Saying Goodbye

I’ve had a lot of difficult goodbyes in my time.
From saying goodbye to someone on their death bed to saying goodbye to someone who’s leaving…

My first painful goodbye was for my grandmother (maternal) in 2007.
She’d been in the hospital for over a month by the time she was moved into the ICU.
We got to see her one last time the night she died. I can remember being taken to my grandparents’ (paternal) house and made to sleep on a blowup mattress.
We’d been to a working men’s club that night, dancing and playing bingo. I was nine.

The following morning, waking up at 5am, I was told my nanna had died.
I still remember how cold her hands were when I saw her the previous night. She didn’t look like herself.

After that, there was my first girlfriend. Liz was two years younger than me – I was 15, she was 13. We spoke on the phone for the last time when I was 16, back in 2014. I found out three weeks later she’d died due to her cancer. She was from Holland, and buried there, so I couldn’t go to the funeral.

In 2015, I said goodbye to my fiancee – sending her home to the US. Ive felt the same pain every year since. She comes to the UK to visit, spends weeks with me, and then had to go home. It never gets easier.

I hate goodbyes – they feel final and painful. I never want to say goodbye, I only ever want to say hello.