7 hours ago I was boarding a plane at JFK airport. Now I am in the Amsterdam airport waiting for my flight to Helsinki. I can't help but think of my great grandfather and his journey across the ocean in 1900. He traveled from his tiny village of Kauhavjarvi to the port at Vaasa, across the ocean, into Canada and then down through the Great Lakes to Fairport Harbor, Ohio. His trip was much, much longer than mine. He was 23, and he was leaving his family forever. I am 32 and leaving my family for only a month. He was leaving what he knew, and heading towards an unknown future. For me this travel is full of certainties - I will be able to communicate with the immigration officials, there will be English alongside Dutch and Finnish in the airports, and I even know what the rooms look like of the airbnb where I am staying and can virtually walk down the street using Google maps. But here's the one that gets me -- he was saying goodbye for his entire life. I can pick up a device and talk directly to my wife and even see her face any time, including when I am above 10,000 feet in an airplane.
I have been thinking a lot about goodbyes this year. I lost my mom in March. I had time to say goodbye, but the words were difficult to find. A goodbye for life. Even in writing this the words feel weird and look wrong on the page. "Lost" seems harsh. Perhaps I should pad it in some way to be more correct? But death is harsh. Should I just say, "is no longer with us"? No, because my mom is still with me in so many ways. She is with me as I travel, for sure, and on every step of this project.
I'm wondering if the words for the goodbye I'm searching for are even necessary. I feel my conversations with her continuing each day, I hear her voice-- both before and after her sickness unraveled her syntax. It is a scary thing to welcome those sounds back, but I am trying to challenge myself to be okay with it.
This is a project about shortening the distance between "here" and "there" -- between the U.S. and Finland, between the towns where my great grandfather was born and a village on Lake Erie, practically unknown to him when he left home. But perhaps that is too simple of a way to look at it (of course it is). The "here" and "there" are also all of the uncomfortable spaces between these difficult moments-- the time between saying hello and goodbye, the years between a diagnosis and hospice, the lag in a conversation between relatives you don't know very well, the silence of water in a Finnish lake, and the space in between the beats of our hearts.
So, as I write and wait for my plane, I am trying to prepare myself to say hello-- to embrace the unknown, despite all of the familiarity that surrounds me in this shiny modern airport. My task is simple: to go to Finland, to listen, to search, to be present. I am not searching for the words to say goodbye to my mom, but instead, how to say hello again.
-Park
I have been thinking a lot about goodbyes this year. I lost my mom in March. I had time to say goodbye, but the words were difficult to find. A goodbye for life. Even in writing this the words feel weird and look wrong on the page. "Lost" seems harsh. Perhaps I should pad it in some way to be more correct? But death is harsh. Should I just say, "is no longer with us"? No, because my mom is still with me in so many ways. She is with me as I travel, for sure, and on every step of this project.
I'm wondering if the words for the goodbye I'm searching for are even necessary. I feel my conversations with her continuing each day, I hear her voice-- both before and after her sickness unraveled her syntax. It is a scary thing to welcome those sounds back, but I am trying to challenge myself to be okay with it.
This is a project about shortening the distance between "here" and "there" -- between the U.S. and Finland, between the towns where my great grandfather was born and a village on Lake Erie, practically unknown to him when he left home. But perhaps that is too simple of a way to look at it (of course it is). The "here" and "there" are also all of the uncomfortable spaces between these difficult moments-- the time between saying hello and goodbye, the years between a diagnosis and hospice, the lag in a conversation between relatives you don't know very well, the silence of water in a Finnish lake, and the space in between the beats of our hearts.
So, as I write and wait for my plane, I am trying to prepare myself to say hello-- to embrace the unknown, despite all of the familiarity that surrounds me in this shiny modern airport. My task is simple: to go to Finland, to listen, to search, to be present. I am not searching for the words to say goodbye to my mom, but instead, how to say hello again.
-Park
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