Saying goodbyes and refreshing memories

Before moving there are goodbyes to be said to family and friends. Some people you are sure you will see again but with others you know it could be the last time you see them. Some friendships exist purely because you live near each other or share an interest and may only be short term, others last for years, even though you see and talk to each other rarely, but when you do meet up your conversation picks up as if you had last seen each other a few days ago, not a decade or more.

One of the things I am trying to do in my last few weeks before leaving are to catch up, in person, with my various friends. This week I had a very pleasant evening in a Peak District pub reminiscing over shared memories and making new ones to take with me into the future.  My feeling is that you carry your friends with you in your head and it is important to refresh your "stored" friends so that they are truer reflections of their real world selves.

In the last few months I have also been acutely aware that I am visiting places for the last time: the house that I was born in, the church in which I was baptised and married (first time around) and where I also sang in the choir for much of my childhood, the schools I went to, the chalk landscape I grew up sheltered by.  Leaving "home" to return to where I currently live has always been a wrench, even if I was only passing through after visiting a client, this time it felt like a final pilgrimage.  Somehow leaving the house where I have spent all the nearly19 years of my (second) marriage has not had the same sense of loss as we are moving onwards together as a family and also I have helped my daughter and her family move into it.  I suspect my feelings would be different if we had sold it to a stranger.

Our house packed into a 20' shipping container