Opinion: While I’m saying farewell to this column, my virtual door will stay open
Everything must come to an end, even the projects we love, even the activities that imbue us with joy. As the famous Ecclesiastes verse begins: “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven.”
It is time.
This is my farewell column, the last after more than 30 years of putting into words feelings and experiences I hoped resonated with others. I’m both relieved and sad, excited and apprehensive. When you do something for so long, you can’t help but worry about how you will deal with its absence. The soul-searching questions are inevitable: Who am I without this? What will fill the crater left behind?
I’ve been talking about stopping the column for well over two years, sometimes debating the possibility with younger colleagues who eventually beat me to the punch. From the Land of No Deadlines, they reported a surprising sense of satisfying calm, likely inspired by owning an undisturbed stretch of time to use as they pleased. Their occasional bulletins made retiring the column so attractive.
And yet. And yet.
I clung to my weekly responsibility like a drowning man to a life preserver. Now I realize I wasn’t ready to quit. Everyone’s journey is invariably different, each of us arriving at the destination in our own time.
The first stirring, my initial disquiet began when the last of my children moved away, taking their kids, the people I love most and best, with them. Bereft, I immediately began scheming to visit, using any excuse to swoop in on their new lives. I had never imagined that they would leave their hometown, far from family, but the unexpected had happened and it fell on me to adapt.
This meant I spent my money and time chasing grandchildren. Rare was the month where I was not living out of a suitcase for days at a time. This June, for instance, I’ll be home a total of nine days, hardly enough time to do the laundry and water the houseplants. What’s more, my youngest son’s wife is expecting their second this fall, and I want to be available, without distraction, for the birth of my 10th grandchild.
As you might guess, travel, however fun it might appear, can be exhausting. Add immovable deadlines and you have a tried-and-true recipe for stress — which, in my case, showed up as bad colds, bronchitis, occasional insomnia and two bouts of pneumonia in the same span of years. In short, column deadlines became my sword of Damocles, forever hovering over me, forever pulling me from a sweet moment of relaxation.
It was time to quit.
Writing this column has provided me with a paycheck, yes, but over the years, it also has given me a sense of fulfillment that I know will be hard to replicate. For a writer, there’s no greater gratification than a solicitous note from a reader, no better encouragement than knowing someone somewhere reads you. We spend so much of our work lives in isolation that these connections are manna. Truly.
From the start, my column was never intended as usual newspaper fare. I didn’t write about politics or economics, and I zealously stuck to those guardrails, except for a sporadic comment here and there about a public person whose actions had struck me as particularly odious. I wanted my 650 words to report on the mundane, my experiences to reflect the highs and the lows of an ordinary life.
As a result, my dear and faithful readers cried with me over profound losses and celebrated with me during moments of joy. That has been a gift like no other, and I feel privileged to have been invited into your homes regularly. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
However, I’m not riding off into the sunset just yet, if ever. I will still write, I will always write, but I’ll be spending more time writing fiction and promoting my historical novel, Dulcinea.
My virtual door — on social media, with my website, and through email — will remain open too. Drop on by, will you?
Ana Veciana-Suarez writes about family and social issues. Email her at avecianasuarez@gmail.com or visit her website anavecianasuarez.com. Follow @AnaVeciana.
