I got on a plane in July and left behind everything I have ever known and loved. I have lived in New York City since 1975.
I have settled in a small town in Southern Italy. In a move that was years in the making, my wife and I were able to get to know our son, daughter, son-in-law and toddler granddaughter who live there.
A few years ago my wife and daughter relocated to Italy to start a new life for us all. I stayed behind until I was ready to join the party.
There is also that.
How are we supposed to say goodbye to our friends and landmarks? Do we have a party? Ask the CDC for guidelines, savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay
The great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
Also see: Why my retirement won't include a bucket list.
It can be difficult to say goodbye. Taking off without saying goodbye can make you feel guilty and hurt others.
If you make it to age 69 as I have, I will say goodbye. You say goodbye to your family. You farewell your high school, your first apartment, your jobs, and your clients. This time, it would all happen at once. This is my last one.
Let me tell you how it is.
I lived in a 20-story apartment building with over 1,000 tenants. I traded that in for a one-story, single- family house in Puglia with a population of 49,000.
A couple retired in Colombia on $4,000 a month. To live this lifestyle in California, we would have to be mega millionaires.
The economy, currency, government, culture and language are all different. No one knows me. I am starting my life over.
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I am hardly alone in leaving home. According to a survey, more than 10% of Americans moved during the Pandemic. Offices, schools, shopping malls, and much more are where people said goodbye.
There are a lot of goodbyes.
The research on life transitions focuses on how people cope with beginnings in life, rather than with foreseeable endings like mine. The concept of a well-rounded ending was introduced in a Motivation Science article.
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If the person feels that they have completed something to the fullest, and that all loose ends have been tied up, the ending is well-rounded, according to the researchers. A well-rounded ending facilitates higher positive affect, fewer regrets, and easier transitions into the next life phase according to the authors.
The researchers found that the more well-rounded the ending, the more positive the students felt. The students settled back home more quickly.
The researchers concluded that a well-rounded ending helps people to create a clean slate and move on with their lives.
The last look around my U.S. establishments promised to be beneficial. I would revisit everything I expected to miss. I would be reminded how much can change in a day. I would come to feel it in those places.
I would return to my hometown in New Jersey. I would feel what I felt at 13 change so fast that I had to figure out who I should be or not.
I'm planning to return to some of the places I've been.
This pilgrimage would allow me to conduct a performance review of my entire life.
Some questions would be answered. Who was I then? Who are I now? Is it possible that I have become who I wanted to be?
It's not necessary for you to take stock, to reckon with yourself, more than saying goodbye. I would be able to administer last rites on my life as I knew it.
Maybe I could reconcile my past with my future, swap the old for the new, the familiar for the strange, the predictable for the unexpected.
I could package all the images I had seen and sounds I had heard into a highlight reel and take it with me to my new home.
The exercise might serve two opposing purposes at the same time, one being to let everything go for good and the other being to hold on to it all for all time.
Gabriele Oettingen, co-author of the "Saying Goodbye" study and a psychology professor at New York University, says that if you are making a major transition, you owe it to your new future to find closure on your prior life.
She advises to take a step back. You will be able to move on and discover. Only then will you be ready to go.
How it happened.
So goodbye.
All my successes and failures, my expectations and experiments, and my discoveries and disappointments are all gone.
The baby in the Bronx, the boy in New Jersey, and the new husband and father in Forest Hills, Queens are all leaving me. I will write.
T.S. Eliot wrote that the beginning is often the end. To make an end is to begin.
I ended up skipping my victory lap. I ran out of time. The epidemic continued.
I am looking for safe, friendly cities to retire abroad on $2,500 or less a month. Where should I stop working?
I realized that going back to all the places I already knew would be redundant. I remember everything. There are no loose ends left.
The time for looking back is over. It is time to look ahead.
The memoir "playing catch with strangers: A family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age" was written by Bob Brody.
The article is a work of NextAvenue.org and Twin Cities Public Television, Inc.
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