And when the time comes, to let it go

Mary Oliver's poetry has been on my mind (just completed a final paper focussing on her poetry.) So it a poem came to mind on this Memorial day weekend.
This is a weekend of letting go, and a weekend of celebrating what was, and a weekend of new beginnings. Friday was my last day at work at Cornell University. Over 15 years of calling this institution my professional home has come to an end. I'm feeling dislocation, sadness, and joy. This new space in my life creates possibilities that did not exist before. It is also a great wrench to let go of the identity given to me by my profession. I've been grieving the losses for a while. Loss of co-worker relationships. Loss of dreams. Loss of income. This grief, grief that is hard to express in the face of other's congratulations, sometimes makes me irritable.
This is a weekend of letting go, and a weekend of new beginnings. Thousands of students graduated this weekend and last. The town was full of strangers driving the wrong way on our confusing Ithaca streets, drunken students stumbling home after celebrations, and be-robed, proud graduates strutting their accomplishments. This is another grief that is hard to express in the face of other's congratulations. I hope that they do make the time to pause and feel the losses. Loss of classmates, loss of studying as a life's focus, loss of freedom from facing the necessity of earning a wage.
Living in a college town gives us an opportunity to face the lesson of Mary Oliver's poem, over and over. Wonderful and dear friends come, spend 2, 4, (or more if they are on the famous "Cornell PHD plan") years with us, and then move on. We must open our hearts to these gifts knowing that they will leave us.
This is a weekend of celebrating what once was, the courage of men and women fighting to protect the country they loved, and a weekend of letting go, remembering their losses, and grieving the cost of war. These many loves and losses, small and large, deserve our mindfulness.
May we all have the courage to be fully with the impermanent loves and endeavors of the now. And may we have the courage to grieve and let go when the time comes. And may we remember, that every loss invites us to a new beginning.

“In Blackwater Woods,” by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.