Valedictories should be left to Roman senators. Journalists should tiptoe away before critics realise they are out of reach. But a valedictory has been ordered, and this will be my first and last attempt at one. For me, however, unlike my colleagues in Beijing, Brussels and Berlin, this is an adieu to full-time journalism.
The time has come for me to hand in my laptop - the badge of office of a foreign correspondent. No more tyranny of the deadlines. That's good. But what will it be like to live without them?
For me, 39 years of journalism has meant working for: Hibernia under the late Basil Clancy; the Irish Independent sub-editors' desk under Dick Roche; from Paris, a weekly column for the Evening Herald for Joe Kennedy; then Paris correspondent simultaneously for the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph; and reports from the barricades for RTE's Mike Burns in May 1968.
That year, as the US went though the upheavals of the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, my plans to be the Guardian's UN correspondent in New York were abandoned when the newly appointed editor of the Irish Press, Tim Pat Coogan, offered me the post of foreign editor. When going north to report the civil rights campaign, the title had to be dropped. For the Irish Press, the "Six Counties" were not foreign.
After a stint in Brussels for the Spokesman's Group of the then EEC during Ireland's early membership, it was back to journalism in Ireland. The old Sunday Tribune under Conor Brady; the new Sunday Tribune under Vincent Browne; Today Tonight under Joe Mulholland; the Irish Times under Douglas Gageby and then Conor Brady.
Thanks to The Irish Times, the chance to live in the US, passed up in 1968, came around again 28 years later. Who could have thought that, in a three-year period, a US president would be impeached over an affair in the White House and that a presidential election would come and go without electing a president?
I certainly did not when I became the Washington Correspondent in May 1996. President Clinton was then cruising to a second term in a boring election campaign against a King Lear-like Bob Dole, who spent the last weeks shouting "Where's the outrage?" in relation to Democratic campaign finance abuses.
Now as I get ready to leave, Dole has been in Florida, still shouting "Where's the outrage?" but this time complaining that George Bush risked being robbed of the presidency by Gore's demands for a recount.
The second Clinton term began with the US at peace and Americans becoming more affluent under a president preoccupied with his legacy. It was time to discover the vast country that is the US. I loved flying over it, from coast to coast, watching the forested ridges of the Appalachians giving way to hilly farms of the Midwest; then, on a good day, seeing the wide Mississippi and on to the endless prairies of Kansas, Nebraska and the high plains.
The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado meant the West. Then came the desert lands of Utah and Nevada, the snowy peaks of the high Sierras, more scorched desert in California's Death Valley and then the blue Pacific.
What you flew over in a few hours, took months and years for the first settlers trekking westward in their covered wagons. You began to understand why their descendants are different from easterners, why Washington is regarded with suspicion, why generalisations about Americans can be so misleading.
As you travel, you find Irish influences everywhere on how the US grew and thrived. I used to think this was exaggerated. Not any more.
The size of the US can also be absorbed from its network of inter-state highways, which tempt many to follow Jack Kerouac and get "on the road". But cheap land means that the cities and suburbs become an ugly sprawl of fast-food restaurants, gas stations and shopping malls. Downtown at night in many US cities means deserted streets which would make you think a nuclear alert had sent people fleeing into the countryside. This is depressing America.
The great cities are different. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston and Miami throb with life after sundown, even if much of it is provided by parading tourists. Washington is unique. The Capitol dome, gleaming white on top of its hill, caps 200 years of US history. From the Capitol's south terrace, the view down the Mall, with its monuments and museums, urges you to explore more history.
The White House recalls my first time there at a garden party for the press. A sudden thunderstorm made everyone run for cover but, in my ignorance, I took a wrong turn and found myself sodden, in a room with President and Hillary Clinton, without even a White House pass. He was just as wet and we had a chat about the IRA.
Living in the affluent suburb of Bethesda and working in the mainly white north-west part of Washington was not typical America. It was not even typical Washington, as a glance at the murders map for the city shows.
The living is easy. Everything works; getting around is no problem, either by car or public transport; and the weather is great (most of the time), with air conditioning to protect against the sweaty humidity of July and August.
Things work because of the detailed regulation of everyday life, which is a culture shock for Irish people used to the "getting by" attitude. You could spend an hour just reading the detailed parking signs on one street.
There is little tolerance when you break the rules. A 13-year-old girl eating chips at an underground station was arrested recently, handcuffed and brought to the police station.
US justice is harsh by Irish standards. Tax defrauders go to jail. People are put away for life or 40 years without parole for crimes that draw suspended or light sentences in Ireland. People are put to death here in increasing numbers. The states are sovereign in this matter, a striking example of how states' rights are strongly held - even the @@right" to kill.
In many ways, the US is 50 different countries, each with its own treasured history, traditions and way of life. A foreigner can never hope to know all about this country or understand its varied peoples.
A foreign correspondent records and describes but cannot really explain the US. Even Americans find that impossible. After expending about one million words in four-and-a-half years, I realise you're only still scratching the surface of a country that can be a dream or a nightmare, power or weakness, wealth or poverty, depending on who you are.
I will miss the US and its people, but not the deadlines.