Grandma's Tissue Farewell

At some point over the course of my family’s history, Grandma Dorothy invented the Farewell Tissue. This innovation of hers has been used by our family for many years as its preferred method of saying goodbye. I think we’re the only family to use this method, and this is a crying shame. I’m now an evangelizer of the Farewell Tissue. Let me help you help your family flourish with this extraordinary sendoff.

The Farewell Tissue is, as you might expect, a tissue. However, it’s evolved over the years to include a paper towel, a piece of fabric, or paper. There are only three requirements for a Farewell Tissue. It must be white. It must be reasonably flappy, so when you wave it, it flaps around like the tissue it’s supposed to be. And it must be smallish. In other words, it can’t be a white fitted bedsheet, for goodness' sake. It could be a white dish towel though.

The Farewell Tissue is not only an object with strict parameters but a process—with strict parameters. First, you must introduce the Tissue at a specific moment in a farewell. Second, you must implement the tissue farewell in a particular style.

Let me explain—because no doubt you want to start using this goodbye method yourself.

First, to set the stage.

When my mom’s extended family gets together there’s always an abundance of chatter, laughter, shenanigans, activity, and connection. It’s a wonderful commotion. It's a family love that will tucker you out for sure.

Saying our goodbyes is the low point of these events, especially as the years pass and each next generation becomes busier and spreads themselves farther apart. This is why a Farewell Tissue goodbye is so important.

The first thing you do for a tissue farewell is to remember to do it. Sometimes the remembering is timely, sometimes it isn’t. Regardless, as soon as you remember your family’s long-standing tradition, you must determine whether you’re prepared for it.

Like this.

You remember you’re supposed to do a tissue farewell. You shove your hand in your pocket. Is there a tissue? Yes? You’re set. No? Run into the house ASAP and retrieve the closest white scrap of fiber-related flappy item. Run back outside to get into position. If you’re doing this at the very last second, there will be a healthy freak-out factor involved.

Once you’re set into position, the second thing you do for a tissue farewell is to wait until the precise moment to pull out your tissue. You will know this moment when you see the departing car filled with your loved ones start to back out of the driveway, or even sooner, as folks get buckled into their seats. These are your green lights. You whip out the Farewell Tissue and start waving as robustly as you can in the air to your departing loved ones.

The final and key step in a tissue farewell is to respond appropriately to the reaction of those departing. Sometimes they will have forgotten completely about the tissue farewell. If this is the case, the car will inevitably pause in its tracks to wait while the people in the car frantically search for their own white flappy material.

This next point is important. You may either pause your hysterical tissue waving or keep waving. Both are fine. Do not just walk away. As soon as your loved ones locate any old thing in the car, they will start robustly waving back at you with maniacal glee and you will wave back the same. We refer to this as the Golden Moment of the Farewell Tissue.

Now that all of you are giggling and shedding a small tear from the sorrows of goodbye, you might as well say a silent thank-you to my Grandma Dorothy for her ingenuity. What a woman to have invented such a stellar practice of farewell!

If you maintain this practice long enough, your family will become like mine in knowing how quickly time flies, how much the world changes, and how firmly the Farewell Tissue holds a poignant constancy.

You will love the Farewell Tissue. It will slowly become cemented into your family’s tradition as it has into ours.

In my memory, I have one recurring image of my grandmother doing this tissue goodbye. My boys were small, and I was leaving my grandparents’ home in PA. They stood outside together to wave goodbye to us as we slowly backed out of their driveway. We were starting our five-hour drive back home to Virginia.

I looked over and there was Grandma with that face she has that nobody else ever had of anyone I’ve known. It’s mischievous, silly, fun, heartfelt, and girlish. That face of hers is about having a good time, which is all about laughter, crinkly eyes, and love—maybe some elbow jabs. It’s my favorite part of my grandmother, and it will always live on. On that day, her face was expressing happiness with that tissue. It was silliness. I will always remember it.

The Farewell Tissue was born at a time when my extended family members were in closer proximity. It was initially an amusing gesture, but over time it became a link between past and present. This gave it more emotional weight and meaning. Each time we do it now, it takes on more nostalgia and import. Grandma’s Tissue is a way to cope with our distance and strengthen the ties that bind us.

A year or two ago, my youngest son and I went up to northeastern Pennsylvania to my grandparents’ old lake house which is still in the family. Lots of relatives were there with us, and we had another typical action-packed time together.

On one of the days, a group of us drove to the nearby town of Forest City to do a few things, and on our way out we stopped by the family gravesite. We took photos together next to the headstones. We asked each other questions about family history and swapped stories as they came to us. We snooped around to see as many of the headstones as we recognized because much of our big extended family is buried there.

Then we got into our cars and started to drive away. I paused and pulled a tissue out of my car’s middle console. I opened the car window and waved my little Farewell Tissue to Grandma.

“Goodbye, Gram,” I called out the window, “Love you. Love you too, Gramps. See you two on my next visit.”

I put the tissue in my cup holder and scanned the cemetery grounds. Nobody was around to see me do this odd ritual.

Except, that’s not true. Grandma saw me, and she waved her tissue right back. I looked in my rearview mirror as I drove away and there it was--a small tissue waving from the top of her headstone. Farewell, Stephanie!

Farewell, Gram.