“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
A.A. Milne
Airports in the mid-’90s had a different personality.
You could still walk someone all the way to their gate—right up to the carpeted entrance of the jet bridge—and stand there pretending you weren’t already saying goodbye.
I was flying back to the U.S. that night. A late flight. One of those long, humming hauls where the overhead lights never fully commit to being on or off. My grandfather—my Tata—came with us. He didn’t travel much by then, but he always came for goodbyes.
He wore his blue coat that night, folded neatly over his arm, like he didn’t quite trust the airport hooks to behave themselves. He was in his nineties. Still sharp, but quieter in the way people get when they know more than they say.
We didn’t talk much. We didn’t need to.
Conversations had a way of already being finished before either of us started them.
The PA cracked in both languages. Announcements blurred. Every so often he’d look at me and give a small nod, like he was storing the moment somewhere he didn’t plan to show anyone.
When they called my boarding group, he rose slowly—not because he was frail, but because he was deliberate. Like gravity asked permission.
We hugged. It wasn’t the kind of hug that ties a bow on things. More the kind that holds on because you’re not sure what else to do with your hands, or your heart.
Then he leaned back, eyes bright with something I couldn’t quite read, and said the same thing he’d said my whole life:
“Buf, buf… para los búfalos.”
He said it like a secret, or an inside joke, or a blessing disguised as nonsense. Maybe it was all three. I never asked. I think I liked not knowing.
He said it again, softer—a little puff of breath masquerading as a laugh—and gave a wave that looked almost casual until you watched it twice in your memory.
That was the last time I saw him.
On the plane, the city unfurled beneath me—a scatter of lights that looked like someone had knocked over a box of stars. I watched them fade until the window held only black water and the faint reflection of my own face. Somewhere down there, I imagined him walking back to the car with my mom, still holding that blue coat, muttering something to himself about buffalo.
I never asked him what it meant. I wish I had.
But maybe the not-knowing was part of the charm—a phrase that stayed mine because it had first belonged to him.
Goodbyes have a way of stretching themselves out.
They don’t start at the gate or end on the plane.
They linger in the sentences you should’ve asked and the ones you never will.
Every now and then, without planning to, I’ll whisper it into the air—
“Buf, buf… para los búfalos”—
and it feels like opening that old airport door again,
just long enough for him to step through.
Not to say anything.
Just to be there.
