The actor’s farewell to a role may be invisible to an audience meeting the character for the first time.

Someone can be saying goodbye to a role while the audience is meeting it for the first time. Two entirely different events occur in one moment, an ending and an introduction, and neither party can see the other’s. Beginnings and endings frequently occupy the same room.

Remember that when someone hands something over to you, a job, a house, a responsibility. Your first day is their last, and their feelings about it are not yours. A little acknowledgement of that, a question about what it meant to them, costs nothing and is very often the thing they most needed and would never have asked for.