Goodbye Harold. Thanks for taking me along on your journey.

I just finished a book.  I'm so excited to have finished it!  I love that sense of accomplishment that comes with turning that final page and closing the cover.  Almost as quickly as that feeling of triumph came, I am overwhelmed by the melancholy of saying goodbye to the friends whose daily lives, in fact their very thoughts and feelings, I have been so involved in while reading their story.  Most of these people are not real.  I rarely read nonfiction -- although I have truly loved the biographies and autobiographies I have read.  They become so real to me as I read.  I can see them.  I can feel what they have felt.  I have been to so many wonderful places with them.  Sometimes they become so much a part of my life that I forget they do not exist outside of the pages.  I become so accustomed to them being part of my life that they never really leave me.  I often find myself wondering what they are doing now before I remember they were just characters in a novel.  I can't bring them back by rereading them, either, for when I do, it is just remembering something that I already went through with them.  I want to know what came next.  I want to know what Jem and Scout did when they grew up. (To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee) I want to know what happened with Judy and Master Jervie.  Did they have children?  Did they stay in love? (Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster)  I want to know what Jo's grandchildren thought of her stories.  (Little Women by Louisa May Alcott)  Even reading a sequel is not enough.  It still doesn't tell me what happened after that and I miss them.  It's like moving away and losing touch with an old friend.  And yet, the only thing left to do is pick up a new book and make a new friend.  So, goodbye Harold and Maureen (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce) and hello my next dear friends!