Endearist On a last day everyone writes the same message. The one specific memory is the only part that gets kept.
Three drafts — short, personal with the specific memory, and a version for a card or farewell email.
The brackets are the point. On a last day every message sounds the same; the one specific memory is the only part that stays.
Short — message or Slack
Dear [Name], Sorry to see you go, and glad for you at the same time. The thing I will remember: [one specific moment, project, or running joke].
On a last day everyone gets the same twenty messages. The one specific memory is the only differentiator — including in the short version.
Personal — with the specific memory
Dear [Name], Sorry to see you go, and glad for you at the same time. The thing I will remember: [one specific moment, project, or running joke]. I am at [contact] if you ever need something, or for no reason at all. All the best, [Your name]
Actually replace the bracket. A farewell with no specific detail says "you were nice", which is what everyone says.
Card or farewell email
Dear [Name], Sorry to see you go, and glad for you at the same time. The thing I will remember: [one specific moment, project, or running joke]. The part that usually gets lost: connections like this do not hold on their own. They hold when one side starts, so I am starting. I am at [contact] if you ever need something, or for no reason at all. All the best, [Your name]
For a farewell email to a whole team: keep it short, do not forget anyone by name, and put nothing in it you might feel differently about in six months.
Everything is generated in your browser. Nothing is stored or sent.
Relationships that ran on a shared office or a shared postcode almost all disappear within a year — not by intent, but because nothing happens automatically any more. Endearist replaces the automatic part with something that keeps count.
Join the waitlist →The six sections split on two questions: who is writing, and what is actually changing. In four of them somebody staying writes to the person going; in the leaving-email section it runs the other way; in the personal section it can be either, because nobody is left behind there. A move changes where a person is. A personal goodbye changes the tie itself. Both get called a farewell and they need different sentences. One thing applies to the whole page. The standard register assumes the person wanted to go. After a redundancy, a contract that was not renewed, a resignation that was suggested rather than offered, or an exit nobody is permitted to discuss, it does not — and the strange part is rarely that nobody knows. It is that everybody knows and nobody puts it in writing. Twenty cards wish somebody all the best for their next chapter, and the person holding the cards knows there is no next chapter yet. Several of the messages below start from that case instead of dressing down a celebratory one; they sit in the colleague section, in the last-day section, and among the short ones. If you genuinely do not know how it came about, take a message that claims nothing about the part afterwards — that one is right either way. The texts run from formal to first-name informal, and the German ones mark that in the grammar. Switching to first names only on the way out says something about the years before — so stay in whichever register the two of you have used so far. On the brackets: [Name] means, everywhere here, whoever you are addressing and never a third party. [Detail] is the concrete thing, [place] a town, [date] a day, [number] a figure — years, kilometres, an age — and [contact] a phone number or a private address.
The square brackets are deliberate: you fill in [Name] and [Detail] yourself. That one filled-in part is the whole difference between a message and a mail-merge.
Two reflexes turn up in almost every one of these, and both are about the writer's own job rather than about the person going. The first is the envy joke — take me with you, lucky you. The second is the complaint about how the place is supposed to manage now. Between them they leave the person who is leaving reassuring somebody who is staying, in their last week of all weeks. The other point is about timing, though not in the way that sounds. To you the departure is news; to them it has been settled for weeks or months. They wrote the resignation or were handed the notice, planned the handover, and explained the whole thing a hundred times. So do not write as though any of it were fresh. You are arriving late into a story that has been running a while. That is the position you are writing from, not a fault in your message.
[Name], I only heard yesterday that you are going. It is news to me and it has probably been settled at your end for months. Either way: I am sorry about it, and I am leaving it at that.
This was not your decision and I am not going to write as though it had been. I would have kept you, and I said so where it counted. If you need a reference, [Name], ask me — I will write it the same day.
Dear [Name], thank you for [number] years of working together. I picked up [detail] from you back then, and nothing about that has changed since. I wish you every good thing.
How this came about has nothing to do with you, and everybody here knows it, including the ones not saying so out loud. You built [detail] here, and none of that goes away when you do.
There is a great deal that does not fit between [number] years and a card, so only this: I liked coming in to work while you were here, and that is not something I have thought about everyone.
We did not work together much, [Name], but I did notice [detail]. I wanted to say that at least once before you go.
You were the first manager here I could tell that something was not working. That sounds like a small thing and it is not one. All the best, [Name].
Nobody here will admit why you are actually going. I thought you were right when you told me, and I still think you were right.
This is the only section where you are writing the message rather than receiving one. The email that goes to everybody is hard for two reasons. The first is thanking the employer. The genre demands it, and everybody can hear when it is not meant — a company reads nothing, people do. So thank the ones who actually did something and drop the paragraph about the organisation; where the exit was not your idea, that paragraph sounds like it was written with somebody standing over you anyway. The second is the reason. Nobody has a claim on it, and in plenty of cases you are not permitted to give it. “Friday is my last day” is a complete sentence. Anyone who wants more will ask, and then it is your call.
Hello everyone — Friday is my last day here. I will spare us the retrospective: it was [number] good years, and most of what was good about them was you.
Everyone — my contract is not being renewed and [date] is my last day. This is not how I would have wanted it. None of it is down to you, and I am leaving without a single bad thought about the people on this floor.
Short, and without an explanation: I finish here on Friday. Thank you for what you taught me in that time, and particularly for [detail].
I did not get to say goodbye to everyone yesterday: I was walked out with immediate effect. So it will have to happen like this. Thank you. I liked being here with you, and that holds regardless of how it ended.
From [date] somebody else takes over [detail]; the handover note says who. Forgive me whatever I have forgotten. I have enjoyed working here.
After [number] years I notice that I cannot remember a single meeting and can remember nearly every lunch break. Thank you for those. I am glad to be going and sorry to be going at the same time.
You were not simply colleagues, you were the reason I set off in the morning in a decent mood. Friday is the end of it. You can get hold of me at [contact].
After [number] years I clear the desk on [date]. I am leaving nothing unsaid behind me and taking away more than fits in two boxes. Look after yourselves.
Two questions decide this one. The first is distance: four hours in a car is not emigration. Describe a move to the next town as a parting for ever and you embarrass the pair of you; treat a move to another continent as a long weekend and you are further off still. The second question almost never gets asked: this card moves house. It gets packed, driven, and unpacked in a flat where nothing is arranged yet and nobody drops by — usually in the evening, usually alone. That is when it gets read a second time, and the second reading is the one that counts. Put something in it that still holds up on that evening, rather than only something that sounds right on the doorstep. Two of the texts below are written by the person moving; the other six are addressed to them.
[Name], four hours in a car is not emigration, and I am not going to say goodbye as though it were. I will come and see you once the boxes are gone, not before.
From [date] there are [number] kilometres between us, and that is the only figure in this that I do not like. I am glad about the rest of it for you, [Name], even though this place changes without you in it.
You know how to move. You proved that at [detail], and I would rather remind you of it a week early than a week late. None of that changes in [place], [Name].
You did not want to go, and I know it. A move you did not choose is still a move — boxes, paperwork, and a flat you have to learn to like. I am thinking about you, [Name], and I am not going to keep asking how you are finding it.
For [number] years we met on the stairs and never once had dinner together. All the same, from next week something is missing when I walk past your door. All the best in [place], [Name].
I am moving to [place] on [date]. It is not a decision against any of you, it is a decision for [detail], and it took me a long time to make it.
I have cleared the flat out and discovered that the furniture was not the hard part of it. Thank you for [detail], [Name]. My new address is on the back.
The first weeks in a city where you know nobody are usually fairly wretched, and nobody warns you about it beforehand. I am warning you now, so that you do not put it down to yourself when it happens.
Short here is mostly a decision about how much you claim to know. A departure travels through a building long before it is announced, and half of what reaches you is wrong. Two lines let you say something true without carrying on a version you cannot check, and without putting the person in the position of having to correct you. The second point: short does not mean cheerful. The same two lines hold “I am sorry you are going” just as easily as “all the best” — and for as long as you do not know whether the leaving was voluntary, the first of those is the more reliable one.
I am sorry you are going, [Name]. That is the whole message.
All the best, [Name], and thank you for [detail].
I do not know how this came about and I am not asking. I only did not want to watch you go without saying anything.
It gets quieter here without you, [Name]. That is not a compliment, it is a fact.
Thank you for your work here, [Name], and for the way you went about it.
I would rather write this than say it to you in a doorway: it was good, working with you.
Take care of yourself, [Name]. And if things are not good just now — I know that, and I am thinking about you anyway.
What I will miss with you gone is mostly [detail]. That is all there is room for on the card.
Not every last day gets marked. No leaving drinks, no card, no round of the floor: with fixed-term contracts, with agency staff, after somebody is walked out, and anywhere HR would rather keep it quiet, a person simply goes home in the afternoon. Where nothing has been organised, one message is the entire send-off, and it gets kept accordingly. Where there is a card or a channel, on the other hand, the public version is worth more: what you say in front of other people cannot quietly be taken back afterwards. Recognition that other people read weighs a good deal heavier after a forced exit than any private line does — and it costs you almost nothing.
Today is your last day and I can see that nobody is marking it. So I am: [number] years, [detail], and a company that has apparently not noticed.
Last day. I am deliberately writing this in the channel where everyone can read it: we have [detail] because you were here, and otherwise we would not.
Half four, you are about to go, and I have spent the entire week working out what to write. It is this: thank you for [detail]. The rest is on the card.
Today is your last working day with us. I want to thank you for the years of working together, and above all for [detail], which helped me a great deal more than I told you at the time.
I did not make it to your leaving drinks, and it still annoys me. So it goes here instead: it was a good time, working with you, [Name].
You left yesterday without anybody getting the chance to shake your hand. That was not right, and I am putting it in a message so that you have it in writing.
I am not putting a verse on the card, I am putting this: you are where I learned how to do [detail], and I still do it that way.
From tomorrow somebody else is at your desk, and that is the part I will take longest to get used to. All the best, [Name] — today, and next week as well.
This is not about a place but about the tie itself: the end of a course, a last therapy session, a shared flat, a team, a year abroad — or a friendship you are deliberately letting go of. Goodbyes like these have no occasion attached to them. There is no last working day, no card going round, no new address that has to be handed out, which is why they almost never get written. What can be written anyway is in the past tense. “You were the person I could…” is a statement and not a request: it obliges the other person to nothing, which is precisely why it can be said even when nothing follows it. There is one exception. Somebody who has asked for no further contact meant the one last good message as well, and respecting that nearly always means sending nothing at all. So the last text below is for the other case — an ending that is no longer in dispute between you.
That was our last session today, and I did not want to leave on a handshake. For [number] years you were the person I could say things to that I said nowhere else. Thank you for that.
I think we are at the point where we only get in touch out of habit. I would rather not let that end badly, so I will say it instead: you mattered to me for [number] years, and nothing about that changes in retrospect.
I move out tomorrow, and that kitchen will never look the way it looked with the two of us in it. Thank you for [number] years in which you never once made me feel I was in the way.
That was my last game with you. What I actually learned here has very little to do with [detail]: you turn up on the bad days as well.
For a year in [place] I was somebody who does not exist anywhere else. That was down to you. I do not know when we will see each other again, which is why I would rather write it down now.
We are probably not going to see each other again, [Name], and one sentence should be said anyway: I would not have got through [detail] without you.
My training finishes on [date], and with it the part where you are the person responsible for me. Most of what I can do, I can do because you explained it twice and were no quicker about it the second time. I am saying so now, because after this I will not be walking past you every day.
You said you did not want any more contact, and I will respect that. So that it is not left unsaid: those [number] years were good years, and I am not holding any of them against you.
Because they are all written at once, under mild time pressure, by people who want to say something kind and have not thought about what. The result is a wall of warm summary — you were great to work with, all the best, keep in touch — which is pleasant to receive and entirely interchangeable.
The fix is the same one that works for thank-you notes: one specific thing beats any amount of general warmth. The project that went badly and got fixed. The joke that ran for two years. The morning they covered for you without being asked. That is what gets screenshotted; the summary does not.
"Let's stay in touch" is the standard closing and it has an almost perfect failure rate, for a structural reason: it assigns the follow-up to nobody. Both people leave feeling the relationship has been extended, and nothing has been scheduled.
Two versions actually work. Name a time — "I'll message you in October" — which puts the obligation on you specifically. Or hand over a channel that survives the change: the number, the personal email, the account that is not tied to a company login. Work friendships die overwhelmingly because the only route to each other was a work address that stopped resolving.
A few practical things about the group message, which is the version most people get wrong:
Proximity does an enormous amount of quiet work. A colleague you liked was maintained entirely by a shared building — you did not schedule any of it, and it survived on structural contact rather than on either of you deciding anything.
Remove the building and the relationship has to become deliberate overnight, which is a much higher bar than either person realises at the time. This is why so many genuinely warm work friendships evaporate within a year of one person leaving, with nobody at fault and both slightly puzzled about it.
If you want a particular one to survive, the move is to put something in the calendar before you leave rather than after. Our contact frequency calculator gives a realistic rhythm, the long-distance friendship plan handles the version where geography is now involved, and the reconnect message generator is there for the ones you notice too late. For everything else, Endearist replaces the structural contact you just lost — locally, no account, no feed.
This drafts a goodbye message for a colleague, friend or neighbour who is leaving. Worth knowing how this works, because most tools in this category work differently: the wording is assembled from templates we wrote, running entirely in your browser. There is no AI model and no server call, so nothing you type is sent anywhere, logged, or used for training. The trade-off is honest — you get a solid draft rather than something that reads as if it knew the person. Edit it before you send it; the details you add are what make it land.