The Long Goodbye

The farewell began quietly, as these things do.

Nobody sent a card. There was no announcement, no gathering, no folding chair to claim. It simply started — the slow leaving — on an ordinary Tuesday, somewhere between the second coffee and the first email.

You do not notice a goodbye that takes forty years. You notice the weather. You notice that songs from when you were young now qualify for the classics station, and that your knees have developed opinions. You tell yourself you are busy. Busy is a respectable way to disappear.

The doctors call it nothing. The mirror calls it a distant cousin. The dog, who has no flair for drama, simply stays closer than he used to, as if he has read the ending already and is being polite about it.

This is a book about leaving, then. Leaving in installments. Leaving the way you leave a party you never wanted to attend — a little at a time, coat over one arm, apologizing to the host on your way to the door.

Nobody has made it to the door yet. That is the plan, more or less: keep almost leaving, and keep staying.

It turns out these are the same gesture.