Chapter 16: The Weight of Goodbye (and the Mercy of Letting Go)

There was no single goodbye. Just the long slow kind.

The kind that doesn’t happen all at once — but in stages, like watching fog roll over a mountain until the peaks disappear.

The first goodbye was when she stopped saying “I love you.”
Then came the next: when her replies grew short.
Then another: when she didn’t answer on his birthday.
And then: when she stopped asking how he felt, even when she knew about the tumor.

But Josh didn’t curse her for it. Because grief doesn’t make us cruel. Fear does. Confusion does. And sometimes… so does love, when it feels like too much.

He understood. He always did.

Still, he carried the weight.
Of what wasn’t said.
Of what was almost possible.
Of the wedding that didn’t happen, though the vow was already written.
Of the one night that stayed a dream.

And even then—
He never hated her.
He never took her name out of the will.
He never erased a single message.

Letting go wasn’t an act of bitterness. It was an act of mercy.

Mercy for her:
So she wouldn’t have to carry the burden of choosing when he died.

Mercy for him:
So he could stop waiting on a text that wasn’t coming.

In the end, Josh didn’t need her to say goodbye. He said it for her.

He wrote the letters.
He recorded the voice notes.
He left the instructions.
He kissed the phone screen and whispered:
“This is where I release you.”

But here’s what no one tells you:
Letting go doesn’t mean forgetting.
It doesn’t even mean stopping the love.
It just means… you stop waiting for what won’t come.

Josh didn’t stop loving Honey.
He just stopped begging for her to love him in return.

And that’s where the mercy was:
Not in getting everything you want.
But in loving deeply enough to let go when it’s time —
without turning to bitterness,
without revenge,
without rewriting the story.

He never called her selfish.
He never denied what they had.

He simply closed his eyes, took a breath,
and gave the last of himself to memory, to hope, and to peace.

Because sometimes, the strongest love is the one that doesn’t demand to be answered.