Reflections on farewells and returns
Time and space away from home
A poignant scene from Interstellar shows an unfolding of heartache between Murph and Cooper:
Murph: You have no idea when you’re coming back. No idea at all!
Murph throws the watch and turns her back.
Cooper: Don’t make leave like this, Murph. Please. I have to go now.
Murph will not turn around. Cooper tries to rest his hand on the back of her head, but she shakes it off.
This exchange between a departing father and his reluctant daughter strikes a chord reminding me of my own predicament.
For almost fifteen years, I have been living far from home. There is no set timetable for a return visit to spend time with my family. No schedule is ever fixed. And whenever I am home, I depart without knowing when I’ll be back again. Just like Cooper, my returns are uncertain. And just like Murph, my family knows it very well. I can’t look in their tearful eyes when I leave. Else, I’d have said, “Don’t make me leave like this”.
Maybe that’s why this scene got me in tears.
When you are away from home, time runs differently. You become a ghost. New people don’t know you, old ones have a faint memory of your existence. You live in a new dimension. Friends become strangers, and strangers become friends.
What happens when I return? Sometimes I feel like I never left. Everything appears fresh and unchanged. Yet, many a time, I feel I’ve returned after spending an eternity in a strange world. I witness what I did not witness, things I missed: funerals unattended, weddings uncelebrated. New kids in the neighbourhood. New houses erected with new families, new faces. I ask where the old ones are. People die, migrate, and move on – much like me. To some, I’m the newcomer; they are newcomers to me. I claim, without voicing, that the place belongs to me, my childhood and my memory. Being new means a never-ending cycle of introductions and re-introductions. Names and faces unpair when you don’t see or talk with someone for many years. This unpairing always gives a sense of being a stranger. I have not yet gotten used to being new, being a stranger in my own place. Attachment is cruel.
Reality comes and bites you. Continents away, you witness your parents’ ageing and ailing health from a distance. As a parent, maybe they wished to see their child grow up. As a child, I don’t want my parents to grow old and fragile – youthful yearning. Nature takes its course: Every time I go home, I see my parents getting older and older. I can’t do anything about it while they are declining. It is painful – not being there with the people I love while perceiving a rapid advance of their time. Technology will only take you so far.
There is a trade-off in living away from home. In a developed country, working a white-colour job, some aspects of life are ostensibly better than back at home. Your priorities determine what pain you are willing to tolerate. Time and again, one has to revisit and reevaluate the priorities… and take off… a fresh start.