Update (August/September 2007)

After a month of saying farewell to people – some expected and some unexpected – I find myself reflecting on how we experience saying ‘goodbye’ and found myself going to a quote by Frederick Buechner, a Protestant pastor and writer:

Each time members of the tribe die, the self we were with them dies too, which is to say that the kind of words we spoke only to them – were only to them – and the kind they spoke only to us are spoken no longer. But if outwardly our language is thus impoverished, inwardly it is enriched because when members of the tribe die, the words they were are added to the vocabulary of the heart, where we have more than just ears for hearing them.