Last looks are hard. Often, they pass us before we’ve noticed. By the time we muster up our attention to look with a sense of ending, what we wish we were looking at has already gone. Change sweeps through and alters those last looks without asking our permission.

The last time I was in my classroom, I gave it a final look just in case. By that time, however, students had already been asked to stay home. The muffled sound of instruction coming from the teacher on the other side of my wall was gone. The awkward trio of teenagers who usually knocked on my door to ask if they could hang out during lunch, were probably in their living rooms losing themselves in TikTok. The real last look for the year- or maybe longer- had happened when I didn’t notice it, in the ebb of students shuffling and teachers congregating on a regular Thursday. My soulful attempts at soaking it in, on the day I parked my car outside my classroom to grab a few last-minute necessities “for two weeks’ continuity of learning”, fell on an empty campus. This small world had already changed.

Even when we know what’s coming, that seems to be the way final glimpses behave. Spring of 2020 was our last shared look for a while, at a life uncomplicated by face masks and six feet of space. For me, Winter of 2019 began a season of last looks. It marked my very last time with two treasures: my grandmother, and the family ranch. In both cases, I had the rare gift of knowing my time spent with something and someone beloved, would be the last. Knowing so made it more clear that our true final moments were shared long before the weight of finality had settled in.

When I visited my family’s ranch this Christmas, I knew it would be the last time. A developer’s contract was already underway to bulldoze the land I’d grown up on. I expected saying goodbye to feel like a movie. It didn’t.

We drove away from my childhood home with the kids, the Christmas presents, and our luggage piled in my parent’s car, and I tried my best to feel as dreary as I could. No one cued an orchestra; there was no closeup on a longing face looking out a rain streaked window, no thick glycerin tears filling the screen frame. It was sunny outside. The kids were excited about getting on a plane.

Like always, we passed my aunts’ and uncles’ houses on the way out, but now they were empty shells. Behind the back pasture, we could see the rise and fall of a yellow excavator bucket had been digging since sunup all week. Half a dozen dusty cars I didn’t recognize were parked along the creek where we used to hunt for tadpoles. Men I had never met were already scattered the length of creek bed, driving heavy machinery to bore a new sewer line through rocks. It was my last time laying eyes on dirt road where I learned to ride a bike- but in truth, my last look happened before it had begun its change into something else.

It seems crass to segue from a real estate transaction to the passing of my grandmother, so I must preface this next part with this: my mother’s mother, the woman who loved my grandfather faithfully for 68 years, is a measure of strength, wisdom, and love to which most of us can only hope to rise. And when I wrapped my arms around her in December, I knew she and I would not see each other again on this side of life. Illness and dementia were on their way to making that end certain.

On our last visit, my grandmother was leaning her frail shoulders against my grandfather and complaining of the cold. Her days were spent being wheeled from resting spot to resting spot in their remote South Texas home. Adding a blanket, checking her oxygen, convincing her to eat something. I knew I’d never get to say goodbye again, but- like the home I left behind- the woman I was saying goodbye to had begun her change long before.

What did float down into the space where that final look should go was a deep appreciation for what endured. Despite her changes, my grandfather waited upon his wife with an attention to every breath and a care for each moment. When I rested my eyes on something that did remain, it was a look at a partnership that survived even as a body had undergone the worst. The real last look- the one that counted- wasn’t of my grandmother; it was of my grandfather, leaning in closely to hear her, protecting her from the breeze.

Thankfully, most of our last looks go unnoticed. Final glimpses would be overwhelming if every encounter felt like an ending. Perhaps that is the glory of travel: every cobblestone road, every winding river is a first-time feast that fills the eyes and heart. We leave with first blush still so fresh in our bones that we forgive the chance of a first also being our last.

Society’s abrupt halt this spring gave us little time to say goodbye to the to-and-fro of our daily lives. The mundane hours spent with colleagues and students just weeks ago didn’t feel profound. I trust we’ll get back to them, eventually- but it will be a while. Many of us would have gladly hugged a few more people tighter for longer, had we known. But that’s rarely the way last looks go: by the time we know we need to say goodbye, things have already begun their change into something new.