I lie in bed and hear them come clumping, laughing, stomping up the stairs. The weak, wintery African sun is just easing her way over the horizon and only children and dogs are brave enough to be up and at ’em this cold in the morning.
“Come on, Oupa,” they yell in delight.
“You gotta see ‘dis!”
And all three of them troop up the staircase and past the room where Pete, Zoe and I are still cocooned against the cold.
There’s a lego masterpiece or a collection or trucks or a cobweb that they just have to show my dad and I grin, listening to their not-at-all-quiet voices, and it warms me all the way to my toes.
This is home.
These early morning intersections.
The game farms and lion cubs are a wonder. But this, this every day doing life together – this is what home is really all about. How does one begin to say good-bye to all of this?
1. Do not panic
After years of commuting back and forth between countries and memories I’ve learned that panic is the fastest way to kill the moment. Panic at the impending good-bye, panic at the packing, panic at the arriving and all that waits as one tries to get caught up on life at the other end.
Panic kills memory making. Slow down, savor instead.
2. Go slow and don’t overbook the last few days
We used to have people and appointments jam-packed into the last few days before our departure making them as full as our over-stuffed suitcases. That is usually a disaster. It breeds stress and suffocates any real chance at connection. Much better to fill the last two days with lots of slow. Slow time for tea and cookies. Slow time for afternoons at the playground. Slow times to savor the last memories right down to the final delicious bite!
3. Don’t anticipate the leaving
In years past I’ve been sad about the leaving before we’d even arrived. I’ve dreaded the good-bye. I’ve agonized over the last few days. I’ve cried way too early.
Not any more.
Now we live each day to it’s own full. Each day an individual. Each day packed with joy and discovery and wonder. Even the very last day. Even the packing and the driving to the airport. Still there is time to enjoy each other – right up to the ticket counter where my dad likes to stick “fragile” stickers on his chest. There is always time for a last laugh and they make the tears easier to swallow
4. Remind your kids what they have to look forward to at the other end
Kids and their grownups need things to look forward to. It does no one any good just focusing on what will be missed. So we count on our fingers and toes all that’s waiting for us eighteen hours and a plane ride away – bunk beds and dress up clothes, neighbors who collect our mail and friends from church who collect us from the airport. Favorite stuffed toys and bikes and let’s just admit it, deep dish pizza.
5. Start planning how you’re going to frame your memories
We’re already talking shadow boxes for the target that three generations shot at and the rock that Jackson spray-painted red and the many, many photos of Micah and the dogs. Describe to yourselves how you plan to relive the memories and suddenly they feel all the more alive, despite the impending distance.
6. Take home tastes and sounds
We always stock up on music and chocolate when we’re in South Africa. A favorite way to recapture a moment. Delicious.
7. Downplay the moment.
Good-byes can be emotionally loaded. My throat constricts as my little brother Luke looks at me over the heads of all our cousins and says, “This is it.” I stand on my tippy toes and wrap arms as far around his tall, strong body as they will go and swallow hard.
“See you next week,” we say to one another. Because that’s much better than, “see you in a year or so.” And we wave good-bye along with all the other relatives that are dispersing and it feels good to just be one good-bye in a crowd.
8. Eat
Last meals together are always good for the soul. We try to build them in. Unrushed. Enjoyable. Last moments to savor together over favorite foods. Or simply over a bag of chips. Keeping company in the context of something as normal as a meal makes the departure far less momentous. Also, food is good.
9. Squeeze in a last touch
We love to run alongside the car, reaching through the window as it starts to accelerate and yell, “Last touch!” as it picks up speed. When he was only four and Jackson was just one Karabo came running through the security gate at the airport for that last frozen-in-time hug. My brother Luke arrived at the airport at the last minute for a last mad squeeze one year and even when we’ve said not to worry about coming, family always shows up for those last crazy hard and desperate hugs.
A body can carry the imprint of another body a long homesick time.
10. Pray
I’ve never caught a flight that my dad didn’t pray over before we boarded. No matter where in the world I am I call him. He prays. I board with peace. We’ve held hands at boarding gates and prayed at the baggage claim. And I know no other recipe for making a good-bye bearable than the promise that the God who goes with us and stays with them will be the bridge connecting us no matter how far or long the distance.
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Heartfelt thanks to South African Airways for helping make this homecoming trip possible. We leave back to the USA tomorrow. Want to keep up with us Stateside? Sign up to get my posts emailed to your doorstep right here Or delivered to your reader of choice. Or just like us on Facebook.
Love this post, Lisa-Jo. Your take is so unique.
Cxx
You are RIGHT on! May your memories wrap themselves around you!
i.love.this. my story is nowhere near as dramatic as yours, but i’m spending a week at the coast with my whole family. a week with my twin who lives 3 hours from me. (i know, not a continent away) after all of our minutes together….we always cry at the end of this week. living the rough and tumble, cousins in a pack, eat together, sleep together life and then suddeenly ending it is tough. praying for you.
we just did this too! week long family vacation and sweet times of rest and relationship where the only thing that matters is who’s gonna start the coffee in the morning… and my dad – who i currently live 30 minutes from – couldn’t stop hugging us as we left, while I cried with every step towards the car…
Always those dang good byes…!
Last time I said good bye I had to do it by a phone call, which made everything so much worse than if I could actually hug the person in question.
I guess in life we’re just supposed to recognize the sweet moments as unique and try our very best to keep the fond memories in a special place in our hearts.
Life’s all about sharing experiences and giving our very best to the world – we need to switch places sometimes so we can pour a little of our essence in different grounds. :)
Oh so well put. You’ve captured the essence of “Good byes: Well Done.” I have struggled with number 3 in the past but you have put words to my feelings. Thank you for a lovely post. Now I’ll be praying for your upcoming good-byes. Safe travels!
P.S. Your pics are perfect!
Blessings,
Maggie
Dear Lisa-Jo, as a fellow sister who lives between two continents and three countries, my heart ACHES simply reading what you wrote. The emotions are so present, as if I were the one about to board that plane… Ouch! Double ouch! My turn was last summer but it all resonates so clearly you could be writing about me! Beautifully and skilfully written. No sense in loosing so much by anticipating the impending ‘doom’: that one was my last learned truth : ) Thank you again for a great post and my heart goes out to you as you board that plane and leave, yet again, a piece of your heart behind. Praise God for the fact that there will be a time when we no longer will need to tear our hearts in pieces and we will no longer need to be apart : )
Love, Jessica
May the Lord grant you safe travels and may you carry the warmth of those beautiful memories back over to the other side of the pond.
Thanks a LOT, Lisa-Jo!! I should have known from your title that I should avoid this post like the plague! I hate goodbyes, and while my family isn’t on a different continent, the distance in miles and money make California a LONG way from British Columbia, and I have lived a life of goodbyes. Everything you’ve said here is true of me too, right down to the dreading goodbye before I’ve even said hello. You wiped me right out with this beautiful, true, celebration of the horrors and wonders of GOODBYE!! Praying for you, even though I’m not sure I’ll forgive you for making me blubber so ridiculously, not just yet anyway–have to go blow my nose first! =)
Welcome home hugs!!
Shaunie
Safe travels. You capture it so perfectly. I’ve had those goodbyes for the past ten years of coming and going. It squeezes your heart. Slowing down, savoring those last moments, is good advice.
Wonderful post! Thank you for sharing! Today I was just thinking about leaving Japan, and how sad it made me to say goodbye to yet another adventure in our lives……and we still have a year left! I definately need to slow down. Having a military life we say a lot of goodbyes. This is great advice for all those times!
I held it together til you got to the last bit about your dad always praying over your flights. My Papa always, always prayed over me before I left home. On Wednesday I will board my first flight since he passed away and his prayers will be dearly missed. Travel safe and know there are plenty of folks back here that will be excited for your return.
Well, you may not be crying yet, but I am! Safe back, and thank you for sharing your words, your lovely words, with all of us.
lisa-jo,
This post hits WAY to close to home for me! i.hate.good-byes. It might have something to do with leaving home in 10th grade for boarding school in the US. I was the oldest. I hated it! It was always a mix of stoicism and huge lump in throat. I didn’t want tears to start because I knew (or tho’t I did) that they would never stop!
Now, in one month, I will say good-bye (again) to my oldest daughter…recently turned 40…but my daughter still:) she is returning to Ukraine. She worked there for 6 six years as a single. The good-byes were incredibly sad for me as I watched her walk into security all alone!
This time it is different. She met someone who went there on a mission trip a few years ago. They married shortly before she turned 37. Now they have a son who will be 2 in November. As much as I hate to say good-bye to him, I am so glad she will have her own family with her.
Yes, I will still hate to say good-bye. But she will be going with her new family. Most of all, she will be going with her heavenly Father…who was with her each of the other times as well!
Thank you for that post. I will read it again in 2 months time when we travel to the US to see friends and family in the all 2 short 2 weeks. I have lived in the UK for 9 years and the return back to the UK after a visit has always been difficult, but I never really cried. Until this year when we took our 3 month old to meet Grandpa for the first time. When we left I cried at the airport more than I ever did before. It is sometimes so hard to think of all the things that that little boy won’t get to experience. Your thoughts on the whole process put it all into perspective and we now look forward to our next trip home. Thanks for that.
Great perspective, Lisa Jo! I cried as I read this. So many good-byes when you live in the Land In Between . . . sigh.
I have two questions. 1. May I print this out and give copies of it to the families I work with and the teens? and 2. Do you know the RAFT model? You hit so many points of it. Just made me wonder . . .
Much love to you as you make this transition from home to home.
We’re anticipating a 3 week trip home to Michigan to visit family in a couple of weeks and this post spoke sweetly to my spirit. We spend most of our life in Hungary and having been a missionary for over 10 years now, my life is full of goodbyes. It is even harder with kids. But I love the message of this post.
Embrace the moment. Savor the gifts.
Thanks for this…
this is oh-so-good. i’m terrible at the transition parts, the packing, the goodbyes, the leaving, the going… i’m going to print this out and put it in my Bible so every time I’m close to tears at church, or I get up in the morning having a hard time breathing because the end (or the beginning) is near, or I have to answer the tough questions from kiddos who so want to go back to Ireland but who so don’t want to leave the aunts and uncles and grannies and cousins, we’ll have a well-worn map that you’ve charted here so well. Thank you.
You really got to me with your #10, about Heavenly Father being the bridge, no matter the distance. You sure know how to make the tears flow. What a touching post. {{{hugs}}}
I can tell that you really did enjoy the moments. I know exactly how you feel when you first arrive you start worrying about the return. I use to count the days; which wasn’t helpful. I think you planned just right for your last days to be the sweet slow reflecting days.
I loved all of the pictures; they were priceless.
Blessings to you!
I’m so very familiar with getting through goodbyes; both our families live on the other coast, as do my best friends. I have learned many of the things you wrote about the hard way; I appreciated reading someone else’s perspective and feeling understood.
you make *my* heart want to run back to Africa for one last hug. i’m so glad you get to be there, and am so glad we get to have you come back home to all of us. love you, sister girl.
I echo the comments of others – thank you for the wonderful tips. I struggle to do all of these! Except maybe #8 ;)
Ruth Van Reken says to keep a physical reminder of the place, which gives kids the sense that they are taking a bit of it with them.
Regardless, I don’t think there’s any way to make goodbyes easy. *sigh*. They only get easier as I get older and understand that goodbye is never the end.
MK’s are constantly saying goodbye. Could have used this guide years ago. So true! Although it made me cry just reading it. I cried when I left my son at college….and he was coming home in two weeks!
This is such a beautiful post… I have done a lot of traveling back and forth to different places for 15 years, wish I would have been able to read this the first time round when saying goodbye was so darn hard. Every point is so true – I’ve learned them.
The most beautiful one? The fact that God keeps our relationships in His hands – there is no disconnect in Him! Be safe and have a good time adjusting!
We practiced all these points in the last weeks, as well….and i’m holding my babies even closer to me this week, convincing myself there are worse heartbreaks I could introduce them to than the ones born of too much love. from another sister far from home —