It started on Friday, December 16, 2016. I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight it has become clear. This was the day we started the long process of losing little bits of Kim, saying goodbye, hoping they would return. Things like her voice, her laugh, her wit. All were there till almost the end but eroded. Sometimes in ways that we didn’t even realize at the time. A new normal every day, only to say goodbye to that normal only to embrace the next new normal.

We found out that morning that her mother had passed away. She hadn’t been feeling well but a flu test on Thursday was negative, so we were hoping for a better day on Friday. That didn’t happen. In fact she got worse.

I sat up with her late that Friday night. Unbeknownst to us she was in the early stages of pneumonia. Her blood oxygen levels were probably already low. That night her breathing was labored. I sat up with her until late in the night, that was the beginning of what would become a regular occurrence over the next eight months. We went to the ER the next morning. The rest is history.

Worse became even worse and we set new expectations for “the worst” many times throughout.

The “end” came last Tuesday, August 8th at around 4 in the afternoon. But the end turned into another beginning, another phase in the Long Goodbye. Family viewing, Visitation, Memorial Service, Graveside, Celebration of Life. A long week of goodbyes.

But as Monday morning dawned it became apparent that the goodbyes weren’t over. Indeed I wonder if they will ever be over. We referred to our second date as “The Date That Never Ended.” I’m starting to believe that I have now entered into “The Goodbye That Never Ends.”

She’ll always be with us. But she will also never be with us. So the goodbyes continue each time she pops up in conversation, or a memory jumps into our heads or we find some long lost token of her presence. The house and our lives are full of them. We think of her and then say goodbye all over again.

May the goodbyes never end.