When the Friends Leave and You Wonder Whether to Follow

We often choose a place for its comforts, but we stay or leave because of who is around.

By Neil Solomon · 4 min read

Picture a couple named Helen and Rafael. They have lived abroad for several years, and their social life has a rhythm they did not plan. Every spring, someone announces a departure. There is a dinner, a card, a promise to visit. Then there is an empty chair at the next gathering.

"Another one," Helen says, taking her coat off after a farewell party.

"That is four since January," Rafael says. "I stopped counting at three, and then I started again."

Both of them are quiet for a minute. Then Helen asks the question neither wanted to ask. "If we are the last ones at the table, do we still want this?"

I think that question is one of the least talked about in retirement abroad. People talk a lot about arriving. They talk much less about the day the reasons to stay begin to leave the room.

What people describe in Qatar

Two writings from Qatar sit side by side in my mind. One was about being left behind. Friends leave in June, and the farewell parties come one after another. The writer described the feeling of staying while everyone else goes, and of making new friends who might also be gone by next summer. It is a hard rhythm. Each friendship has a built-in end date.

The other was about leaving. The writer said that leaving Doha hurt more than arriving there had. I read that as grief for a life that had become real. When we arrive, we expect to feel strange. When we leave, we are surprised to feel torn.

What people describe in the United Arab Emirates

In the UAE story, a man had spent decades in the country. Leaving it, he found, felt like an exile in his own homeland. The place he was returning to had changed while he was away, and he had changed too. The people he left behind in the Gulf had been his daily life. The home he went back to was now the unfamiliar one.

I find this one moving, because it turns around something we often assume. We think "home" is where we came from. After enough years, home can become the place we have been living.

What people describe in Turkey

The Turkey story was wistful. After leaving, the writer missed the eccentric people met along the way, the odd characters who made ordinary days interesting. Particular people were on the writer's mind, far more than any view or monument. I take from this that when we leave a place, what we grieve is rarely the scenery.

How the four compare

What I notice

Across all four, the weight is in the people. Money and paperwork come up less. This matters if you are weighing a move. We often choose a place for its comforts, but we stay or leave because of who is around.

It also means the question of going back is rarely answered by a list. It is answered by how it feels to sit at that table. If most of the chairs are empty, the table has changed, and it may be fair to say so without blaming anyone.

I do not read any of these stories as saying that staying is right or that leaving is right. They show that both choices cost something, and that the cost is usually friends.

Helen and Rafael decide to wait until the autumn before answering their question. They write down the names of the people who are staying, and the names of the people they would like to see again.

"Two lists," Rafael says. "Let us put them side by side."