“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
A.A. Milne
Goodbyes don’t start when you hug someone.
They start long before—when you realize there’s nothing left to say that hasn’t already been said.
They happen in the car ride to the airport, headlights tracing the road like a film reel, everyone pretending the silence is comfortable.
It was the mid-’90s, when airports still let families walk you all the way to the gate.
My flight back to the U.S. didn’t leave until late, one of those overnight hauls where the air hums with exhaustion and the lights forget how to turn off.
My grandfather—my Tata—was there, his blue coat folded neatly in his arms, like he didn’t quite trust the hooks to hold it.
He was in his nineties then, sharp as ever but quieter that night.
We didn’t talk much. We didn’t need to.
The PA system crackled in both languages, each announcement blurring into the next.
Every few minutes, he’d look at me and nod like he was cataloguing the moment, storing it somewhere private.
When they called my boarding group, he rose slowly, the way people do when gravity itself seems reluctant to let go. We hugged—a long, uneven kind of hug that’s half gratitude, half denial.
Then he leaned back and said, almost under his breath,
“Buf, buf… para los búfalos.”
He’d been saying it my whole life, like a catchphrase only he understood.
He said it again, softer this time, with that glint in his eyes that always made you wonder if he was serious or joking.
Then he laughed—a little puff of air more than a sound—and gave me a small wave as I turned toward the gate.
That was the last time I saw him.
On the plane, the city stretched below like spilled glitter. I watched the lights fade until there was only black water and my reflection in the window. I tried to imagine him back at the curb, heading home with my mom, muttering “buf, buf” to himself like a benediction.
I never asked him why he always said that. I just liked that it was always there.
Goodbyes get a bad reputation. We think they’re about endings, but really they’re just proof of how good something was to begin with.
That ache we feel? It’s the receipt. The evidence we had something worth missing.
I can still see him: the blue coat, the laugh, the wave. And every so often, without even thinking, I whisper it back into the air—
Buf, buf… para los búfalos.
How lucky am I.
