A Man's Goodbye

I thought I was free. Free from frustration. Free from emotion. Free to mentally check out. The clock had mercifully if not stubbornly reached 3:30, and I was done. Just done. But it would not be that simple.

On the last day of school, probably the last day of school for any district in the state of Iowa, June 10,  on the last afternoon, in the last officially contracted minutes, we as a staff were relegated to a professional development speaker. It was not that dude's fault. He was doing the job he was hired to do. It was a miserable assignment. And I felt miserable in the experience as well. Three hours of a speech full of philosophy I am diametrically opposed to in a room where the distraction and false energy of snacks and caffeine are not allowed made me ache for the door, for the entrance into the glorious summertime sigh of relief.

Finally, the only salvation to be had was upon us, that which could be delivered only by the big hand on the 6 and the little hand past the 3. No more. The wait was over. The weight was off. The hard part was done. But then it wasn't. Then came the hardest part of my day.

Out the back door, after almost everyone else in the building had left, I ran into my friend putting the last of the artifacts from a decade and a half of teaching into their proper place: his truck. He would not be back. He had stayed one year longer than he needed to; I always knew that this past year was a bonus year for me, one more go round teaching at the same end of the building with my friend before he retired. It was a bonus year of coffee and conversation before the first bell with the kind of man every school district needs.

I once heard a teacher who I've met but never got the pleasure of teaching with described in this way: "He has a way of making whoever he is talking to feel like the most important person in the room." I understand what that means, thanks to my friend.

And this was it. This was the official exit. All the retirement talk and summer talk and next fall talk and reflection and speculation and official retirement cake were past, and it was time to actually walk out the door for the last time. There was no avoiding the fact that here we were, two guys who had not only genuinely enjoyed working together but had also dared to be unflinchingly honest and even admit weakness to each other, both completely understanding the symbolic nature of this moment, the end, when we would both drive off and away and not do what we do together anymore. It was time to say goodbye.

What is the proper way for two men to say goodbye? I have learned how to do many hard things in my life, but this is not one I've figured out. It's always awkward, for it is generally intensely emotional and emotions are not what men do well. What do you do when you know that your time together is over, or at least will never be what it was, and you both mutually want to acknowledge that yes, in fact, this does suck, yes, I will miss the hell out of you, yes I respect you more than almost anyone I know, and yes, I am pretty damn sad? How do you communicate that, without, you know, admitting to feelings and admiration and love? Do you offer any words, knowing that none of them will be adequate and there is a chance of a quiver in your voice? Do you shake hands? Do you hug? Or do you punch them in the arm, deliver a foul stream of invective, and chuckle your separate ways?

We shook hands. Then we hugged. I'm certain I stumbled over some words, imperfect and forgettable thought they were. Then, I think, we both got in our trucks as quickly as we could so as to move on and get distracted and not linger in the moment. At least that's what I did. Because I really didn't want to feel about it anymore. Unfortunately I had to pass his old classroom on the way out. His empty classroom, devoid of any semblance of the giant of a man I walked past every day on my way to every cup of coffee in the staff lounge, coldly and passively awaited its next tenant.

I have faced this a handful of times over the past decade, and it is harder every time. People move. Jobs change. Duty calls. However much this might just be how life works, I still hate the man's goodbye. I dread it.

But I don't hate what the man's goodbye stands for. The man's goodbye is an acknowledgement that there will be a real loss because of the real quality that stood before. It reminds both that there were sacrifices made, candid conversations, life shared, honest vulnerability, and loyalty. The man's goodbye is a reminder of the consequences of putting in the time and trust with anyone: you care, you thrive, and you have something to lose. Risk, once again, equals reward. And while the goodbye is torture, it is merely the final scene in the final chapter of a masterful novel.

I'm not sure that men have an easy time being great at friendship. Men have lots of buddies. Friends are harder. Inside of us there is a need to be powerful, to be supermen, to be better than others and to pee in corners to establish that. We should not need help, for help is for the weak. We do not have problems, we are not scared of anything, and we are certainly in complete control of our homes. I know this is fiercely stereotypical, but here it stands. There is truth in most stereotype.

Friendship requires more than the beer-drinking bravado, the bombastic diatribes, and the posturing. To find two guys willing to get deeper than this, in the same place, at the same time, with the same interests, is often an act of divine intervention. Because of that rarity, I believe, we simply have little experience in properly walking away from it.

So the awkward man's goodbye stands. Though I began this post hoping to find something out, hoping to reach some answer that would ease the clumsiness of the next one, I come to the conclusion that it must be this way. For it is a loss of the valuable and rare, and one never gets used to losing those things.