Last Goodbye

Today had a distinctive Jeff Buckley feel to it, and by that I mean melancholy. Hard. And given the reason for the melancholy and the hardness, I thought this would be an appropriate song with which to mark this day:

This is our last goodbye
I hate to feel the love between us die
But it's over
Just hear this and then I'll go
You gave me more to live for
More than you'll ever know

This is our last embrace
Must I dream and always see your face
Why can't we overcome this wall
Well, maybe it's just because I didn't know you at all

Kiss me, please kiss me
But kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation
You know it makes me so angry 'cause I know that in time
I'll only make you cry, this is our last goodbye

Did you say 'no, this can't happen to me,'
And did you rush to the phone to call
Was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind
Saying maybe you didn't know him at all
You didn't know him at all, oh, you didn't know

Well, the bells out in the church tower chime
Burning clues into this heart of mine
Thinking so hard on her soft eyes and the memories
Offer signs that it's over... it's over

Yes it is. I tried to tell my kids that, but they said: "That's what you said the last time, Mom." Hmmm. I guess it is possible that I did say that before, and I guess I understand that they can't feel or understand the difference between the two times. They don't know, at least not on a conscious level, what's different about me that makes this time different.

I also told their Dad that my relationship was over, because it doesn't work very well to get that kind of information secondhand from the kids. He was nice about it, but it wasn't a comfortable feeling by any stretch of the imagination.

Comfort was something today just refused to offer, and by the end of it, I was not in good shape. I yelled at my daughter, and that never makes either of us feel good. Afterward, I asked both of my kids to come and talk to me.

"I'm angry" I told them. "Not at you, at life, but it is causing me to overreact to things that irritate me in our interactions and I'm sorry about that. I will do what I can to express it appropriately, and I'll go to yoga in the morning. That will help. In the meantime, if you could just try not to give me a hard time about doing things that you know are your jobs, that'd really help."

And they really seemed to hear me...