-How do you translate “goodbye”?

So everyone thinks that there are no upsides to death, but I think I found one. When someone dies; they are forever gone. Never to be seen of or heard from again. No chance of him or her popping up at a group interview with you, no way of bumping into them on the street, no case of accidentally dialing them up for a quick chat; when someone dies they are truly out of your life. I’m not pro-death or anything, but I’m just appreciating the fact that death is the only real way “goodbye” works. Think about all the times you said goodbye and then ended up seeing that person again. Sure years could go by and situations could have drastically changed, but you still see them again. Even if it is not face to face, you hear about them, or read about them; the world is big but not that big. Even when you try to deliberately get rid of someone, they have a tendency of coming back. Some people are like ugly boomerangs; you throw them and then they come back and hit you on the head. Others are like a Kennedy, forcing you to say goodbye before the really good parts.
When you are fortunate enough to see the end coming, and try to plan a goodbye that suits the situation, it is stranger then writing your own obituary. Okay, that was morbid. Planning a goodbye is stranger then Lindsay saying she wants to join a convent; is that better? Imagine telling someone, “I probably won’t see you again, but if I do the relationship won’t be the same, we might try to pretend it is, but who are we kidding; we had a good run, lots of good times and inside jokes, but now apparently the universe says we need to part ways”, yea saying goodbye totally covers that. Those last six words read as “b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t”. So communicating “goodbye” is no fun and nearly impossible, but what about when we don’t want to say it yet. Can we postpone it or just not say it and pretend it is not real then? I think that is too much like holding on to a corpse and saying it’s not dead. Or buying the Nun suit for Lindsay thinking it’s going to last. Goodbye is always there. It’s like the taxes of personal lives. If you avoid them the IRS will hunt you down and then you have to pay even more.
Maybe goodbye is not as powerful as its made out to be; it’s bark could be worse then it’s bite. The world lives with death and taxes and it still spins. The world has even learned to survive Lindsay Lohan. Goodbye seems like a piece of cake. A cake that is bitter and awful and tastes like moldy fungus; but still just a cake.
Madonna said there was no greater power then it, Humphrey Bogart said it without actually saying it, and too many people never had a chance to say it; goodbye. It’s unavoidable, but manageable. Painful but not terminal. So next time; give a hug, shake a hand, or lean in for the kiss and say goodbye.