When is the last time you’ve had to say goodbye to someone?

I mean really had to say goodbye, the kind of goodbye that means, “I don’t know when we will see each other or talk to each other again on this earth.”

Most likely it was when someone you knew was dying. Think about how incredible that is. Once upon a time, when folks moved a town over, graduated from high school or college, or went off to war, there was no promise of continued communication or connection. The impending distance was felt more fully.

Just as we as a culture have separated ourselves from death (taken it out of the home and into the funeral home), we have also all but banished the weighty goodbye—and we think we have banished the need for the goodbye.

We all know that in the past twenty years, the evolutionary line of connective technology has taken an almost-unimaginable leap forward. First there were printing presses, and then telegraphs, and later telephones (with an astounding evolutionary line of their own), then the internet, which brought e-mail and social networking sites and video chat and a plethora of other ways for us always to be “connected” to one another.

In many ways, these developments are wonderful. This post isn’t about Facebook being evil.

But although I’m no sociologist, I wonder if these changes have made our partings shallower.

I wonder if we have become less reflective when we exit one place, or one phase of our lives, to move on to another. If we are not as careful as we should be about how we leave the things and people we care about, when we leave.

It’s easier not to worry about it, because it’s more comfortable that way. Over the past few weeks, as David and I have prepared for our move to Philadelphia and have had a series of last dinners and last drinks with friends and family in Seattle, I swallow my sadness and adopt a casual air at the end of the evening, saying, “We’ll keep in touch,” or “We’ll visit soon,” or “We’ll post new photos of our apartment on Facebook so you can see them.”

But it feels false. I find myself wanting to say, instead, “Although my love for you isn’t going to change, I am sad that this life we’ve shared together here, at this time and in this place, is changing. I am grieving for that. It is a loss to me.”

And: “Thank you for being an important part of my daily life.”

Now, as I am also leaving the Good Letters blogging community as a regular contributor, I would like to extend this message to you—you readers, and you writers.

Before beginning this post, I spent some time thinking about what participating in this blog has meant to me. What I’ve gained from it, how it has changed me.

There are many answers to that question, not the least of which is that it has given me a reason to reflect, and a space to share those reflections with others, friends and strangers. But I think that the most valuable thing I am taking from this blog is not writing for it, but reading it.

Before I started working for Image and joined the team of writers, I read the blog haphazardly, when I thought of it, or when a friend linked to a post on Facebook. But after I came to know first-hand the time and care that go into the pieces, and as I came to know the writers as individuals through their posts, I began to look forward to reading the day’s essays first thing each morning.

Here’s what I found: intelligence, artfulness, vulnerability, humor, and grace.

Allison Backous falls in love. Lindsey Crittenden writes a note to a dying friend. Kelly Foster tells us to pay attention. Laura Bramon Good cuts her hair. David Griffith loses his mother. A.G. Harmon eats a cupcake. Caroline Langston visits 7-11.

Jeffrey Overstreet celebrates “The Rainbow Connection.” Peggy Rosenthal balances her stuff. Andy Whitman looks out at his suburban neighborhood. Bradford Winters gives his mother a birthday present. Tony Woodlief wonders what will happen to his babies. Sara Zarr prays for her father. And Richard Chess, in his very first post for Good Letters, reads the Torah.

I don’t use the word “blessing” lightly, but all of these stories, and so, so many more, have been a blessing to me here. Thank you for them.

Thank you for being an important part of my daily life.