Falling in love with Vancouver in the spring and summer is easy. Falling in love in autumn takes more heart. More soul. More patience. Vancouver in autumn is rain falling sideways in orange streetlamps. It is cold hands and wet feet and chilly mornings, it is golden trees and blue sky. It is puddles and bus windows fogging up and it is rain. Lots of rain. With days of sunlight scattered like petals on a dewy lawn.

I fell in love.

It was easy in the headiness of May. Easy to lose my heart to the shower of blossoms and freshness of the earth each morning. Easy to lose my breath to the snow still dusting the near-distant mountains under blue skies and pink sunsets. But your September rain didn't put me off. Nor the cold, nor days of isolation. Not even the day my shoes leaked and I forgot my coat in the icy sleet and worked ten hours with half an hour's break.

You wooed me with neighbourhoods bursting into the colours of spring, and flowers exploding out of gardens and the taste of summer promise. Now you bid me goodbye with green grass and blue skies; with yellowing trees, the taste of change in the air, and still that magic around every corner.

I am tired of goodbyes. Each one breaks my heart a little more, and maybe one day there won't be anything left to break. Just little shining particles. Each a remnant of a time which glowed golden fire in its aching beauty. Some are small. The falling sun behind the mountains each night. The final leaves spiralling to the earth before winter settles over the world. The first time you’ll ever read the last page of a book. Some are harder. Leaving the place you’ve called home for five months. Going away from the people you have come to love. Bidding the ocean goodbye. I have to remind myself that, like the seasons, goodbye is not gone, only change. We lose the rhapsody of spring colour for the ripeness of summer which, in turn, must burn up in the crisp autumn. Even winter's icy hold loosens into spring as the world takes a breath. If I didn’t say goodbye I wouldn’t the hold the most perfect parts of myself. Like memories, and people and places; hope; adventure, and the stillness some call content.

So this is how I say goodbye. Not forever, just for a time. With my feet in the ocean, salt water in my eyes, and a full and grateful heart beating steadily in my chest.