Andrea Davis's Blog
Saying goodbye? / 07.10.08, 04:28 PM
During May we got a few interns at the Fitness Center. Everyone was excited about this because it meant more coverage and a lightening of each of our loads just a bit because we’ve had one less staff person for a couple months now and we were always scrambling to have someone to greet people and check them in at the front desk. I was excited about this because it meant that I could focus more on organizing member documents without the distractions of the front desk and also keep focusing on the Healthy Church Initiative, where I work with neighborhood churches to give each one’s members 2 weeks of free access to the Fitness Center. I really enjoyed getting to know the interns as we trained them in using the computers and give them professional training specifically about our Fitness Center, but also in general improving their customer service skills (I know mine have improved through working at the Fitness Center – I used to have none! :)). We were getting to know one another and I felt like I was connecting and everything. Then within a couple of weeks these three ladies all were unable to continue volunteering for various reasons. There was no real, closing goodbye with any of them – at least in the way I would’ve liked to say goodbye and let them know that I would miss them.
In some ways there has been a lot of transience throughout our year in Lawndale – after a while coming to the realization that just as my team and I are here for only a fleeting moment, many of the situations and relationships we have found ourselves in here in North Lawndale even within the year are also often brief and fleeting. In many ways people don’t stick around for long (that may have been the case back at home in Iowa, but I didn’t notice it as much then because I wasn’t being as intentional about relationships). This quality is probably the main reason why when I ask people I meet where they live they say “I stay at…” because no one lives anywhere very long. They’re just staying for a while. Melissa and Sam experienced the reality of this earlier in the year when a young man (and his brother and mom) whom they had built a relationship with all of a sudden called from Oregon saying he’d moved. They had been tutoring him in his schoolwork and we’d had him over to the house. Then all of a sudden he called saying his family had moved away. This was obviously hard for Melissa and Sam and for all of us because we saw this budding relationship change drastically with that phone call (but we also realize the reality that it was likely much harder a transition for their family to make – moving away from their entire support system in our neighborhood to a completely new state and community).
As I begin to tell people that I’m leaving to go back to school in Iowa at the beginning of August, they often react with… well, what emotion is it? Probably surprise and frustration and some sadness. For one thing, it’s not expected that you will hear ahead of time when someone is moving away or will no longer be working someplace. You often find out not even while it’s happening, but after it’s happened. You don’t get a chance to say goodbye. And I feel like my friends here, especially at the Fitness Center, are genuinely sad that I’m leaving and will miss me. My friend Cliff came up to me the other day and said “So you’re leaving for real?” He had thought that I’d be going away and coming back, but I told him I’ve gotta go back to school… though I really hope to come back to visit sometime.
A few weeks ago Leroy our president of Mission Year had encouraged us that as we near the end of our Mission Year to say goodbye WELL. Most of us know that we’re leaving the city and we know ahead of time, so we can do it “well.” Whatever that means. I guess we’re finding that out… doing our best. Part of that for me is I want to be able to let people know how much they’ve meant to me… how much they’ve impacted me and changed my life… how do I show that to the people I care about? I’m not sure. But one part I do know that will help me to say goodbye is knowing that I am not really saying goodbye to the hearts of the people I have known this year – because I’m just not able to do that. I am not giving up on their causes, which have become mine (ours). Justice, racial reconciliation… for the homeless, for children who have not received a fair education… I am taking these causes with me when I “leave” and I will be championing them as I share their stories, which have become a part of my story, for the rest of my life.
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