I often felt like I didn’t have much control in my life as a kid. When my mom and father divorced, I was about 6-years-old, and I went from having my room to moving in my grandparents and sharing a room with my brother. He and I got along fine, but then we moved again when our mom remarried.

Leaving my friends was difficult. Then when our mom divorced a second time, and we moved back into my grandparents’ house again, I again lost the friends I had made.

But I remember an especially difficult time that I hadn’t expected.

When I was 12-years-old, my friends and I became friendly with two sisters. They had moved in with their grandparents so that their father could work at a local job, but they would eventually go back to Oklahoma. Living in Philadelphia, Oklahoma might have been Spain.

My friends and I had a great time with the sisters. We played tag and hung out all the time. We became fast friends. After about a year, the news came that the sisters needed to move back to Oklahoma. I still remember saying goodbye and feeling heartbroken.

The sisters left early on a Saturday morning, and I got up to press my nose against the window and I watched as the big truck parked in front of their house. The movers added all their things into the big truck, and I waved to the sisters one last time.

They left that morning, and a part of me felt broken and sad.

Too many times I had lost friends through moving, but this time it was different because I was left behind.

I saw the sisters about ten years later, and I hardly recognized them. We talked and said hello, but the bond that we had as kids had been broken. We had not stayed in touch, and the distance was too great.

Saying goodbye can be difficult. Because I had such instability in my early life, I have a hard time saying goodbye. And yet, nothing lasts forever.

Sometimes letting go and saying goodbye offers other opportunities that we are not able to see in the present moment.

Sometimes we’re not ready to say goodbye but have to because someone we love has passed on.

Sometimes we’re left behind.

In the end, it all still hurts, and we feel raw inside.

I know that’s how I felt.

Time does heal wounds, but some hurt takes months or years to heal.

And for today, I want to acknowledge that. Saying goodbye is hard for me. It hurts and takes time for me to heal.

None of us know how much time we have with our friends and family.

Go find someone you love and hug them. Tell them how much you love them. And be true.

To yourself and the future.

What we have today is all we have.

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