Leaving. What a varied thing it can be. We may experience departure as a relief, a burst of anger, a perceived voyage of adventure, a forced flight, or as an agonizing and painful wound. 

My feelings about leaving Edinburgh have not snuggled neatly into any of these categories. As the final months of my stay began to accelerate like the untethering of calendar pages in an old movie, I became increasingly impressed with how subtle the signs were that our days in Scotland were quickly coming to a close. 

Consider, for example, the psychological disentanglement that precedes the final days of packing up clothes and personal effects. For me at least, this process started months ahead of boarding a flight back to Florida. It began in a charity shop when I realized the futility of buying any more clothing than I would be able to fit into a large suitcase. Over time, I also started to notice a kind of polite indirection in the remarks of my friends. Sometimes it was as simple as someone refusing to give you a final goodbye hug on the pretext that they knew we would be bumping into each other again. On another occasion, some dear friends said that they would be on holiday for the entire month before Teresa and I were scheduled to fly out of Edinburgh Airport – – a hint that we needed to plan something sooner or risk losing the chance for a proper goodbye. 

And then there are the lists that you begin to compile, the friends you want to make sure to spend time with, the details of notice to the landlord, and, finally, the bookings of transcontinental travel. Yet in truth, while flight arrangements really do seem to lock things down in a more significant manner, in many ways that are more important, you have already long since begun the process of embarkation.

Ultimately, all of these encounters, experiences, and observations add up to the same thing: you will be going home soon, and bidding farewell to people you have learned to love, some of whom you will never see again. When I said goodbyes as a younger man, I often thought to myself, ‘this isn’t really final. Plenty of time later on for reuniting.’ But as I’ve grown older, I have dropped such presumptions, especially when parting with those who are ahead of me in years. Experience has taught me that some separations are indeed final.

I have also sensed a kind of sorting out process that long proceeded packing up clothes and personal effects. I recognize that I am five years older than when I left Orlando in 2013. It is also clear that I will return to a deeply divided country that has changed a lot in the time that I’ve been gone. Then, too, I have changed in a number of ways, as have my views on various topics. Coming over here required me to adapt, and so will going back to the United States. As an example, I haven’t owned a car during my time in Edinburgh because I haven’t needed one. Public transportation is good here, and most places near city centre are accessible on foot. Teresa and I sometimes muse about how we will navigate all of this.

On a more personal level, we have lost friends and family during our time in Scotland. Two people in particular, Gary Lloyd and Steve Johnson, come to mind. But there are many others that have left us over the past five years: Isaac Hunter, Loyd Boldman, and Emerson Grace. Not only do such losses remind us of our own mortality, they also chip away, sometimes jarringly, at how we perceive the stability of relationships that steady us on a daily basis.

I simply cannot believe how fast these past five years have gone by. It will surprise no one reading this that time seems to get away from us more quickly as we age. I have no unique insights here. Perhaps this is just another manifestation of the ephemeral world in which we live. “Life,” said Linda Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, “is a casting off.” We are always leaving in the sense that we never cease moving forward in time and cannot return to the past.

But setting these reflections aside, Teresa and I are ready to go home, and we are grateful for this. I miss my daughter Katie and want to be closer to her. I miss my mother and father-in-law and wish to help with the transitions that lie before them. I long to again be with my old friends, friends like Lamont and Jessica Goff, Lee and Gabriela Coulter, Jason Thomas, and many others. But I know that living in Scotland has changed me, and that in some ways at least, I will never entirely get over leaving it.