Speaking of grace, did you know that Nancy means grace or full of grace? Wishful thinking on my parents' part, d'you imagine?

My point today, and I do have one, is that I have said a lot of goodbyes in my young life. Some, of course, were final. Or final for our time on Earth. Most, really, were the "see you later/until we meet again" sort. Because even when you think it's pretty much THE END or the very last time you'll see someone, I've been astonished to learn that lives that once intersected might do so again.

Even with all that experience at goodbye-ing, it's not something I've mastered. Hey! According to Wictionary, goodbye is from the Middle English godbwye - a contraction of God be with ye. I like that! Today I will say God be with ye to some people very dear to me. Some I've worked beside for a very long time and some only a few years or months or weeks.

Today I'll turn the last page of a 10-year-long chapter of my RayZooMay. End one era of my work life and prepare to begin another. I've muttered and mumbled and hinted at it for a long time, and now the day has come to make a graceful exit to my "what's next."