Good luck, Goodbye, Bobby Jean

I remember 1985/86 like it was yesterday sometimes.  I remember Bruce Springsteen and my favorite album of his, Born in the USA.  I loved all the songs on there including the tear jerker Bobby Jean.  When I was almost a teenager someone I cared very deeply for moved away and I never got to say goodbye.  I never got to tell him how important he was to me.  He left in the summer of 1982.  I missed him for years.  I thought of him during the Bobby Jean song.  I wondered just how many people simply up and disappeared from the lives of friends without a word or any closure.  

I found my Bobby Jean again in 1990.  I went to visit and we fell deeply in love.  I came home after that visit a different person.  The visit was in the spring.  I couldn't handle being away from him and he wanted me too.  I gave my 2 weeks notice at work in late June.  My friends there tried to talk me out of it for the most part.  They did support me, they just didn't want to lose me. One day in July. The 7th, to be precise, I left.  I took a suitcase, some tamales and some cheese to the Greyhound station in Chicago where I got on a bus bound for Pensacola FL.

I married him and we've been happy.

I listen to Bobby Jean now and feel sad in a very different way.  I am Bobby Jean.  I left without a word to my oldest friends.  I was just gone one day.  I never gave them a chance to say goodbye and I never got to say goodbye to them.  It hits me now that maybe they did care and maybe I should have said goodbye.  Was I sparing them or me?  I think now that I was very selfish in not saying goodbye and having closure with them all.  I was there one day and just gone the next.  I try to avoid uncomfortable situations.  In running I created an uncomfortable situation.  

It's over now, and I know none of them will read this,  none of them will know that I do feel bad for not saying goodbye to them.  Take the time to say goodbye to people you've known when you move on.  Take the time to tell your friends and family that you love them and care for them.  

I always felt sorry for Bruce when he sung Bobby Jean.  I never meant to be Bobby Jean.  I've lived a song.  I guess that's a dream in my bucket list I can cross off.  Bucket list?  Does that mean I have to make a bucket list since I've crossed something off one?