The long goodbye

Photo credit: Amaya Gonzalez-Møllmann, 2021

I was 21 years old the first time I moved country. I sold most of my furniture — I had moved into my own apartment 2 years earlier — and stored the rest in my father’s attic. That last month before I left, I stayed with my grandmother. I remember neatly folding my clothes in piles on her dining room table where it stayed for weeks until I finally packed my two giant suitcases. This wasn’t just going abroad for college. I was leaving for good.

The process was one I would repeat, perfect, and come to dread over the next 10 years. During my twenties and into my early thirties, I lived in 15 apartments (that I can remember) in 7 countries on 2 continents.

Here’s the thing. I’m a typical Taurus. Whether or not you believe in astrology (I’m solidly on the fence), what I mean is that I am prone to holding on for slightly too long. Leaving feels like loss rather than adventure. Goodbyes routinely make me cry.

And yet. As I am entering the last months of my 20+ year stint in New York City — the longest I have lived anywhere, ever — I am starting to notice a familiar sharpened sense of presence. This is the other side of loss: the ability to experience more deeply that which is about to be scarce.

This might be the last time I walk here, I muse, as I meander through Brooklyn Heights to revisit streets I used to run through without noticing them once a week while marathon-training in my late thirties. The choice of pastry at a favorite haunt takes on another meaning. Will I come back before I leave, or should I get one of each just in case?

I like this part of the long goodbye. I have spent years learning to become more present, and suddenly it feels natural and unforced. I am grateful for that.

Ahead of us, still, is the packing, the purging, the letting go. I try to access any lessons from previous moves. At age 28, when I finally rescued the boxes from my father’s attic that I had left there 7 years earlier, I remember feeling astounded that I’d ever thought I needed what they contained. I know this. And yet I also know I will be reluctant to let go of too much.

All that is solid melts into air, Karl Marx famously wrote in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. All is change all the time, and yet specific change happens in a specific context. The one we are in feels like a tornado. Moving or not, it’s a time for long goodbyes.