Moving Overseas - Farewelling Friends, Family and Fur Children

Good Morning my literary friends!

Today I reflect on saying farewell to friends, family and fur children. The countdown is on to my departure for London, assuming all goes well. This week I drove my fur child Bentley 2.5 hours from home for a ‘fun visit’ to a family who have adopted us both into their ranks in the past few years. Unbeknownst to Bentley, the car had been sneakily packed whilst he was at the groomer. He’s pretty intuitive and I have no doubt he has known something was ‘up’ since we moved out of our apartment in late October. So when we jumped out of the car, I waited until he went inside before unpacking his belongings, tucked hidden on the veranda and out of view.

I am incredibly blessed to have friends so selfless to agree to take my fur child while I galavant across the planet, to try my hand at being a resident of the United Kingdom. This morning he is on his way to his first temporary home before settling with my friend in a new state.

Saying goodbye to him was always going to be the hardest aspect of this departure, given that with the border and COVID situation in Australia, saying farewell to my family in person was never really on the cards.

I recall BCMUOP (before covid messed up our plans), attending farwell events for friends and family moving overseas and saying something akin to, ‘well we’re just a flight away’. Knowing that for a few thousand dollars and 24-ish hours of discomfort, we could fly around the world and hug our loved ones. Ah, yes. Those were the days, weren’t they? When the biggest fears we had of flying were our luggage going missing and terrorism.

Now that I’ve started the ‘farwell cycle’ I am inside the window where many of the visits and goodbyes will be the last before I depart. I know that there are risks with leaving the relative safety of Australia right now, but I also know I can’t spend the next few years living the same way I have for the past two.

One thing I have noticed about moving around, is that true friends and family remain exactly that, irrelevant the distance or the time between meetings.

Stay tuned!

x A