Beatriz Ygnacio

Twenty-First Century Literature 12: On the Subject of Goodbyes

April 19, 2020

First Last Goodbye

My first pet was a guinea pig. I named him Twirly, after the spirals of brown and white

that you could see on his fur. He was as noisy as a guinea pig gets. But that day, he was silent. I

looked at his still body and wondered why he wasn’t squeaking. Then, my yaya came, gasped,

and I knew. I felt the tears well up in my eyes. We put him in a small box and buried him under a

tree in the garden.

But I wasn’t content. I would still wake up excited to feed him only to see his empty cage

outside my door. I would still arrive from school ready to take him in my hands as he squeaked

with joy. So I decided to write. My eleven-year-old self’s journal reads, “We buried Twirly a few

days ago (the “i” in “Twirly” is dotted with a spiral). I’m really gonna miss him.” And then I felt

okay.

So, when my mom had to leave the country for work, eleven-year-old me wrote letters to

her in a notebook every day. When one of my best friends migrated, fourteen-year-old me wrote

her a “life survival guide” that she could bring with her wherever she ended up. When another

close friend moved schools, sixteen-year-old me made her a storybook about her life. After

writing, I always got closure. Writing seemed to work, so that was how I learned to say goodbye.

But this time, as I try to say goodbye to everything I’ve known for the past twelve years,

it feels as if writing isn’t enough. There’s too much that I wish I could have done. I wish I was

aware that I had my last last day in school last month. The last time I sat in class around the

people I’d grown up with, the last time I had lunch with them on the classroom floor, and the last

time I’d watch them make TikToks in the back of the room after. The last time I said “good-bye
and thank you” in the way I’d learned to, the last time I hurried down those stairs after class, the

last time I said, “see you!” to the guard, and the last time I took off my blue ribbon, checkered

skirt, and black shoes. It’s unbelievable to think that the next time I’ll be going back to school, it

won’t be to the same place I have been spending most of my time since I was four, or that the

next time I present in class, I won’t meet the same sets of eyes that I’ve known for twelve years

and am so used to seeing.

With all that’s happening in the world right now, one might feel that they shouldn’t be

giving thought to this, that it’s a waste of time because there are much worse things going on.

But this isn’t just about saying goodbye to your high school friends. It’s about blaming the

circumstances we are in for our regret when, really, that regret is brought about only by our

obliviousness to the fact that every day could be our last. It’s about saying that we wish we’d

known because we would have done so much more, because only then would we appreciate it

all. Instead of waiting for the last day, why not live every day like we would that one?

But, as Celine Sciamma said, “don’t regret, remember.” Remember the flag ceremonies

your days began with and the gratitude notes your days ended with. Remember the teachers you

would listen to in awe as they spoke their minds, the ones you would laugh with, the ones you

can always find home in. Remember the classmate who’d break the silence after a teacher asked

a question and the classmate who would blurt things out in class and make everybody laugh.

Remember the one who’d remind you to be good just by being good and the one who’d make

you smile just by smiling. Remember the ones who were always sick but were medicine for a

bad day as well as the ones who lacked sleep but never tired of making you laugh. Remember the

ones who defended their beliefs with their heart, the ones who challenged your thoughts to make

you stronger. Remember the ones who worked hard to remember details for everyone, those who
kept the days from crumbling. Remember the ones who sang and danced for you and let the

world’s beauty shine through them. Remember the people who grew up around you, with you,

even when you were too busy to notice—the ones that make saying goodbye so hard.

When it was time for The Little Prince to leave his fox and the fox wept, he asked, “So,

you get nothing out of this?”

“I get something,” the fox said, “because of the color of the wheat, which is golden like

your hair, and will remind me of you.”

Just as I am reminded of Twirly’s fur when I see any animal that has the same spirals he

had, I will think of my time in school when I see the checkered pattern of our skirts on a table

somewhere. I will think of my classmates when I hear a song on the radio that they’d sang or

read a joke online that they’d told. Like the other goodbyes I’ve met, I say this one through

writing. But it does not give me closure, because this is not the end and it won’t be for a very

long time; this is only our first last goodbye. I promise to remember, for it is remembering that

will keep this alive and even make it grow. And I will remember to nurse the pain that comes

with it, because I know that it is this pain that shows me that we know love.
Works Cited:

De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. The Little Prince. Harcourt, Inc., 1943. Print.