Here comes goodbye...

There are moments when I am struck with the sheer amazement of how quickly people can come into your life. They’re not there one minute and then—POOF—you’re sprawled out on the soft brown corduroy la-z-boy in your apartment in Montreal waiting for the nightly phone call from a boy living in the Vast Canadian Northland.

But that’s another story for another time, because at the moment I am startled by a different direction of movement. A departure.

Today is my last day at my Big Girl Day Job and marks, in my mind, the first of many Goodbye Days before I board a west-bound plane to Melbourne, Australia. Days marked with the weight of knowing I may never again see some of the people who have been in my life over the past few months. Days where I sit stunned and unable to grasp the concept of leaving, of people left behind.

Rosa, the beautiful, kind-hearted receptionist whose name I proudly announced as I wished her Good Morning! with as much excitement I could muster that early each day. I doubt she knew my name—why would she when thousands pass her smiling face daily?—but it was always a pleasure knowing hers.

And some of the regulars at the pub, the ones who feel a bit like extended family when you’re waiting out a slow dining room shift and they are perfectly inclined to update you on the goings on in their life.

“I have a new baby niece named Lauren. I went to visit her over the holidays. Would you like to see a picture?”

Goodbyes are always the most difficult in my mind, and I daydream that the people I meet walk a one-way street into my arms and my heart and nestle there warmly, forever. But inevitably, someone honks, or I buy a plane ticket to halfway across the world, and I am brought back from my reverie to the middle of a windy six-lane highway where people are rushing in and out of my life at speeds I could never hope to control.

So instead I hold onto the more menial questions whose answers I can grasp and direct with a firm hand. How many shoes should I pack? Should I bring all my SLR lenses? Or just the ones that I use most often? What should I make for dinner tonight?

And the rest rolls by me, chaotic and calm and if I squint my eyes I can see the metropolis of Melbourne and the sandy beaches of Sydney and the adventures that loom large on the horizon just a few short weeks away.