Saying Goodbye

Bangkok is a very transient place.  You are for ever meeting people and saying Goodbye to them.  People come and go and they seem to go quicker then ever in a Bangkok.  It is that sort of place.  Some you hardly know, others you know for a short time and others you think you will know for ever but it all comes to an end evetually in my Bangkok. 

For one who hates saying Good bye, this can be a very difficult place in which to live.  I sum up living here as being caught up in an intense micrososm of life. 

A couple of weeks ago I shared my encounter at mass where the French ambassador's wife came up to me after mass to say that I was 'her Fr Dobbo'.  Last Sunday, she came to me to say Goodbye.  She is back to France and gone.  Another lovely and friendly face gone from the cathedral but then another will come. 

I have been here nine and a half years.  For all that time, a part of my scene at Caritas and in my life has been an Irish guy named Patrick who is a lay missionary with a Church group in Ireland.  Well, after nine and a half years together, it was time for him to move on.  His assignment is now full-time in Cambodia.  When it came to his last day last week, the ending was as sudden as it was simple.  It just happened.  Patrick, whose desk has been beside mine, when it was time for him, packed his bag, stood up and announced that it was time to disappear, and that he did.  He just said "Bye!" and left.  That was it. 

But was it that simple?   I don't think so.  There are all the years of his being around and how do you sum them up?  There is the now empty space in the office.  There is another void to fill. 

There is no picture this week as I am not sure how to capture what I share.