Since October, I have said many goodbyes to dear loved ones. The reunions and meetings were heaven, the good-byes, honestly, difficult, each and every one. I find them unbearable as I just seem to thrive having all my loved ones with me.

Today, Petra and Leoni left to go home after an extended holiday visit.

I decided to look up some quotations on Good-byes….

 ”Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
~Dr. Seuss

“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

“Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn’t work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.”
 ~Snoopy

“Don’t be dismayed at goodbyes, a farewell is necessary before you can meet again and meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”
~ Richard Bach

“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
 
“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
~Henry David Thoreau
 
“Man’s feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell”
~Jean Paul Richter
 
“Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again”
~Elizabeth Bowen

“The return makes one love the farewell”
~Alfred De Musset
 
“Farewell, fair cruelty.”
~William Shakespeare

“Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need to know of hell.” 
~Emily Dickinson, “Parting”

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

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” 
~Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie

“Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.” 
~William Cowper

“To die and part is a less evil; but to part and live, there, there is the torment.” 
~George Lansdowne

“Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you’re close in heart.” 
~Kay Knudsen
“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.” 
~Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.”
~Ben Jonson

“Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.” 
~John Dryden
“Where is the good in goodbye?” 
~Meredith Willson, The Music Man

“As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.” 
~Anna Brownell Jameson

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