The End is Built into the Beginning
I’ve always hated that saying, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” With the exception of pain — physical or emotional . THAT I don’t cry about when it finally passes. Everything else, I cry about long before it’s over. I think of it as pre-mourning. It works for me.
Instead I like that quote from Synecdoche, New York: “The end is built into the beginning.” Everything you start automatically gets an end point tacked on, whether or not that end point is known before it happens. I can take comfort in that idea because it allows me to mourn beforehand. I know the end is coming, even if I don’t know when the end will be. So it’s totally cool to indulge the sadness, to engage in pre-mourning rituals.
The school year is coming to a close. We have one more year at this school before we have to switch again and learn another new community. That school will be the final buffer between the now and that world beyond when the twins will go find their passion at a distant school and only call me for pizza money and to send more Costco socks.
[I will seriously have a nervous breakdown if they only call me for pizza money and Costco socks.]
[I don’t think it will only be pizza money and Costco socks, but you never know.]
So I’m blue, thinking about them growing up and away. I want it to happen; I mean, I really want them to find work that is meaningful and happy moments. But I wince as buffer after buffer gets removed, pushing me closer to that end point that was built into that beginning. They weren’t going to stay my little babies forever.
[Seriously, I’ve tried keeping them small, but they don’t listen. They keep growing.]
I know the pre-mourning is just the working out of fears of how the actual mourning will go. Because I don’t know if it will be pizza money and Costco socks or something more. Something more akin to today, albeit with older humans on all fronts. I’m hoping for more of today.
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I look forward to seeing what my kid is going to do. But then, I have the comfort of knowing that my kid is a clingy barnacle, who has to talk to someone and will likely call me twice a day because otherwise she’ll explode. But I do hope that she finds some other people to share her confidences – and if that means I get cut out, so be it. She’ll need other people when I’m gone.
Aww. My twins are only 6, but I do think occasionally about them as teenagers. (Adulthood is still too far distant for me to really imagine.) It is hard to believe that some day I won’t be their favorite person, but such is the progression of childhood.
I needed this quote today as we’re still in the middle/space between with this move. A new chapter is beginning while the other one is closing.
Abiding with you for these upcoming transitions.
I am the opposite. I can’t wait for some of these endings to happen. For me, they may be new beginnings.
Costco socks rock.
I dunno. I think the quote actually means that, because the end is expected, we shouldn’t fear it, we should accept it more easily. Doesn’t pre-mourning take away from the enjoyment of the present? Aren’t you stealing from yourself (and your kids) if you are pre-mourning? Robbing yourself of today and your precious time together?