I Will Always Love You

These lovers first said hello and last said goodbye on a NE couch

This morning as I lay on the couch with my lover one last time, this song came to me in all its cheesy glory:

If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I'll go but I know
I'll think of you every step of the way

And I... will always love you, ooh
Will always love you
You
My darling, you...
Mmm-mm

Bittersweet memories
That is all I'm taking with me
So goodbye
Please don't cry
We both know I'm not what you, you need

Oh I don't know, Whitney. I'd like him to cry. Really, really cry about losing me, the way I've really, really cried for the last year, and especially this last week. At least once.

I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have all you've dreamed of
And I wish you joy and happiness
But above all this I wish you love

I do want these things for him. I really do. But I don't want to lose him.

And I... will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you

I will always love you
I, I will always love you.

You.
Darling, I love you.
I'll always...
I'll always love you.

Yes I will. And I cried my little eyes out as I heard it playing inside my head. And when I managed to pick myself up off the couch and pry myself away from him, Whitney was quickly followed by the Stones reminding me I can't always get what I want.

I'll say...

2019 postscript: Just weeks before we are slated to say goodbye again, I came across this beautiful cover featuring Dolly Parton and Brandi Carlile.

And I will, still, always love him... only this time, I'm willing to lose him to create space for more harmony in my own life.

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...

Roots Before Branches

This morning I had a super interesting experience in my yoga class. I went to an Ashtanga led practice, which means I did more poses than I do in my own practice, including a series of four poses called Marichyasana A-D, all of which require a bind.

Now binding, for those who don't know, requires one to open the shoulders, and typically, this is difficult if not impossible for me to do. This morning, I was easily able to bind in each version, which surprised the hell out of me. I would have thought that after two rather stressful days with my parents, I would've closed my shoulders tighter. Instead, it seems that just allowing myself to be in that space with them, as painful as it was at some points, opened me.

I knew that was true of remaining in a yoga pose, but I didn't realize it was true about spending time with family with an open heart. Super cool. As hard as it is for many of us to make peace with the people we came from, it's such an important part of who we are -- mind, body and soul. We can try to deny that -- I should know because try I have -- but the body always remembers.

This afternoon I was watching the last episode of season 3 of Glee. It almost killed me to watch Finn and Rachel say goodbye to each other -- reminding me a bit as it did of a goodbye in my not-too-distant past -- but the blow was cushioned by the two of them singing (link to Glee) this lovely song (link to Room For Two):

I gotta have
Roots before branches
To know who I am
Before I know
Who I wanna be
And faith
To take chances
To live like I see
A place in this world
For me

Sometimes
I don't wanna feel
And forget the pain
Is real
Put my head
In the clouds
Oh, start to run
And then I fall
Thinkin'
I can't get it all
Without my feet
On the ground

There's always a seed
Before there's a rose
The more that it rains
The more I will grow

Whatever comes
I know how to take it
Learn to be strong
I won't have to fake it
Oh, you're understandin'
The wind can come
And do it's best
Blow me North and South
East and West
But I'll still
Be standing
I'll be standing

I gotta have
Roots before branches
To know who I am
Before I know
Who I wanna be
And faith
To take chances
To live like I see
A place in this world

Speaking of taking chances and living like I see a place in this world, the name of the original artist of this song compels me to tell a story of a time in my life that was characterized by doing just that. The autumn after I graduated from college, my friend and I decided to buy a 6-month, 4-stop airline ticket. We stopped first in Fiji, then New Zealand, then Australia, then Hawaii, but we spent the bulk of the time in Australia.

While in Oz, as I've written about before, we were pretty wild. Live-in nannies during the week, we'd literally spend our weekends in the bars (there's no such thing as bar time over there). On one specific occasion, my friend was working her magic to get us some free drinks by flirting with a guy at the bar. Eventually we all ended up going back to someone's flat to crash, and the drinks daddy was hoping to get lucky. My friend wasn't interested, though, so she gave him a classic excuse: she said it was her lady time, and something else was occupying the space he was hoping to enter.

"There's room for two!" he said -- and ever since, that phrase has always made us chuckle...