Series' End

FOTB (Friend Of This Blog) and resident optimist Ed of Riverbend Journal had a though provoking comment on my post yesterday about packing up the last items at my parents' place:

"With many experiences, when we close out a chapter of our lives, we are already seeing the upcoming chapter ahead and that can help us bridge the gap emotionally.  But in this case, you can't see the chapter ahead and indeed it may look more like the end of a book, which I'm sure makes it heavier on the mind."

Pretty smart fellow, that Ed.

If I am truly honest with myself, this last bit of packing and the oncoming sale of The Ranch is the end of what will likely turn out to be two of the most change packed years of my life with a lot more emotional events than I care to admit.

Somehow in the past two years ending this December, I was laid off (for the second time) and got a new job halfway across the country which entailed a move, an effective severing of almost all aspects of my social life and connections and saw me spend less time with my wife in person than before we met each other, effectively reached the end of the active parenting era, lost my surviving parent, arrived at a decision to do something (sell The Ranch) which completely change the last 25 years of planning, and then had to establish a new life and new connections where I had literally none (which is still in progress).

And, I had to buy a new car.

If I look at all of it spelled out that way, I can imagine the response I would have to a friend if they brought that list of items to me. 

It has not been all bad of course, and by writing all of that out I do not intend to make it seem so.  My job change has been for the better and New Home 32.0, for all that I do not have the years of activities and social network I had there, has its own charms and adventures.  I can still train in Iaijutsu.  I can still work out. The Ravishing Mrs. TB is here permanently (more or less).  There are rabbit organizations nearby.

But for all of that, there is a heaviness and an emotional weight I am not fully aware of.

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Growing up, I read a number of books series.  Most memorable in my mind were the original books written by Frank L. Baum about OZ, Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Anne and Andy series, and the then de rigeur Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew (mostly the originals, before they got up to then 1970's modernity).  A treat series - which I have not looked for the way I should but enjoyed greatly - was the Tom Swift series (1960's science had the ring of science fiction to a lad who did not know better).

Later, my series became all Fantasy and Science Fiction - Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs (John Carter, Pellucidar, Carson of Venus), Andre Norton (Witch World), Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian).  You will note these are are older writers; around my post-teenage years I found less and less series and more and more stand alone books (although Jerry Pournelle's series about Falkenberg's Legion was a fabulous late find).

The great things about series - good ones, anyway - is that one gets to visit and revisit characters and places that one enjoys.  Sometimes they are clear laid out in terms of their paths throughout the series. Sometimes they start strong and then end up wandering, the latter books being lesser than the former.  But always, one had a sense of where the overall plot was going - after all, if the book is a series, that means that the characters survive and continue their stories.

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The saddest part of any series, of course, is when it ends.

The end of series tends to be from one of two causes.  The first is that the author dies.  The second is that the author loses interest in the characters and wanders off to different shores.  Of the series above, both happened (along with - sometimes - the least desired option of other authors picking up the series with greater or lesser success, usually lesser).  

Either way, the story ends.

There is a certain subtle sadness when one closes the back cover on a series for the first time.  Prior to this point, one always could look forward to the next adventure, the next story - now, there are no more.  In the best of endings, the characters never die at the end.  The series just ends; the characters are free to go on to other adventures in one's mind.

The series are never quite the same after that - certainly, the stories are still there, the remembered parts that bring us joy or tears, the lands that we had come to love ever fresh for our return visits.  But always in starting, we know that there is an ending, a wall beyond which the characters will not go.

The Never Ending Story has reached its border.

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It appears -using Ed's metaphor - that this particular series has reached its last book.

That is not to say that my series has reached its last book (well, hopefully anyway).  But it appears that this particular series - which was originally intended to continue for several more volumes - has met its end.

And maybe that is okay.

As I have written before, the last book in this particular series has not lived up to earlier volumes.  Perhaps that is to be expected:  the last book dealt with a very different set of circumstances and adventures than the previous books, and there was definitely a change in the plot and tone.

It was, arguably, lesser than its predecessors.

Like all good series, it will go up on the shelf - in my case a bit more literally, as so much of what has happened in and about that era of my life is entered here on the blog or in my journals.  I can go back to re-visit it in my mind any time I want - but I wonder when I will do so.

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There comes a point in every reader's life where the old books no longer speak in the way they used to.  Sometimes that is maturity, sometimes that is a change of taste, sometimes...well, sometimes things do not resonate with us as they did of old.  And at that point, we have only one choice.

It has been long years since I have picked up the first book of a new series.  Who knows what wonders await in the pages yet to be written.