When Goodbye Wasn't the Plan: Grieving a Place You Couldn't Return To

Have you ever had a deeply unexpected goodbye? A goodbye to a place you always expected to be able to return to?

For many TCKs, our lives are filled with so much movement, and with that movement comes goodbyes. Some of those goodbyes are expected, maybe even planned. Goodbyes after graduation. Goodbyes right before leaving for furlough. Maybe long dreaded goodbyes at the end of your family's time overseas. But often the hardest goodbyes are the ones you never saw coming - the ones that don't give you time to say farewell. This post is for anyone who had to leave a country, a city, a life behind without warning - and years upon years before you could return, or even worse you never got the chance to return.

The Goodbye That Wasn't a Goodbye

Sometimes, the plan was just a visit "back home" for the summer.

Sometimes, it was a temporary relocation because of a crisis.

Sometimes it was a sudden evacuation, a family decisions, a closed border, a broken visa, or a worldwide pandemic.

You never knew that when you packed your bags this time, you were leaving for good. You didn't know the last time you walked through your house would be the last time. You didn't know that the last time you ate at your favorite local restaurant would be the last time. You didn't get to say goodbye to the people, the food, the familiar route to school, the little rituals that grounded your daily life.

I was on the receiving end of this the summer after my junior year of high school. COVID started a couple months prior, and not knowing what it was, not many around me took it very seriously. But as I know many of you are well aware of before long, school ended, lockdown started and life was so far from normal. In Niger, all of the families/friends I had grown up with and around were given the option to take an "repatriation flight" back to the US, before borders and countries closed. Many families chose to leave not knowing that COVID would become a worldwide pandemic. I had countless friends that a goodbye was not possible with. They were given 24 hours to pack up their house and get on a flight. No warning. No farewells. Just goodbye from a distance. While the grief for me felt very real, I cannot imagine the grief of my friends who realized maybe a year later that they would never be returning.

Grieving a Place Feels Lonely

Grief for a place is often invisible.

No one throws you a memorial service when you lose a country (although how interesting would something like that be! If anyone would do it, it would be a TCK for sure!)

No one send flowers when the life you built in a "foreign land" becomes unreachable.

And yet, the ache is real. The tears still come. The longing lingers.

You look at photos and can't help but think: I used to live there. I used to be that version of me.

You scroll past news headlines and feel a hurt others may not understand. In your search through the headlines, part of you wants your home to appear because it gives you reassurance that others see just a snippet of the pain you feel. The other part of you hopes your home doesn't show up in a headline because it means whatever caused you to leave has not gone away.

There's a term for this ache: ambiguous loss. Mayo Clinic describes ambiguous loss this way: "Ambiguous loss is a person's profound sense of loss and sadness that is not associated with a death of a loved one. It can be a loss of emotional connection when a person's physical presence remains, or when that emotional connection remains but a physical connection is lost. Often, there isn't a sense of closure." It's the grief of something lost but not gone. Something you can't return to, but can't forget either.

Why It Hurts So Much

Places aren't just locations. They're memory keepers. They hold the moments that shaped us:

• The market where you bought food with your mom

• The dusty road where you learned to ride a bike

• The house where your family continued on through power outages

• The school playground where you made your best friends

Losing a place suddenly feels like losing a part of yourself - and in a way, it is.

TCKs build homes across borders, and sometimes these homes close their doors when we're not looking. The grief comes not just from missing the place, but from losing who we were when we lived there.

Holding Grief and Gratitude Together

Even in the loss, you're allowed to feel thankful. You're allowed to smile at memories and still mourn them. You're allowed to miss a place fiercely and still build a new life elsewhere. It can feel virtually impossible to do in the moment, but let your gratitude come from the knowledge that God gave you the blessing of that home and place that you can cherish forever, whether you every physically return there or not.

If you never got the goodbye you needed, maybe this is your moment. Write a letter to that place and I will do the same. Say what you wish you could have said had you known you were leaving for good. Say goodbye in whatever way you need to. Look through your photos and allow yourself to feel. Tell someone the stories. Say out loud: "I miss you. I loved you. You were home."

Your story doesn't end because a chapter closed unexpectedly - it just shifts into something new!