You put away her left-behind things because it hurts to be reminded they were here and now they're gone. Maybe a few years. Maybe longer.
Life asks you to adjust, and after a bit you do.
We were lockdown buddies, the four of us, when everything first stopped. They had not been together all that long, Mary-Margaret and Mitchell, but you could already see they were really good for each other.
In the latter part of her degree she did a semester in London, loved every minute of it, was desolate coming back here for the final part, vowed she would be going straight back.
But then other things began to happen, new guy and new people in her life, new possibilities, and she hesitated a month or three and then COVID happened.
Life asks you to adjust and after a moment, after a time, you do.
On the drive out to the airport, I said, Imagine how dismayed 20-year-old-you would have been to know it would be four years before you were going back.
Yes, she said, but then she wouldn't have had everything that made these last years so good: her partner, their friends, the gigs, the music, the raves, the trips into the wilderness, finding her feet in the working world: at Bike Auckland, at Newshub, at IAG, becoming the kind of comms person an agency in London or Bristol could use.
Her dream is to be a voice artist, but your chances of being Lisa Simpson are only ever going to be slim, so you adjust.
She finished up at IAG last month, got farewelled with her first long corporate lunch; said goodbye to her remaining grandparents, knowing it might be a last hug; said goodbye to the little kitten she gave the name Sugar Plum Fairy, now an 18-year-old Sugar, likely the last hug also.
She filled her suitcase, told us proudly at the airport we should have seen it while it was still open, she had packed that thing like a sonovabitch. I pulled out the phone and showed her the photo I'd taken when I saw it at the end of the passage, lying ready to leave.
She said, That going in the newsletter? I said, Most likely.
She has a three-year visa that cost her thousands, and itās worth all of that for the access it gives her to the National Health, to the right to work. Also they throw in a complimentary SIM card. Possibly other things too.
Right now they're in London for a few days, then backpacking into France, then Italy, then Greece, then Turkey. From Singapore airport, reading flooding reports, she texted maybe not Greece or Turkey after all.
Life asks you to adjust, and you do.
Then theyāre back to the UK to find work; comms for her, planning and urban design for Mitch. There have been Zoom interviews at 4 am with London that might pan out, but they also like the idea of Bristol.
We miss them so much. It's a bond and a love that is surely as strong as any we will ever feel.
Adapt, adjust. Weāre spring cleaning right now, we have vowed to get ourselves out of town in the weekends more than we have been.
The last time she left, she said as she hugged me, Don't drink too much, Dad. A month later I quit.
She didn't leave me any advice this time. But I keep learning about life as she makes her way in hers.
