Necessary Endings

Every end is a new beginning ~Proverb Quotes

The end was 19 years in the making. It was impossible to fathom in the beginning when the first acts of the script were being played out that the end was approaching, approaching at an exceedingly rapid rate, that the end would be reached seemingly moments after it began. As the script evolved the acts took many unexpected twists and implausible turns with the final act containing the cruelest of fates. The end came unexpectedly with the actor unprepared for the abruptness at which the play finished, stunned when her playing career ended in a preseason training session of her Senior year at college, crushed that the final season which she had prepared for her entire life, ended before it began.

I spent the better part of 20 years a stage hand, a director, a choreographer, a spectator, a counselor in the unfolding saga that was her soccer career. I was present for Act 1 when she first ran onto the playing field, a pigeon toed 4 year old with unkempt hair wearing an oversized blue jersey that was the signature of the Park District soccer teams. Not much talent but a big smile of joy as she ran up and down the field and, occasionally, twirled ballerina style at random moments during the game.

I was there at the final scene, her Senior Game, where she had ceremonial involvement. She walked onto the field sporting the same grin, the ear to ear grin, she wore when she first ran onto the field in Act 1, the grin she wore every time she stepped onto the playing field. In agreement with the other team, at the kickoff, her teammate played the ball forward she walked gingerly to the ball and took her final college touch, a pass to the opponent who promptly kicked the ball out of play so she could sub out. She then took the long walk, the final walk, the curtain closing walk from midfield to the bench into the arms of her teammates. I wept.

I wept not only for the tragedy that played out before my eyes. I also wept because this was a painful end to a phase in my own life. This was my last child to play soccer on a competitive, school team. I had few more joyous experiences than watching my kids excel at soccer. Her walk off the field was also a painful ending for me.

Endings are a necessary part of life. If things do not end our lives will be so cluttered that we cannot start something new. We will be too bogged down to recognize the next opportunity, an opportunity that may surpass all our currently held expectations. As the gardener prunes the rose bush so it produces better buds so we must let go of any regrets we have at endings allowing us to embrace the next opportunity, step into a whole new world.

Some endings we must initiate ourselves while others are thrust upon us. Because we never know when a chapter in our life will end, we must exist in each moment as if it's our last, play each game with the vigor and intensity we would if we knew it was to be our swan song, our legacy. In this way, when an unexpected ending does occur, we can walk off the field knowing that no matter what happens, we gave it our all.