The Long Goodbye

I hate goodbyes, if I had my way anytime I left a job or relocated I would keep it under my hat, walk out the room at the end of the day, throw out a ‘see ya tomorrow’ and then drop a postcard from my new place.  Not because I don’t care, but generally because I care too much and I want to avoid the whole entire goodbye scene.

Now when I was younger I was the opposite. My family briefly nicknamed me hard hearted Hannah for a while there as I hated showing emotion in public. Wait, I showed emotion, oh plenty of that… but generally the angry kind, the sad kind was a big no go for me.  Then again, I also used to rip off my dolls heads and put them in plastic bags in the freezer and stuff their bodies in the cupboards, so looking back I may have had some issues as a kid!

I was not looking forward to saying goodbye to my home, my friends, my family, or my fur kids, oh my fur kids. Eventually I knew they would be joining me, but how to prepare my heart to be away from them in the meantime? I didn’t know how too, and even now, a few weeks after the fact, tears fall thinking of them, and my heart squeezes as I remember walking away from them not knowing when I would see them again.  Family and friends I could explain to, but for all my sprouting of “my pets know just what I say” did they really? Or are they back in Australia tonight wondering where that person went too who used to love them so much once.

Though deciding to pack up and go and actually getting gone was a slow process, I didn’t really ponder the ramifications of leaving. Weird I know. I have left plenty of houses. Plenty of homes. Ones that I have laughed and loved in, built friendships in, fallen in and out of love in, had my precious fur kids in, so it took me by surprise that when it came time to step outside the door and drive away one last time from this rather simple little three bedder, that all of a sudden I found myself faltering and not wanting to go.  Who would talk to my old buried dog in the yard? Who would look out the front windows now, and would someone else let the huntsman spiders live!? It all felt wrong. I was caught between wanting someone else to love our little house, and not wanting to give anyone else the chance.

As I walked through once last time, the sun was setting outside.  I was finishing the cleaning as I went. One by one I went through mopping the hardwood floors. Turning out the lights on each room as I finished. I could hear Iris Dements “Our Town” in my head.

The living room is clean and I flick off the light. 

I hear the lyrics in my head “and you know the suns setting fast, and just like they say nothing good ever lasts…”

I go through the kitchen, mopping the floor, and turn of that light

“Go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover cause your hearts bound to die”

I’m in the laundry now. Last room of the house. It’s done. I’ve mopped myself out the back door. I lock up the house. I take a last look around my backyard and I go.

“Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town,

Can’t you see the sun’s setting down on our town,

On our town, goodnight”

And that’s just the bloody house folks! I’ve still got to say goodbye to family friends and furries yet! Seriously, you wonder why I drink.

Anyway, long story short, it ends up taking me six days to disentangle myself from my furries. I keep saying “I’m not ready”. Truth be told had we not finally booked the plane ticket a mere four days out from flying, I would still be sleeping in my neighbours house (where they are being very capably minded), saying “I’m not ready to say goodbye”.  But I wasn’t ready. I can’t even tell you how I cried. I could try, but it would be more depressing than… I’m trying to think of a really depressing book here, and all that popped into my mind is the Diary of Anne Frank, and well, I can’t be so wrong to write that can I? Anyway, tears, there were many. I can even now remember exactly how much it hurt. You know I have heard people say emotional pain can be physical and I didn’t really ‘get’ it. But I hurt. My heart hurt, like a giant fist was around it, squeezing it tight.  Just remembering sitting on the bed hugging Jeffy, holding Bennys face and smiling and crying all at once at his funny kelpie eyebrows, and oh I can feel that fist again.

I cry again typing even now. I’m not sure if that fist is trying to squeeze my heart and hurt me or if its holding my heart together to stop it from falling apart. Needless to say, I miss them. More than words can say. So I’ll stop trying.

And that folks, better be that for tonight.  I’ll leave you with Iris Dement and Our Town.  For the record, it was the last song played, in the last scene, on the last episode on Northern Exposure.  But I like a lot of her stuff. If I ever want to sit and cry (sometimes a girl loves a good cry and wallow) listening to Iris singing “no time to cry” is just blissful.  

How it Happened - A choose your own adventure story

Somehow, since the last entry not only have I failed spectacularly in my efforts to blog (though it does mean I have done at least one thing spectacularly this year) but I have found myself unemployed, of no permanent address and living in the wilds of west coast of the South Island in New Zealand.  That’s always a solid career move, moving to where less than 1% of the NZ population live isn’t it?

For the record, so far I have seen more cows than sheep I think, or perhaps we are break even. Either way, here I am.  How I got here takes a bit longer to tell.  We can condense it if you like, or you can take the longer version, like a choose your own adventure if you are old (like me) and remember them.

Condensed version:

LOML (love of my life, keep up - you never read the old entries or old blog did you) randomly said one day “want to move to NZ and become gold miners?” Okay I say – after checking furry pets could indeed cross the high seas and that cranky furry cats could pass go and gain entry, yes lets. So we packed up our belongings, put them in storage, rented our place and came to find our fortune in the (cold) ground.

Longer version: (You might need a drink)

LOML (love of my life refer to above), randomly said to me one day “want to move to NZ and become gold miners?” Okay I say – after checking furry pets could indeed cross the high seas and that cranky furry cats could pass go and gain entry, yes lets.

So it began.  What no one tells you though when you say “yes lets” is that you think you will fly away with a cat tucked under your arm, a dog on the lead and merrily walk into your new home. No tears will fall, there will be no angry words spoken and somehow you will arrive without wanting to divorce the love your life approx 25 times in that last week.  For a start you can’t really arrive with the cat tucked in your handbag.  If you’ve met my cat, or heard about my cat you’d probably think me bonkers to try that anyway because he has killed small dogs, small children and probably a large brown bear if he could get his claws near one. But my god, do I love that cat. LOVE THAT CAT.  (I joke about killing the small children…maybe)  Also, the dog too wasn’t allowed to just you know, sit next to me on the plane. They were also going to cost over $3000 and not even get a window seat. I was fine with all of this, but we couldn’t line a house up before we arrived for them to fly over anywhere near when we were.  In fact we are here now and still can’t line a house up, but I’m getting ahead of myself (do you want to break for a drink? I know I do…)

We did arrange to stay with a partner in the mine though, which was fantastic, but no pets allowed.  LOML assured me this would be short term as we would find a house quickly and the pets would be with us lickedy split or however the saying goes. I don’t know about you, but I can lick an icecream freaking fast, but my pets still aren’t here. CUE TEARS.  Getting ahead of myself again. Drink!

Anyway, there was close to ten years of stuff to pack up at home, I might add STUFF in capitals cause where there’s shed there seems to be a lot of STUFF and that seemed to take some time.  We had also done some renovations to the house that we thought we had finished, but LOML realised we had a list a mile long that really, really needed finishing before we could rent the place out.  Also, throughout this deciding to go to NZ and actually going it took ooooooohhhhhhh twelve months. 

So long that I kind of forgot about it. 

We both did. 

Until two weeks before departure and all of a sudden we had a shit load to do and not enough time to do it and I all of a sudden really, really did not want to leave my home, or my pets, not when I didn’t know when they were coming over. DRINK! Cause I might cry thinking of them.

What the hell, I might just go and have a drink now and come back for the “leaving home” entry after the drink. Cause its always advisable to write when emotional, ya know?  On the upside, we have landed safely in Hokitika, a beautiful little part of the world.  I wake up, look out the window and see snowy covered mountains and walk down to a truly wild beach.  Snow and beach, all in one view. 

Down side, no fur kids. DRINK!