A farewell can acknowledge the difficult parts without allowing them to own the whole story.

Endings put pressure on people to choose one story: either everything was good, which nobody quite believes, or the hard parts get the final word. Both versions lose something true. A person, a job or a chapter can have been genuinely difficult and also worth having, and saying so is more honest than smoothing it over. Naming the difficulty briefly often makes the affection easier to believe.

If you have something to mark, let yourself say one honest hard thing alongside what you valued. Keep the hard part short and the valued part specific.