Approaching an End…

As I muddle through life it is inevitable that I, like everyone, must face endings in various and sundry things. For example the end of a relationship either via breakup, personal drift, or even death, could be the end of a movie, or the end of a career (or job placement change). No matter whom we are or where we are in life change will happen and with change comes endings.

For me, I see an approaching ending. For the past decade and a half I have been reading a wonderful series of books by Robert Jordan and I recently purchased the fourteenth and final book in that series. Even as I start this book, I know that the end is at hand. Robert Jordan has passed away, one way or another the series will be resolved, and I will no longer be able to peeking on the lives of these characters.
Will I miss them? Yes.
I have missed characters from a book series before.

Will I morn that loss? Perhaps.
In my own way I will grieve for the loss of those relationships. In no way am intending to say that losing a loved one is as mundane as finishing a series of books, similar but of differing intensities.

Will I feel achievement at having completed a series many have abandoned half way through or having read more than 13,000 pages in the process? No.
I do not feel accomplishment like others do; instead I will look back on the ‘journey’ or ‘adventure’ I enjoyed while reading this series.
I am not the same person I was a decade and a half ago.

Whatever becomes of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Elayne, Egwene, Nynaeve, Lan, or Siuan I will miss them as if they were absent friends.


Of course most endings are followed by new beginnings, whom shall I meet next and what adventure will they lead me on?