To Closure

A ‘90’s fad, you were whatever it was that was supposed to happen at the end of something that made it feel like it was really over.

Closure.

You became something people needed. They would call each other, having just broken up, and say things like, “Look, I just need some closure.”

Or, given all the layoffs happening, therapists would tell their clients the reason they feel so empty or rejected is that they didn’t have closure.

Or someone died, unexpectedly, and never would you get to say “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you” or “I’ve always loved you,” that last statement that would have given the survivors peace. Closure would be peaceful.

Closure, you are a lid snapping shut. The well-engineered closing of a BMW door that feels not only safe but air-tight. Closure is Bogart and Rains walking through the fog and the rain, and Bogart quips, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Everything is right with the world, no matter how wrong the world is. We could accept lost jobs and lost loves and lost lives with closure.

However much we want you or need you, despite seeing you so often at the end of movies and novels, even when we think you should be there and it’s not too much to ask for, you are rare. Elusive at best. But the breakups never make sense (at least to one person, often to both), we hated the job but it was better than nothing. No matter how much advanced notice we are given that our aunt, now 104, is going to die, when she does it’s too soon and we have one more thing we’d like to say.

In my life, I’ve never known you. I’ve known letting go and giving up and moving on. I talk to my dead relatives all the time trying to finish up those conversations, trying to start new ones. 

If I wanted it--the job, the romance--to end, I didn’t need you.

But if I didn’t, if I wasn't ready, I would have never seen you there anyway.

On the runway. Fade to black. “The End”