Closure.

In the next few months, I am going to have to say goodbye to a lot of things in my life. I have nine weeks left of graduate school and five weeks left of my internship with San Diego Hospice. That means saying farewell to professors, supervisors, clients, colleagues, homework and routine. While some of those I can part with gladly (i.e. homework), others I cannot bear to leave. For an entire year, I have been helping others cope with loss; I guess it's time to take my own advice.


Whenever I reach a point like this in life- a point where many different journeys are coming to a close- I always find myself going back to this poem. I heard this my senior year of college during my semester in San Francisco, and it has always brought me comfort. I think I need to meditate on it again...

I Teeter on the Brink of Endings

O God of endings, you promised to be with me always, even to the end of time.

Move with me now in these occasions of last things,
Of shivering vulnerabilities and letting go:
Letting go of parents gone, past gone
Friends going, old self growing;
Letting go of children grown, needs outgrown,
Prejudices ingrown, illusions overgrown;
Letting go of swollen grudges and shrunken loves.

Be with me in my end of things, my letting go of dead things,
Dead ways, dead words, dead self I hold so tightly, defend so blindly,
Fear losing so frantically.

I teeter on the brink of endings:
Some anticipated, some resisted, some inevitable,
Some surprising, most painful;
And the mystery of them quiets me to awe.

In silence, Lord, I feel now the curious blend of grief and gladness in me
Over the endings that the ticking and whirling of things brings;
And I listen for your leading
To help me faithfully move on through the fear of my time to let go
So the timeless may take hold of me.

Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace