Mother may have uttered goodbye much more than I have given how much longer, thus far, she lived on the planet and maybe even more than most people, overall. She bade farewell to many of her brood of kids as they moved overseas to England and the U.S., knowing that theirs and her life would be forever changed by their transition to a new culture, country, and way of living. Sometimes, she would host a party to send them off and at other times, she wouldn’t. When we left Trinidad for the U.S., we had no such party, one reason being[1] we were secretly leaving Trinidad, my mom finally getting the courage to move as far away from my abusive father as possible. She wanted to start over in a new place, without the tangible memories of her past that came with seeing old haunts, coming into contact with familiar people and, face-to-face with always fresh no matter how aged, hurts. I think in general that people are bad at saying goodbye in this culture and that could be the case in others too. Our uncomfortableness with uncertainty and the “bad” feelings that come from grief makes us inept when it comes to facing what’s inevitable that people leave, times change and loss happens.
This week, my colleague in my department, had her second to last week at the agency. Her mother and best friend live in Florida and she wants them to be near by as she and her husband grow their family, having babies. So, our department had to figure out how to say farewell to her. My company often does a good job of this – having what a friend and former colleague less than affectionately calls, a “cake wake.” The culture of the organization is to celebrate a person’s moving on with a cake and an invitation to a company party to share the cake and memories about the soon-to-be gone employee. I’m not exactly certain of all the reasons why my buddy calls it a “cake wake.” If I remember correctly, I think her dislike had something to do with her feeling that the celebration was disingenuous, that sometimes an employee was leaving under a cloud of negativity so that having a celebration of this person’s tenure with the company seemed wrong to her. Even if that’s true, heck, I think the idea of formally saying goodbye, with a celebration, is as Martha Stewart might say, “a good thing.”
We didn’t have cake when my colleague left, she too, like our ex-colleague not liking the company’s tradition. But, we did have a send off for her in fact we hosted two! One was a company-wide get-together at a restaurant in Jamaica Plain, Bella Luna (I highly recommend this joint – they have this amazing peppery cocktail on their menu, Some Like it Hot and in their private party area there’s a wall-mounted extra-large version of the Connect Four board game that provided hours of fun) the other was a more intimate gathering at our boss’s home for the department plus a few others, which I catered and our boss hosted.
We had pork ribs (one of my colleague’s favorites) on the barbecue with hamburgers and store-bought sides and chips. I later paired up the leftover ribs for dinner for me and my daughter with a lightly flavored, filling easy peasie J peas and rice side dish, followed by one of my daughter’s favorite desserts: a crisp, shortbread cookie with a creamy chocolate center. As I prepared and cooked for this party, and even when I appropriated the leftovers, I reflected on what it means to say goodbye, and how much more we should memorialize such occasions with festivity, because part of human identity involves change, moving on and times of loss. For all of us, learning to do this well, better, makes us healthier as a people and improved individuals.
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Broiled Pork Ribs with Sweet and Tangy Sauce
[1] The other part being something I’ve mentioned on this blog before, our unpopularity in mom’s family.
