Expat Goodbyes and Hellos – The Circle

Time is racing by now and I can hardly believe that in two weeks we’ll lock the door and leave our home in Belgium.  As it has been with every place we’ve left, the hardest part about leaving will be saying our expat goodbyes to the people who have been part of our circle for the last five years. Belgium will be particularly difficult to leave.  In part, that’s because it’s the longest we’ve lived anywhere as a family but mostly, its because we’ve been privileged to be part of a tight circle of very close friends.  Saying our expat goodbyes will be sad but it more au revoir, auf wiedersehen – these are friends who will undoubtedly stay part of our lives.  Still, implicit is an acknowledgement that our relationship will shift as we’ll no longer be part of the daily fabric of the group.

Strangely unsettling are the expat goodbyes to people who have been part of our lives in a less significant but nonetheless important way.  With most of these people, our goodbyes truly are goodbyes, it’s unlikely that we’ll keep in touch for long if at all; possible, perhaps even probable, that we may never see each other again and yet they’ve been part of our lives over the years.  I experienced this kind of unsettling goodbye just the other day as I left a dental appointment.  Our dentist is a lovely woman who has been our dentist for 5 years and knows every member of our family.   She’s been kind, caring and we’ve got to know her a little bit, so saying goodbye – wishing each other well in a “have a nice life” kind of way felt awkwardly sad and emotional.  I’ve found that often these kinds of goodbye, usually when a child is saying goodbye to a beloved teacher, are the ones that make me crack.  I manage to hold myself together for my own goodbyes but watching my children say goodbye to someone they adore but may never see again is my undoing.

Then there are the bittersweet expat goodbyes with people we feel we are just getting to know.  People we are certain would have been close friends if only we had got to know each other better, sooner.

On the other side are the hellos.  The longer we’ve travelled, the more we find we cross paths with people we’ve known in a previous location.  In Shanghai, we ran into a couple who were in our ante-natal class in Hong Kong.  In Belgium we found a family who were neighbours in Shanghai and a family whose child was in our daughter’s reception class in Shanghai. After we move, we hope to spend more time with friends who were in Shanghai with us and who are now living in Scotland and with friends we made through my coaching studies at Coach U.  The circle of expat friendship, the foundation of our friendship group in our new life.

It really is a very small world.  When we say goodbye, maybe it is actually au revoir – we never know….

Do you have a story about surprisingly difficult expat goodbyes or about someone who has been in your life in more than one location?   Tell us about it in the comments or on our Facebook Page.