My son and daughter-in-law and their young children spent a year living in Amsterdam. Saying goodbye to their children’s new friends, Toshi and Yuki, was one of their first real experiences with loss.
Even now, mentioning those names brings back stories and sad faces. But their memories remain. After they returned home, the grandkids named their new puppy after Yuki which was a wonderful way to honor the memories.
It makes me think about the many goodbyes we experience throughout our lives.
We often think of death as the long goodbye. We know the heartbreak of losing someone we love. Yet even the deepest grief eventually softens into remembrance. The sharp pain fades, leaving behind stories, photographs, and moments we can revisit with tenderness and even laughter.
Long before that final goodbye, life gives us plenty of practice.
Author, William Bridges wrote “Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change.” He observed that every transition begins with an ending. A move, a divorce, retirement, a new job, children leaving home, selling a house… these are among many life changes, and transition is what happens inside us as we adapt to them. Successful transition takes time. I think of our residents at JSL. They first move here and perhaps it’s just not exactly like they thought it would be. But a few weeks later they’re kicking themselves and asking, “Why didn’t I move her sooner?”
When we are young, goodbyes often arrive without our consent. A parent gets transferred. A family moves across the country. One day we’re riding bikes with our friends we assume we’ll know forever; a few weeks later we’re unpacking boxes in a new neighborhood.
What I remember most about my childhood goodbyes is how absolute they felt. My family moved from the Southside of Chicago in midwinter 1961.
I was thrown into a new city, a new school, new neighbors and classmates. It was hard for six-and-a-half-year-old Jo. But the experience made me who I am today… resilient and comfortable meeting new people.
Before texting, social media, and video calls, moving away often meant disappearing from each other’s lives. We promised to write letters and maybe sometimes we did.
Perhaps that’s why those childhood separations remain vivid childhood memories. They teach us that not everything we love will stay with us.
As we become adults, goodbyes don’t become any easier. It’s complicated.
We say goodbye to the homes where our children took their first steps and where holiday dinners stretched late into the evening. We leave jobs, communities, routines, and identities that help define us.
We watch sons and daughters begin their lives in other cities, sometimes on the other side of the world.
We say goodbye when relationships end.
And occasionally, we say goodbye to versions of ourselves that no longer fit the person we’ve become.
The striking thing about goodbyes is that they’re rarely about distance.
Two people can live thousands of miles apart and remain deeply connected. Others can live across the street and gradually drift away.
Not every relationship is destined to continue indefinitely. Some of our relationships belong to a season rather than a lifetime. This isn’t failure. It’s simply part of being human.
The challenge is recognizing the difference between relationships that deserve continued effort and those that can be honored with memories and gratitude and allowed to rest.
We can say what needs to be said. We can express gratitude for the time together and we can tell someone what they meant to us.
Most important, we can acknowledge two sides of every goodbye: the memories we made and what’s changing. Both deserve recognition. The pain we feel when leaving a place or a person is evidence that something meaningful happened there.
We don’t grieve what never mattered. We don’t miss what never touched us. That’s why goodbyes feel so heavy. They’re reminders that we loved, connected, belonged, and cared.
Each goodbye says the same thing: “This mattered.”
The measure of a life isn’t how many goodbyes we avoid, or get through, but how many things we loved enough to make the goodbye so difficult.
May our goodbyes be softened by love, and our memories be carried with tenderness rather than regret.
May we recognize the meaning in each connection and find peace in the changes that shape our lives.
May this Shabbat bring rest to what has ended, healing to what is still unfolding, and quiet joy in what remains.
Shabbat Shalom