See You Later – Making and Keeping Friends on the Move

“So, I decided we would be friends,” she said.

I guess it did make logical sense, we only lived a long city block away from one another, each one of us making a home away from home here in a foreign country. And we both had children the same age who really did need to make friends.

It appeared we would be fast friends, whether I wanted it or not. Later I realized what it would mean that we had become forever friends, to transverse boundaries and cultures, miles, time zones and years.

Those first days of friendship, when we lived just a stroller-ride away, were spent with as many hot, sunshiney days as possible swimming at the local pool and many other days tucked indoors reading, playing games and sharing meals together. Celebrating the 4th of July and enjoying Christmas teas still stand out as some of the highlights with such an outgoing friend.

But with only a couple years into the friendship, this dear friend announced she was moving away to a neighboring country where her husband had taken a new job. The news of this swept over me and lodged in my gut making me sick.

There we stood, in her kitchen, probably the last time together. Looking down at the old rumpled Soviet linoleum floor, I didn’t know then how this experience would eventually become as familiar to me as an old friend. I didn’t know how to say goodbye and what to do without such a friend anymore. I wondered if the unavoidable goodbyes would eventually overshadow new potential friendships in the future?

Here’s the inevitable choice: be wary of making friends for fear of losing them one day or dare to make new friends over and over again no matter the impending goodbyes. Will the courage to make new friendships outweigh the fear of loss at the certain parting?

These and other like questions slip in on the tails of such goodbyes. Someone once told me that grief is cumulative, which means loss piles up over time. So what does one do when the life you’ve chosen means regularly experiencing loss? Quite honestly you must face the facts bravely and make the only choice that gives hope.

As we hug our friends hard and hold them tight, our hearts squeeze out both sadness and hope. As we kiss them goodbye the sadness gives powerful credence to the power of love while the hope knows all the ways this friendship will continue to be part of who we are, encouraging us to go on and be well.

At the end of 14 years living in a foreign country, there are honestly countless goodbyes. To list out the friends and corresponding goodbyes could fill pages. On the one hand this may be quite depressing, but on the other hand, it is quite remarkable, to see in black and white all those with whom we’ve had the privilege of sharing this life.

In fact, that’s the naked truth. Just as we chose to live this unpredictable life overseas of working and raising a family, we also get to choose how we respond to all it offers along the way. Choosing hope means we work at keeping the friendships through our Smartphones and cyber-connections or planned out (and sometimes random) meetings up together wherever we are in the world. Choosing hope means saying goodbye well while turning around to say “hello” and step into something new, ready to offer friendship to someone new. Trust me, though, there will be those moments where the choice looms monumental and in its giant-ness you may forget your power to choose.

For example, there’s the time when my 11-year-old boy sat on the steps of our new home and wept. His new best friend, made only a year before when he transferred into a new school, had just left the country, unexpectedly, quite literally under the cover of darkness, in secret. This goodbye barely possible, happening only an hour before his friend’s family piled in the car and drove away. The sudden loss a giant shock that brought sobs. “When have you felt like this before?” I asked him as I sat beside him there while he cried. After a moment’s pause he answered, “When Mr Chip died.” Yes, exactly. It feels just the same. Pure raw loss.

Naming it releases the worst sting of the pain with the last of the tears. Then there’s a deep breath and a remembering. And sometimes another person needs to help with the remembering, to remember there’s now a choice: to let the sadness settle in or to step into all that hope has to offer.

Watching your teenage children navigate the sometimes wavy, sometimes tumultuous waters of friendship and transition can be like catching a mirrored reflection of your own inward world. Riding the waves of eager expectancy and timid hesitancy just a normal rhythm you all learn to wait out and live through.

Maybe, like mine, your daughter is a shining example of this – she, who started gymnastics at four-years-old and navigated in a Russian-language, old-Soviet-gym environment, now eagerly runs into a new gym in this new city, but hesitates to take her place in line as girls her age chatter and laugh around her, the English language of her mother tongue overwhelming her as much as the foreign one that muddled my mind when I first went overseas. “Go for it,” were my words of advice to her as I faced my own anxiety and took a seat among a group of parents, new people to meet and a new culture to learn to cross over into. The courage it takes for a 13-year-old girl to walk into a massive gym without knowing another soul is not any less than what it takes for her 47-year-old mom to do the same.

Just a couple of days ago, this same mom sat perched on a bleacher with a mug of warm coffee nestled between her knees – heart swelling she watched her girl mount the balance beam and execute her routine without much of wobble and after dismounting rejoin her team with high-fives and shared laughter. It’s the return on the investment, right? Choosing to face change with courage, making new friends in a new place while carrying the old ones with you always especially on your Smartphone at all different times of the day and night.

And so that long list of friendships and goodbyes is really a record of how much friendship outweighs the fear in goodbye every time. That wasn’t a final goodbye back there standing in my friend’s kitchen but more honestly a “see you later.” We no longer did life together with our families the way we once did, but we built on those memories and bonds of friendship every time we reconnected for a conference in a far-away place or for a skiing trip back on the mountain where we first met, picking up where we left off as if we never missed a moment together.

While grief and loss may be cumulative, so too love and friendship accumulate. The time-worn adage that it is better to have loved and lost begs the question of whether or not it ever really need be lost. As my family settles into its latest transition, like global nomads transversing new terrain regularly do, we look on to whatever new is coming up on the horizon, and I marvel at the piles of friendship, mingled among the hellos and goodbyes, and feel no loss.