"Maria just left" I called Victor crying. Oscar and Lu took her to the airport, but I decided to stay home. Despedida is the word in Spanish for the act of saying good-bye, and up to this point I haven't found a word in English that fully translates it. This is not the first time that someone had left us. Agatha, Victor, Yoli, Laura and Pepe, and everyone else that had left New York in the past years: Maria Jose, Mark, Natalia, Martha and many others. I walked past Maria's bedroom and I could feel the absence of a space that suddenly belongs to no one. As it has happened in the past, new people will come, bringing new stories. That is the way of New York.