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12/8/2006: "to see you go"
How do you love them, these touches only the road could imagine!
Because the road still tells a good story about small figures pretty much like yours charging against the horizon.
And tells how, against astonishing odds often including themselves, most people get where they’re going.
Even in the hurtle and chinook of the vast swashbuckling diesels you hear it.
And, during hushes between, in these small secrets traded by birds.
- Reg Saner
You know, and we do, that the machine will go on without you. Days and years will come and pass and in time to come you (and all the rest of us) will be no more than whispered words snatched along the corridors, and signatures in pink files. We have no illusions about our own permanence.
But while nobody is indispensable, some are irreplaceable. Those of us you have entrusted with your confidence and your values will understand this well.
And I think it's only just starting to sink in - really, really sink in - that soon you will be gone from this place. Really gone this time, not just to some tropical resort or some expedition to Turkey or the UK. Your temporary presence denies us this comfort of realisation. And when it hits home fully that what we all shared within those walls will never be the same again, then there will be time for grief. Not fucked-up white-washed "sad-to-see-you-go" grief, but a silent and powerful reckoning.
To paraphrase Tennessee Williams, there is a time for departure, even when there's no certain place to go. This is the time, if ever there was any, and this won't be farewell, if we have any say in the matter. Then, forgive me my sadness and frustration, when I should be happy for you and the new beginning you have embarked upon. And perhaps in ten years' time, we will be fortunate enough to all be sitting together, enjoying our cups of tea, and this will seem small and distant. Until then, there is only the road ahead, looking emptier than it did just two months ago.