Instead of writing an essay addressing the end of our time together, I thought I would simply assemble some of my favorite thoughts on the matter. Here they are, in no particular order.

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes.  A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or a lifetime, is certain for those who are friends.  ~Richard Bach

Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell.  ~Jean Paul Richter

Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?  ~Unknown

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.  ~Henry David Thoreau

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.  ~Carol Sobieski

Excuse me, then! you know my heart; but dearest friends, alas! must part. ~John Gay

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back.  May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields.  And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.  ~Irish Blessing

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.  ~Robert Southey

Not to understand a treasure's worth till time has stole it away is cause of half the poverty we feel, and makes the world the wilderness it is.  ~William Cowper

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.  ~George Eliot

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.  Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.  ~Flavia Weedn

But fate ordains that dearest friends must part.  ~Edward Young

As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence.  ~Alcibiades

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.  ~Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.  ~Tryon Edwards

Ever it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.  ~Kahlil Gibran

Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.  ~William Shakespeare

Don't cry because it's over.  Smile because it happened.  ~Theodor Seuss Geisel

Fr. Larry Crockett