Here's to a heartfelt goodbye - Sisterspeak

Ebony, Sept, 2002 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

IT'S a funny thing about goodbyes. The modern songwriter says there s no good in goodbye, while the Southern folklorist bids us be wary of them. As the saying goes, "Every shut eye ain't sleep and every goodbye ain't gone." But this September our attention is concentrated on goodbyes, a year after thousands of people went to work and never returned home. The horrific events of 9/11 painfully remind us that there may not always be time to say goodbye and perhaps we should make our everyday partings a little kinder, a little sweeter.

"I'll see you in August" was the last thing that the singer Joe Williams said to me in what was surely one of his last interviews before he suddenly died in 1999. He was set to perform in the Chicago area that summer, and in a long, freewheeling interview early that year, filled with a lot of laughter, he talked about the past and about the future. When I remarked that Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington had really admired his work, he laughed and said he really didn't care, because he was his harshest critic. "I still have to like it first--or you won't hear it," he said jokingly. "I'll see you in August. We'll talk more about it then." He was dead less than two months later. What he said of Duke Ellington can also be said now of him and all the great ones. "A spirit like that never dies, you know."

The French call it la douceur de la vie, the sweetness of life. Joe Williams constantly sought that sweetness and a connoisseur of his work can hear it in his songs, particularly his ballads. And although he gained fame with songs like "Everyday I Have the Blues," his poignant, memorable interpretation of "Here's to Life" on one of his last CDs infuses his 80 years of living in every turn of phrase.

You never know when a routine goodbye is, in fact, a final goodbye. People who have lost loved ones say that you should always hug your children, because you never know when they walk out of the door if they will walk back in again.

Perhaps that's the overall lesson of 9/11, or least one of the big lessons of this national tragedy. I will leave the broad political, racial and global implications of the act to others. But in its aftermath, people everywhere seem to be returning to fundamental truths. Dr. King, who preached the redemptive power of love and love in action, warned us 40 years ago that force cannot overcome a great evil; only great love can do that. "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate," he wrote.

America received its wake-up call on 9/11, but the alarm clock had already rung for Black folk--already restless, already hunted, already profiled, already hungry for a peace that would last. This latest injustice shocked us with its suddenness and its severity, but did not really surprise. We have been weaned on sorrow. "The American Black community has the best experience in the world in dealing with terrorism," the Rev. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor told EBONY. "We have known it. We've seen them in white sheets. We've seen the bombing of churches. As a result, Blacks are in a position to teach the country how to deal with terrorism and how to go forward in spite of it because we have shown a disciplined approach to terrorism."

Our disciplined and creative response to survival is uniquely exemplified in a conversation between the great author James Baldwin and our own national treasure Maya Angelou. Recounted in her latest book, A Song Flung Up to Heaven, she says Baldwin helped pull her out of her acute depression following King's death. Baldwin reminded her that Blacks have danced, cooked and sung survival. "We put surviving into our poems and into our songs," he told her. If you want to survive, you have to lift your own spirit, laugh, dance and sing. Hang around positive, supportive people who lift you up. And laugh whenever possible, so when it's time to say goodbye, there are no regrets, no recriminations, no "I should've, would've, could've."

And so in the aftermath of yet another national tragedy, can we at least learn how to say a heartfelt goodbye? Send your loved ones off in the morning with a gentle word, a warm hug. Don't let the doors slam, the silences grow frosty, the bitter words hollered down hallways and driveways. There may not be another time. There may not be a second chance. What is it the old folks used to say? "Tomorrow ain't promised."

Let's reach back to those days when we bonded together because that was the only way to survive the brutality of the day. When we listened to the rumblings and ramblings of the elders. Remember when a misbehaving child got three reports from nosy neighbors before he got home? Remember the days when you abused a Black child or beat a Black woman at your own peril? We cannot predict the future, but we can bond together.

We can remember and learn from the famous words of the great poet Gwendolyn Brooks: "We are each other's harvest, we are each other's business, we are each other's magnitude and bond."