Offering Goodbyes

Dec 07, 2024

If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed;
If not, 'tis true this parting was well made.

-William Shakespeare

I’ve always found the word “pa” in Romanian, the language I was born into, a bit peculiar to say out loud when parting from a friend. It has always felt so abrupt. It means “bye,” used only with people we know well. Some online sources suggest its origin lies in the Italian word “ciao,” but no matter how much I squinted at “ciao”, I couldn’t see the “pa” in it. For some time, I assumed it came from pax, the Latin word for peace, given Romanian’s strong Latin roots. However, it turns out its origin could be Hungarian: “pá”, a friendly farewell, especially prevalent in Transylvania, the region I’m from.

"'Good-bye' is originally 'God be with you.'
The Romance languages say 'to God'; the Slavic languages, 'with God'; while Japanese sayonara is literally 'if it must be so.'
'So long' was first imported into Britain by soldiers who had been stationed in Malay-speaking countries. The Malay salutation, salang, is a corruption of the Arabic salaam ('peace')."
—Mario Pei, The Story of Language

I think our world needs more rituals of goodbye, I know of so many people who simply disappeared one day, without a word. And I am aware that people are busy, their attention grabbed in different ways by different things every single day, but I find life a little hollow without the ritual of a proper parting.

I am reminded of Marina Abramović's long walk on the Great Wall of China, a walk of her and her partner Ulay, initially entitled “The Lovers.” They wanted to be the first people to walk the Great Wall of China, setting off alone from opposite ends to meet in the middle, where they would marry. For five years, they planned this walk, and, as we know, a lot can happen in five years. So, by the end, they still committed to the long walk, but to meet in the middle to say a final goodbye and to part ways. After that, they didn’t see each other for 22 years.

I don’t think we should make every single goodbye one big ceremony, but I do think that the people and places we love or loved, should be offered the ritualistic power of a goodbye, even if it’s just one word, a letter, or a symbol given to mark an ending.

This year, I said a final goodbye to my grandfather, in early spring. This time, this goodbye was a full ceremony, one externally with the burial, and one internally, within me. Beyond the grief, I also experienced a form of peace and understanding that some things are never, in fact, final, even if reality painstakingly reminds us that they seem to be final every single day.

This year, I also said goodbye to social media. In the past two months, I’ve been mostly away, only on Substack, avoiding Notes as much as possible. I just woke up one morning in October not wanting to come back to X or Instagram, and it was one of the easiest goodbyes this year. Twitter was a big part of my life back in 2020 and 2021, in the pandemic. It changed my life for the better in so many mindblowing ways, but I never had the chance to say a proper goodbye to it, and with X taking over, it’s not the same platform—it’s already gone. So, goodbye Twitter, and thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

In a few days, on the 10th, I will be saying goodbye to another year of my life—31. It’s been a good year, one that has laid a strong foundation for the things I care about: loving more, writing more, meeting fellow writers from around the world, and finally traveling to a place I’ve dreamed about for a long time. I’ve also grown fonder of The Hague, the city I’ve called home for the past two years, and I feel ready to put down some roots here. For someone who has changed countries so often over the past decade, this feels like a blessing.

As the year comes to an end in a few weeks, I’m also preparing my final goodbyes to this year. Usually, on New Year’s Eve, a few hours before the fireworks, I try to map and draw the whole year on an axis, marking every event that shaped that year, and drawing another blank map for the coming year. Maps, for me, are in this case also a form of goodbye—a way of creating a visual snapshot of the experiences of that year.

Memory is fallible, but I believe we always remember the goodbyes we put our hearts into. Goodbyes, when done well, are a kindness - both to ourselves and to other people.

Thank you for reading. I wish you Happy Holidays and a beautiful new year ahead.

Goodbye / pa 👋🏻,

Patricia-Andra Hurducaș