Grappling With Goodbyes: With in-person graduation up in the air, seniors should try to find closure from the smaller moments of high school

Illustration by Natalie Scholz

Last moments. The last time in your childhood home before leaving. The last time you talked to your grandma. Your last day of high school. Last moments suck. They sting because you’re already feeling the sense of loss you know awaits you after the moment is over. Still, we treasure these last moments because they provide a sense of closure to the end of a chapter.

Now, with school canceled for the rest of the year and the possibility of having an in-person graduation wavering, seniors are grappling with the reality of not getting their final goodbyes. But it’s important we don’t ignore this sense of loss we may be feeling, and realize we can still find closure by reflecting on the smaller moments throughout high school that made us the person we are today. After all, it’s the smaller moments — from awkward Link Crew Day icebreakers to English class inside jokes and 6 a.m. bus rides to cross country meets — that give big events like graduation so much meaning.

All of the pictures we had in our minds of our last moments of high school began to drift away on March 17 with the announcement of school being cancelled for the rest of the year. But at this point in the stages of the pandemic, many seniors, like me, are still holding onto the possibility of a graduation. 

As teens, we don’t step into adulthood the moment we blow out our candles on our 18th birthday. Rather, society has established your last days of high school and graduation as not only a symbol of the end of your high school experience, but also your childhood. You’re not just saying goodbye to high school, rather many are saying goodbye to being fully dependent, to having home-cooked meals every night and having your laundry washed and folded for you.

Graduation is romanticized in pretty much all forms of media, and the ideal format is easy to picture — all of your childhood friends together in matching caps and gowns. Your mom tearing up in her seat while your dad moves out into the aisle to get the perfect shot of you walking across the stage. Moving your tassel over to the left side of your cap. This is it. You made it. 

But for me, I wasn’t utterly heartbroken about losing those fleeting moments of glory in my Columbia blue gown. I was scared because these moments are more than just fun with friends — they’re moments to say goodbye to the people and places that shaped my last 18 years.

Graduation would be sad. Definitely scary. Maybe I’d even cry a little bit. But at least I would know that it was my last time with my peers, and I wouldn’t be left feeling like I didn’t get to see the last 15 minutes of a rom-com after the couple had their big fight. In the same way I know the guy will end up getting the girl in the end, I know I’ll get my diploma — but we all still look forward to the ending. 

But what almost hurt me most was the realization that all our “lasts” had already happened and we didn’t even know it. I didn’t get to savor my last swim meet. Or the last day of high school. I didn’t get time to process what it would be like to not hear the marching band practicing outside my bedroom window every morning in the fall. 

What I’ve found was circumstances like this make you miss the things you thought you always hated. Like waking up 5:30 a.m. for morning swim practices or even socratic seminars (yes, I said it). Having these last moments stolen from me, and of course the social isolation of quarantine, have forced me to reflect on the entirety of my high school experience and make me more appreciative of it than I would’ve been with those last months of school.

But while I encourage seniors to lean into these smaller moments in replacement of the final days of high school, I’m not going to deny the situation this virus has put us in really is unprecedented. Right now it feels like someone, or rather something, has pressed “pause” on our high school experience and hasn’t decided whether to start it again or not. We know we’ll never return to East for another normal school day. But will state and federal guidelines allow us to experience our graduation on July 14?

The uncertainty produced by this pandemic has placed seniors in an awkward limbo in which we are faced with the decision to either move on by ourselves, or hold on to the idea of somehow getting that sense of closure in the near future. Do we take “SME ‘20” out of our Instagram bios or wait until we know if we’ll get to walk across that stage? Should I hold onto my senior year when I haven’t set foot in school for over a month now, or start transitioning to the mindset of a college freshman?

There’s no right answer to that question, but it’s important to face these emotions and sense of loss rather than turning away from them because you feel ashamed of feeling that way. All around us, unemployment, illness, loss of loved ones and domestic abuse are unraveling people’s lives. As a class, we have the ability to recognize the magnitude of these impacts while also mourning the sense of closure to our youth that was promised. 

Closure. We crave it. We try to manufacture it when we feel it’s been taken away from us. We may not have known that March 13 was our last moment. But my hope is that we can find closure in something less fleeting than a moment — by reflecting on the many memories we had before that. 

All the buzzer beater basketball games. The times you stayed up until 2 a.m. cramming before a test. Getting breakfast on late start days with your friends. Fighting with your friends. Failing pop quizzes. The good, the bad and the ugly. By reflecting on these and recognizing how they have prepared us for our lives after high school, I know we can step into this new chapter with confidence and grace — even if the pandemic doesn’t allow us to have these moments of closure we were expecting.