This. Don’t ever delete the account because someone will scoop it up and impersonate you. Just set auto reply and log out. Check the terms, you may need to log in every 6 months though. Do that a couple of times at least.

This is what I did. I set up autoresponse giving out an address that redirects to my new email address. My parents called me to see if I was hacked. Everyone else just started using the new address.