The Power of Endings

My sons are finishing school this week. While my younger gets up in the morning and goes to school with the same drive and attitude that accompanied him in the previous months, my older asked if he could skip the last three days. His grades are already finalized, so why should he bother going to school? It’ boring. He was also thinking not to go to the final basketball practice, on the very account of it being the last one.

My boys’ different attitudes to the school year end made me think about our approach to ending sin general. Although they seem to be an inherent part of many if not all actions and processes, at least from the point of view of the English grammar, for many of us, it is just a dread, redundancy, or an afterthought.  We tend to fear it, choose to skip it, or simply deny it. Why don’t we just accept it?  A few things come to mind.

Endings are viewed as merely logistical necessities. There is nothing exciting and new about endings. There is no need to give them a thought. Things will end somehow, let’s move on to the next new thing. How many of us plan for doing dishes when they think about making dinner? We will shop for the ingredients, cook, but, for many of us, cleaning is just a side effect of cooking. We do it eventually because it needs to be done. I know teenagers who, after testing their latest TikTok recipe, don’t do it at all. It doesn’t seem to be a part of their cooking process.

Yet, clearing the table and doing dishes can be a good transitional opportunity. It can be a quiet moment after a lively dinner chat, or a bonding group activity, where the whole family helps one another. I remember a preschool teacher, who to encourage children to cleaning up after play, taught them a fun and cheerful clean-up song. Clean-up was the last part of play. The same way Shavasana is the final pose of a yoga practice. Seemingly it is a doing-nothing pose, but every good yoga teacher knows to plan at least five minutes for this deep relaxation asana.

Another misconception about endings, which leads to us neglecting them, is the idea that they can be pushed away or totally avoided. I remember that when I went to summer camps as a child, I never wanted to leave. Instead of spending the last days of the camp on saying goodbyes, my friends and I spent our energy on lobbying with our camp instructors to stay one more day. It never worked and it never helped to ease the pain of ending.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just face the truth and accept that endings are a part of the process? If we did, we could plan for an ending that we could really enjoy. Last week I finished the fourth and final season of “Dix Pour Cent,” a Netflix show, which I watched in the name of learning French. In the first three seasons the plot was developing at a steady pace. In the fourth season, the story was suddenly rushed and it looked like it was improvised just to close the loops and wrap things up. Did the writers forget to include the ending in the script? Did the actors mentally move on to their new projects? Whatever the reason, the sloppy ending is all I remember from the show.

To conclude, let’s not ignore the endings that are bound to happen in our lives. Let's give them time. I read somewhere that beginnings and endings are the things we remember the most. Who doesn't want more good memories?