Saying Goodbye

A relocation tale.

It’s been a few months since I have written, and I mean not just here, but written anything.

I saw a quote from Ernest Hemingway pop up the other day, along the lines of, when writers stop observing, they stop writing. In my humble observation, you can observe a lot, so much that in fact you do not know where to begin writing.

So I will begin exactly where I am at.

I am sitting in a bathrobe in the living room of my couch, in a mostly empty room, in an empty house with full closets, in our home in Canada.

It is eleven fourteen in the morning, and I have bags under my eyes and damp hair in a bun.

Our three year old son is still sleeping. We arrived here last night.

We took an Uber, then a bus, then a plane, then a plane, then an Uber, then a hotel, then our truck, back to Ontario.

Total travel time: two days. We didn’t take a direct flight because we booked last minute and the prices were out of budget, so we took the connecting flight back to our Canadian destination. We sold our house here, and came to empty its contents before the closing date in a couple of weeks.

This is the final stretch of a relocation process to Mexico that has taken months. Or, depending how you look at it, years.

We found a place in Mexico. I love it. The culture, the food, the music, the motion, the people; life.

I didn’t want to come back to my little town in rural Ontario, my home for the last four years.

I realize, as I am writing this segment later this evening, that it was not the physical move that has been exhausting so much as the emotional one.

I didn’t want to come back because I didn’t want to deal with my feelings of saying goodbye. And once I realized I have been repressing my grief, I stopped feeling exhausted immediately.

It is good for us to be here. It is good to say goodbye. I told my husband (and myself) a story earlier about how I hate transitions, how I don’t want to look backwards; how I don’t want to say goodbye, but kind of just duck out. I told him about the time I moved from Montreal to Vancouver, and all my high school friends came over to say goodbye, but that in the end only one friend came to see me, and that visit ended our friendship.

I found myself caught in a victim mindset, and a stuck mindset, where every goodbye of the past had been somehow meaningless, or unnecessary. When he suggested I go to dinner with some of my friends here, it was something I wanted to avoid, because somehow in my mind I felt like they wouldn’t be interested. That it wasn’t such a big deal. As if my being here and leaving here were somehow insignificant.

I was repressing how sad I actually feel about the people and places I will miss.

I was sitting in an empty house with full closets, begrudging the task before me, of cleaning out the closets. But when you clean out your closets, you find lots of hidden treasures.

I opened the first closet, and I found a whole bunch of useless junk that we had trained along with us on every move in the last six years (there were many). I was grouchy and loud, complaining with every item I threw into a very large black trash bag.

My husband decided he would leave with our son to give me some space. It was a blessing. As soon as they left, I immediately stopped clearing out the closets. I had nobody left to complain to.

I looked across the lawn, where our neighbour’s grass had become a jungle. Our grass had become a jungle too, but hers was worse.

She is an elderly woman born in Beirut. She brought us flowers over for Christmas. She knocked on our door once to help her jumpstart her car, dressed in a fur jacket. She invited us for coffee, but I only went over once over the last year.

And then she had a stroke. I was seriously worried that she would die alone, and no one would find her. She walked around like a zombie, barely recognizing anyone, it seemed. The last time I saw her there was snow on the ground.

I looked out at her grass, and looked beside me at my garbage bags, and I called her.

“Araxie?” I asked.

“Yes!” she exclaimed.

“It’s Kate.”

“Oh my God! Kate!” she said happily. “Where have you been? Where are you going? I saw that you were gone and then I saw the For Sale sign.”

“Are you busy?” I asked. “There’s a lot to say. Can I come over?”

“Sure!”

“I’ll be over in five minutes.”

I walked over to Araxie’s house across the street, and was greeted by her at the door, dressed in earthy colours and a big chunky necklace. She looked fabulous.

I was so glad that she was okay, she appeared much better, and totally lucid. We spoke about her illness, her return to health, my move, her life, my life.

She invited me over for Lebanese food, next week. “I don’t know if we will be here next week,” I said. “But if we are, we will come.”

We went to the grocery store. We spoke with the familiar faces around town. Grocery store clerks, bright and happy teenaged girls who heard that we had moved to Mexico.

It is these kinds of interactions, the mundane and familiar, that mean something. In a small town, they mean a lot. These are some of the interactions a part of me wanted to run away from. Because I would miss them.

I was trying to live in the future, because I thought that coming back to my soon-to-no-longer-be home would be like living in the past. What I missed was living in the present.

When I lived in Vancouver in my twenties, I studied Buddhism for a while. I used to meditate on the beach, and in my apartment. I carried around a little book of Buddhist parables, which I gave to my cousin before he left for his worldly travels more than a decade ago. A tenet of Buddhism is to live in the present moment, to really be there. It sounds cliché, but there is something absolutely invigorating to the soul, settling and pacifying, about doing just that.

I later noticed my son, rolling his trucks along the floor. Some of his favourite toys that he’s been without intermittently for a few months. I realized, as I was gazing at him, fully present, that it was good for him to be back here. This, after all, was and still is, his home. A place he feels comfortable and safe. This little town is the place he was born, conceived six months after we moved here.

This little town is his place, and our place, and a part of it will always be. The place where we bought our first home, where we had a dream that was never fulfilled in the way we expected. The place we thought we would live in the rolling hills, with a smoker, a pellet gun and a banjo. Barefoot and pregnant.

Our first house. I did not know it yet, but I was pregnant. July 2020

And we did, for a while. Now, this chapter is closing.

We also experienced the trauma of the Covid collectivism. Of losing careers, a car, a house, both of my grandparents, and my cat. Of making friends, and friendships fading. Of potential, lost. But, so much was also gained.

Mexico is a new beginning for us. But the chapters aren’t cut straight and narrow. You have to step backwards to move forward. You have to feel what you need to feel in the space between, in the transition, in the goodbyes.

I am learning to relax about this move, finally. To embrace the present moment, the whole process. Not to run away from this place, or my feelings about leaving.

When I finally opened up some drawers in our bedroom, with this new state of mind, I found things that made me smile. Some old earrings I forgot about, my positive pregnancy test, an old songbook, a letter from my sister.

There are some things that don’t belong in black garbage bags. Some things, you take with you, or you find somewhere safe to keep, for the next big chapter.

I look forward to saying my goodbyes, and being here until I am gone.

---

Very Opinionated is a publication written by me and my partner

William Gervais

.

We are passionate about producing podcasts, videos, and this Substack. We write about culture, society, ideology, politics, philosophy, liberty, and more.

If you enjoy reading, watching, and listening to our work, please like this post, share it, and subscribe. You can also help our content reach new ears and eyes by doing the same on Youtube & Spotify.

For anyone seeking residency outside of the collectivist anglo-sphere, you can use our affiliate link for the ultimate relocation guide to Mexican residency.

If Bitcoin is your thing, you can drop us some SATS here.

Thank you!

---

Read Next: