Wish goodbye to your loved ones like it were the *last* goodbye you were able to give them and perhaps the meeting/parting will go some way to being more emotionally significant.
Often, we only fully appreciate things once they are no longer accessible to us – consider that expression: ‘to take for granted’.
This is an idea I have adapted from the Stoic practice of imagining the things you love being taken away from you. Or put another way: just because you don’t think about it, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
Plus, sometimes that goodbye *will* be your last and you might not know this at the time. So in a way, it’s a… precaution.
Many of those who I have loved are not around anymore and I do not feel I showed them that I cared enough when they were.
Even years later, this is not easy to deal with – as I’m sure you know.
As an agnostic I do not draw comfort from some afterlife that offers a second chance at reunion. All evidence I’ve turned up seems to suggest that when they’re gone, they’re gone.
And so I hope not to make the same mistake with those who I am privileged to still have around me today.
“When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as
the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.” ~ Khalil Gibran
