From the minute that it was announced that season 9 of How I Met Your Mother was going to be its last, fans of the show, including myself have gone sentimental, because really, it was hard to say goodbye to a show that made your weeks complete for nine years. And there was only one word that came to mind to describe these final 24 episodes — it was bittersweet.

Season 9 basically revolved around Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin’s (Cobie Smulders) wedding weekend at the Farhampton Inn, with flashbacks of the gang’s antics from the first eight seasons mixed with some stories that related to Barney and Robin’s wedding. It was also revealed how Ted (Josh Radnor) finally met the kids’ mother Tracy (Cristin Milioti), and how Marshall (Jason Segel), Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and the rest of the gang met The Mother in separate incidents way before Ted finally mustered up the courage to go up to the girl with the yellow umbrella at the train station.

From the first episode of the season, it already felt like a farewell. Ted was already packed to go to Chicago where he would start afresh without having to deal with Barney and Robin’s wedded bliss in New York. Of course, he has never completely gotten over Robin, and his sacrifice meant that he would be able to keep his friendship with the gang without things getting weird. Marshall and Lily have their own fresh start to look forward to, as with the newlyweds. The weekend is filled with a lot of legendary antics and the final season is a mix of the humor that made HIMYM such a guilty pleasure from the beginning — and sentimentality for having to let go of this group of people that seemed like a regular part of each week. Because everything happened in a space of two days, the format seemed different, yet familiar, which is a credit to director Pamela Fryman, who has been with the show from the start.

The flashforward to the future where Ted finally finds the girl of his dreams and how it is interwoven into the story was a great reward for all of the heartbreaks that Ted had to go through in the season’s nine year run. The fact that the mother was just as goofy as he was was an added bonus. When Cristin Milioti was first cast as The Mother, I had reservations because she wasn’t exactly what I had pictured for Ted after meeting all of the girls that he got involved in. But when she gelled so well with the gang, I knew she was going to blend well with the group’s chemistry. When she sang La Vie En Rose, she totally got my seal of approval. See, in the show’s nine seasons, one can’t help but root for Ted because he is such a pure soul. He loves his friends and he loves completely. The innocence in which he falls in love with women and the pureness of his belief in happily ever after connects him to the viewers so well that they feel like he is their brother — or in Barney’s case, Best Bro. I’ve always been Team Barney and Robin though just because there is no one in the world who gets Barney like Robin does so when they decided to get married, I was over the moon. Lily and Marshall also got their fair share of closure. The issue of Marshall’s judgeship and Lily’s dream job in Italy totally made viewers take a look at their own marriages and deal with their own imperfections.

I liked how HIMYM closed out the stories gradually — especially Marshall and Barney’s Slap Bet, which has been a running storyline for many seasons (and one of my favorites). I liked how everybody seemed to get their happily ever afters, despite the fact that they were going to be apart. And just when I thought that everything was going well, the last two episodes had a major bombshell waiting for me (and the millions of fans). It was filled with heartbreak.

In a way, I would have wanted the series to end on a happy note for everyone, and I would have been happy if they had just stopped at that. But HIMYM, despite its silliness, is a series about the realities of life and friendship, and love. And while it didn’t exactly end the way I wanted, the ending totally made sense. And it ended with a hint of hope, which is the core of the show after all. In the end, it went full circle and everyone ended up where they should be — happy to have been part of each others’ lives. As for me, I can always watch the gang on DVD anytime I want to revisit their adventures, and that makes me happy too. It was a legendary nine seasons, and I would not have missed a minute of it.