I’ve been thinking about ghosts a lot lately. Not in the typical sense. The first few words of the Mourner’s Kaddish have been stuck in my head for a while, yitgadal v’yitkadash over and over again. I couldn’t tell you why. It feels like a ghost, like I am grieving the death of someone or something I can’t even identify. It is probably something to do with being a senior, or the death of my grandparents this year and last. 

Life is layered. I walk the same paths as I did freshman year. Admittedly my path home from layout is similar to sophomore year’s, for most of it at least. Paths I walked while they were still alive. I’ll keep on going. They won’t. But life goes on in some form, it has never needed anyone here for it.  

I joined staff as a wide-eyed copy editor my freshman fall, and for the last seven semesters my Monday and Tuesday nights have been defined by this magazine. I don’t entirely know what life will be beyond this cycle of academia and publication. I’ve never had to know. The Tufts Observer is the first big goodbye, the one I’ll have to learn to live with the earliest while I process the idea of leaving this place behind and learning to hold everything it has meant to me. 

Truthfully, I don’t think we’re ever ready. For me, most goodbyes have been forced, necessary to the person leaving. They were tired. I wouldn’t have chosen it. This one flips it; I take their role. I am walking away while this continues, going on and on and on without me to be a part of it. What existed before me shall exist after, making issue after issue, documenting this school, this place, and everyone within it. 

This magazine has encapsulated some of the best and worst parts of my life. The triumphs and losses of life and publishing have consistently overlapped. But that is how things go. The large things in our lives intersect with the others. Good things happen while bad things happen and I’ve had to learn to process them both. I hope the things I love outlast me and continue on, despite me no longer being a part of them. The love I have for it will continue on; maybe different, maybe changed, but still there. This magazine is fueled by the love of those who run it, by me and Bota and Myisha and Owen and Lena and Ale and Emmett and whoever came before and will come after. It is all still here, maybe shifted, but never ending. 

Even though it is the quintessential Jewish prayer of death, the Mourner’s Kaddish only speaks of love for G-d. It holds the prayer for peace and ends on that note, that hope for love and peace and calm. This magazine has my heart. I have waited, baited breath and all, for each issue, hands stained in ink and eyes heavy for sleep. I found so much joy creating it next to so many wonderful people, in putting so much of our minds into making the best magazine possible. To have had a role in creating something as wonderful and powerful as this has been one of my greatest honors. 

I’ve always hated goodbyes. I don’t see that changing. But I’m glad this is the note I could leave on—a note of love and hope for the future, one where I get to say my piece before heading out the MAB Lab door. To Brigid, Bota, and Richie, for teaching me how to do this and how to leave it. To Amanda, Sofia, and Brenna, for carrying it on or leaving next to me. And to you, for either writing, making something for, or reading this magazine. I hope it has meant something to you, even just a fraction of as much as it has to me. This magazine lies within its people, its writers and artists and readers, and I have an indescribable amount of love for all of it. 

My whole heart, 

Josie Wagner