As I finished writing the last word on my Board Exam answer sheet, the bell echoed through the room and my mind alike. I knew what was to come. With each changing tone of the bell, memories switched through my mind - of all I had achieved in a span of 14 years, how I would never have imagined being in the place I am when I first walked down the corridors of my school. I thought of how some of my best friends in school were made in the last six months of my time spent with them. Friendship, though something strong and valuable to me, is something I find hard to admit.
When all of us exited the gates of the Exam Centre, somehow the notion of separation found its place among the relieved emotions of the culmination of exams and of school. Goodbyes echoing all around, I bid farewell to those I knew, hoping childishly that one goodbye would fix them in my memory forever. Everyone hoped, in one way or another, that the hasty scribbles on their shirts, the many photos clicked together, would somehow neutralize the emptiness we all felt inside.
Perhaps what irked me the most was how I could not meet everyone that afternoon, could not express to those I knew how important they had become to me. Being the shy person I am, I never could say to these people I love how I really felt. To some of them, I didn't even find the chance of saying goodbye.
Why did I relate the memory of my friends with how I parted with all of them? Closure is something all of us crave. The disturbing part is how, when something ends or someone goes away, the regret of never getting to say goodbye is a thought saturating the crevices of all our minds.
The best way to say goodbye, to embrace the threshold of parting, is to never think too much about it. Associate people with memories, not goodbyes. In these short-lived moments of goodbyes, we experience little experiences of unexpected death. Death is a fact, life is what we're here for.
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