The Farewell

Mineral Pigments, Ink on Silk

15”x15”

2025

Saying goodbye has always been the hardest thing for me. Each farewell feels like being torn from the present, forcing me to face the inevitability of separation and the permanence it carries. I try to hold on, but it’s always futile; I wish to resist, yet there’s no escape. I’ve come to realize that the deepest pain of goodbye isn’t in the parting itself, but in the loss of moments that can never be relived.

When I was a child, my grandmother told me that many people who leave us turn into butterflies to come back and visit. She pointed at a large moth and said, “That must be your grandfather!”. As a kid, I didn’t really understand what “goodbye” meant. To me, saying goodbye to family just meant we’d see each other again soon. But my grandmother’s words always made me feel that those who had left us hadn’t really gone away—they had simply found another way to stay with us.

Though partings are inevitable, every time I see a butterfly, I can’t help but think that the people we believe we’ve said goodbye to have never truly left. We will meet again eventually.