Closing Time

I lived with a girl in Germany who loved to read. She went through more books than any other person i've ever met, diving head first into the content, connecting on a personal level with many of the characters and losing herself completely in the stories. This girl would read during breakfast, on breaks at work and late into the night, flying through thousand page novels in three days and some of the classics in a mere afternoon.

Every once in a while however, I would watch her read a single page over a bowl of cereal only to put the book down until later that night when she would proceed to read yet another single page.

"You only have a few pages left, why don't you just finish the book?" I asked her one day over coffee, perplexed and somewhat annoyed by her peculiar behavior. It was then that my friend holding the book to close to her chest, near to her heart, looked at me and said,

"Because it's so good I don't want it to end."

In the book of life, chapters vary. Some are long, others extremely short. Some bring great happiness and success, others, heartbreak and loss. For me, the chapter of my life in the city by the sea brought much laughter and growth. It brought new friendships, new adventures and the comfort of being closer to home. Though my time in Seattle was shorter than I ever could have imagined, it is a chapter of my life that I will always look back with fond memories and smiles. The scene, the story lines, and most importantly, the characters made leaving an extremely tough decision. Though I didn't understand it in Germany at the time, I get it now. When you come to the end of a good book or an awesome chapter, sometimes it's just hard to complete. Because at the end of the day, completing means letting go, and letting go means moving on.

"I finished my book!" She said with enthusiasm later that night after a traditional German dinner with our house family. "Ya?" I answered with bit of confusion. "You sound happy. I thought you didn't want it to end? "

And as I watched her run up the stairs towards her stash of unread books on the third floor she yelled back at me with certainty in her voice, "Oh come on! Everyone knows that the best part of reading a book is finishing it." Stopping on the top stair she turned, looked back at me and said,

"Finishing one story means starting another. And new stories are the best."