"All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye"

What signifies closure? How do we know when something is ending, and a new thing is beginning? If I think over my life, there are definitely certain events that mark conclusion:

- A final exam
- A graduation ceremony
- A celebration luncheon with thank you notes, a card, and maybe even a gift
- Packing up boxes and physically moving
- Turning in my key, selling back my books
- Signing yearbooks
- The dropping of a sparkling electronic ball in Times Square and a countdown
- The ding that means it's safe to unbuckle your seatbelt and retrieve your bags from the overhead bin

But how do we experience closure when something just ends? When there's no conclusion, no celebration, no clear ending...when things just simply stop, but everything else around me keeps moving? When I have no more flight itineraries in my inbox, and no more campuses awaiting my visit...what do I do?

For the past eight months, I have always had somewhere to go, something to work on, someone waiting for a response to an email or a voice mail. But now, as I sit in Lambert airport waiting to depart for my final two visits, I don't know what to feel. For the first time in my life, I don't know what's next professionally. I am staring into an uncertain future, with very little on my schedule, and absolutely no closure. I've had April 17 in my head all semester as the "graduation" day so to speak...but I realize that this graduation will have no "Pomp and Circumstance" and no diploma. Instead, I will arrive at the airport, wait for that ding one last time, walk out of the terminal, and be finished. Closure...how do we get it when it isn't given to us?

Love and miss you all, C