It’s move-in time in college towns all over the country, Boston being the biggest. Lots of tearful parents — admit it, dads — are depositing their teenagers at the dorm in this huge rite of passage. Having been through this trauma twice, I wish I had some words of comfort, but I still hate to see the backs of my kids walking away from me.

If it’s any comfort, I can say with some authority that they’ll be back. Our daughter, after a few years in Asia, will begin graduate school in a couple of days. In Boston. Yay!

Our son will soon begin his third year working in Africa. I can only hope it passes quickly and he’ll be back on this continent, if not time zone.

In two more weeks, I will be leaving home, too. Not my Milton house, but the Globe. I’m taking a buyout, though I will still contribute occasionally.

The Globe has been my second home for 30 years, and I think I’ve written for every single section, except I never cracked the New England bird sightings. (I can tell a bat from a pigeon, but just barely.)

I started as a general assignment reporter working nights and Sundays. One Sunday, a terse editor assigned me to follow Mayor Raymond Flynn around on a five-hour walking tour of Boston.

Terrified of the editor — are you listening, John? — I pointed to my big belly and half-joked: “I hope there are EMTs around just in case.’’ Startled, John seemed to notice my third trimester for the first time.

“Don’t worry, kid, you can knock off after three hours,’’ he said. He wasn’t joking.

Over three decades, I’ve covered the good, the bad, and the hideous. I remember when police would respond to a domestic violence call by telling the abusive husband to walk around the block and cool off before going back into the house. Thanks to Eileen McNamara’s reporting, I remember Judge Paul King asking a battered woman from the bench: “What did you do to make him hit you?’’

Also hideous: the day when an antiabortionist killed two people and wounded others at two Brookline reproductive health clinics.

The priest sex abuse crisis in the Archdiocese of Boston, whose leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, was given a cushy landing in a Vatican palace. Last I heard, he was still wearing a big red hat and robes instead of an orange jumpsuit.

In 2004, I covered the 10-month vigil at St. Albert the Great in Weymouth. Led by a progressive and popular priest, the Rev. Ronald Coyne, the church was ostensibly closed due to “reconfiguration,’’ which the archdiocese said was necessitated by declining attendance and collections. (See “priest sex abuse crisis,’’ above.)

But St. Albert’s pews and coffers were full, and many parishioners believe their church was targeted because Coyne was one of 58 priests who signed a letter calling for Law’s resignation. St. Albert’s was the first of several churches that went into a 24/7 vigil — and it was the only one that was reopened by the archdiocese. But Coyne was not reassigned there, a war won but a battle lost by dedicated parishioners.

What I will miss most of all are the decent, often heroic, people at the center of such stories. Time and again, they have opened their homes, and their lives, to me, and to Globe readers. It is an act of faith that has sometimes astounded and always humbled me.

In this ugly and divisive election year, it’s worth noting that people’s grace and resilience in the face of the unthinkable has made the world a better place. I’m thinking of Linda and Peter Biehl, whose daughter Amy, an antiapartheid activist, was brutally killed by a mob in the dying days of apartheid in South Africa. The Biehls established the Amy Biehl Foundation in Cape Town — and hired two of the men responsible for Amy’s death to help with its programs. They came to consider each other family.

The Milton Academy jazz band has had a longstanding relationship with the foundation, and over the years students continue to play at its various events in the South African townships.

I’m thinking, too, of some of the 9/11 widows who, while coping with their own shock and grief, reached out to others in need. Among them: Diann Corcoran of Norwell, Christie Coombs of Abington, and Cindy McGinty of Foxborough, who soon after their husbands were killed began raising money for various causes, and continue to do so 15 years later.

Though I will no longer be a Globe staffer, I’ll continue filing this monthly column, which reminds me of that country western song, “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?’’ Over the years, I’ve (mostly) loved hearing from readers. You’ve sustained and entertained me, and I’m grateful.

So don’t be a stranger now, you hear?

Bella English writes from Milton. She can be reached at english@globe.com.