Closing Remarks, Part 2

 May 7th, 2021—8 days until graduation

The first weekend of my freshman year, I walked to a flower shop with Joy Lewin. She was a year older than I, confident and outgoing, and I traipsed along beside her on the walk to Old Town, feeling chosen and secure. We entered the shop with its bell over the door and lingered among the blooms.

“Yellow roses mean friendship, right?” Joy asked, examining a vase of them.

I Googled it for her. “Yes!”

“Thank you!” She plucked one stem from the vase and put it on the counter, buying it with a dollar from her purse. When the clerk had wrapped it in a piece of tissue paper and handed it to her, she in turn handed it to me with a sunny smile. “Here you go, friend!”

I took it, touched, and it lived upside down on my wall until it had dried into a sweet reminder of my very first friend of college.

....

In the present day, that yellow rose is gone, lost in one semester’s move or another, and Joy has graduated and moved on with her life. But on the last day of classes in my undergraduate career, I open my door and find a bouquet of twelve yellow roses on the floor with a card. They are wrapped in damp paper towels and a Ziplock bag, and I melt at the care that was taken to give me this gift.

I read the card—“...love, Chloe,” one of the sweet women who moved to my floor this year—and pin it up on the cork board on my desk with the stack of cards that have come through in the last week.

The women love me well.

I fill a vase with water and put the roses on the coffee table, a reminder of the multiplied blessing of relationships I have been given throughout these four years.

....

May 11th, 2021—4 days until graduation

On Tuesday, the exhaustion overtakes my stress. The girls do homework in my room, and by 9:30, the last one has succumbed to weariness and left.

I fall asleep by 10:30, too tired to grasp the slippery days anymore....

....

May 14th, 2021—1 day until graduation

The buzz of anxiety comes only in waves now, replaced by paralyzing tiredness. I recognize the signs of it—intrusive thoughts, an aggressive need to be alone that supersedes my patience or care.

And I’ve stopped spending time with Jesus.

I can’t feel Him, can’t sit still long enough to be present with Him. So I push Him away. “Come back after I graduate,” I say.

When I realize what I’ve done, I feel sad. In my stress and weariness, I have pushed the most important person in my life out of this milestone. I have ignored him. Even as I celebrated the moments when it was my turn to walk across the platform and receive my phantom diploma, I knew he was there and held him at arms length.

Then again, I’ve been doing that with everyone lately.

The goodbyes are half-hearted. I so badly want them to be sweet and deep, but no one has it in them. We have poured ourselves out and now we are empty. We have to go away to refill.

There is grief in this reality—and also excitement. To be refilled! To be refreshed and rested! This is what Jesus does for us; it’s written in so much of Scripture, how he waters and tends and nurture his weak and weary ones.

I pray with them as I check them out, asking God to restore their souls like He did David’s. I drink in the fact that He does this.

And maybe I am spending time with Him after all, if only in this ministry. I do it with Him. The station of “co-laborer with Christ” has never felt so tangible; together, He and I are working to send these women off into the world, where He will use them in profound ways, as He has done here.

Still, I look forward to the day I get to escape to the mountains, to embark on my next adventure, and I wonder:

Could it be that, truly, I have been prepared to leave?

....

May 15th, 2021—OFFICIAL GRADUATION DAY

The day comes. The official graduation livestream rolls and I choose not to watch it. I spend that hour on packing and cleaning my room, the door propped open for those who might look in and say goodbye.

I am fumbling with the decrepit vacuum when I look up to see that Anna has appeared in the doorway. “No,” I moan, slumping.

She gives me a sympathetic look.

I open my arms to her, pull her tall frame so close I can feel her breathing against mine, and I know she’s starting to cry.

“I love you,” I say.

“I love you, too.” Yes. Tears in her voice.

I pull back and look at her sweet face, burn the image in my brain.

“When the COVID guidelines lift,” I say, “I’ll come stay in your room.”*

“Yes.” She nods. “That would be fun. And I have to come visit you.”

I nod now, my eyes big with sadness.

“I’ll miss you,” she says.

“I’ll miss you. So, so much.” I wrap my arms around her once more, then pull away and say, “Now get out of here!” It’s too sad, too overwhelming. I’d rather have it over with.

A moment later, Kristen, my sister RA, appears in my doorway to ask a logistical question. This has been my life the past few weeks—juggling emotions and details simultaneously. Mostly, it’s awkward, and I drop things.

I want to well over with tears, but I can’t. I have to keep focusing on one task after another, the baby steps to the end that take all of my energy until I have none left with which to cry.

But I am terrified of the crying alone, after it all ends, when no one is there who understands fully.

The loss of this place, of these people, feels almost unmanageable in some moments. Megan says it when she asks the question late at night in my room: “How do people live after this?”

There is life after this. I called my grandmother this morning and worked out some details for it. I am excited for that life.

And, when I try to take in the loss of this season, I feel overwhelmed.

Hannah Thompson tells me that when she graduated two years ago, she felt like she got hit by a train. Sitting in the echoey silence of an empty dorm floor, I feel that the same might be true for me.

________________

*Audrey, if you are reading this, I realize I was mistaken in saying that—it will be your room I stay in.