The tears they come in waves.

Salty and salient, free floating down my face.

It’s the season of goodbyes, and I’m feeling the change on the days I’m not too numb and tired from this life transition.

May was for saying goodbye to the house as it went up on the market and went into contract; I spent time in each of its rainbow rooms gently enjoying soft moments of stillness, acknowledging all this space has meant to me.

June is for goodbye to friends. Those lasts dinners and brunches and time together are happening now, and I find myself taking more soft moments for each face I’m seeing and thinking about exactly who and what and how they have been in my life and what we’ve brought to each other throughout the years.

And July is for Alaska. We will be in Kauai by the second week, and with just a handful of days left, my husband and I agreed to make no more commitments or plans with people when the month begins so we can set aside those days to find soft moments for ourselves and this great state in the midst of this move.

I’d like to drive in the sunshine down the turnagain arm one last time. Go up into the mountains and spot the little pink flowers tucked in the tundra. Walk the dogs by the duckpond. Breathe with the trees.

And if there’s no time or energy left for any of these things, I’ll just sit on my front porch and reach out in my mind and thank this space for being my friend and containing me all these years; let my thoughts drift to those mountains and trees and seas and green. We don’t have to be somewhere to connect with it; the same holds true for the people we keep in our hearts.

The tears they come in waves.

Silent and silty tracing rivulets down the tired cheeks of my face.

My brother taught me how to let go. That you don’t have to be with somebody to still be with them. That separation is but an illusion, connection our destination, love an invitation to learn to love beyond the physicality of time and space.

His birthday would have been yesterday, he would have been 41 this year. I could feel him nearby as I ran through the forest, tugging at the pigtails in my mind, whispering with the winds of vicissitude. I reach up and give the trees high fives; they speak with him and the breeze in trinity telling me how close I am to the finish line.

Almost done with who I was, almost ready for who I’ll become; I can’t contain the depths of my own space, and I let myself spill out onto the steadfast embrace of the earth.

And the tears they come in waves.