The longest goodbye - Defence family posting time
Photo by Meg Jenson via Unsplash
It’s posting time for Australian Defence families. That dreaded time of year none of us speak of until it’s upon us.
Our little family of five is one of the thousands of Defence families who will be packing up and moving on to a new posting within the next few weeks. We’re no strangers to farewells, it’s a part of the life, but of all the many goodbyes we say as a Defence family; this is always the longest.
Our loved ones who are serving members often depart with mere hours or days of warning in times of necessity - it feels as though there’s never enough time to hug them goodbye or have last kisses or “smoodges” as my babes call them. Never enough time to think of all we have done as a family in our last few days or weeks together, all that we wish we had done together and all that we hope to do once we’re together again.
And then there’s posting season … the seemingly never ending carousel of purging, packing, picking a new home and posting away. It is a weeks, sometimes months, long process from the moment of receiving posting orders to the point of being allocated a date for removal and of course choosing a home at our new destination. For months toward the end of the year, families are sorting through their belongings and selling or giving away those they don’t wish to post out with. The community Facebook page becomes a veritable swap and sell marketplace. We all eagerly await each other’s "free to a good home” posts - with one family’s trash becoming someone else’s treasure…for the posting cycle at least…then it will inevitably find its way to the curb again to be picked up by another eagle eyed bargain hunter during the next posting cycle.
In some respects, the length of the Defence posting process is marvelous. As parents, we have time to prepare our children for the inevitable transitions ahead and our children have the time to adjust to the idea of a new location, new school, new home and new friends. And of course, there’s ample time for saying goodbye to old ones. Just last weekend we celebrated my big girl’s 6th birthday at the adventure playground on base and it was incredible. Being surrounded by our community, in the place we call home, as we celebrated her and all she’d accomplished this year is a memory we’ll hold dear for a long time to come. The day was a hectic but joyous occasion, still being talked about by her and her classmates and their parents. Of course all the while celebrating, in the back of our minds we all acknowledge that the time for moments like these is short-lived. Many of the families in attendance will move on to new locations in the coming days, but there’s nothing like the knowledge that time is short - to give you a crash course in being present. Defence families, more than anyone I’ve ever met, know how to live in the moment.
In other ways, this long - far too long - goodbye is brutal. It’s a slow drain on the heart and mind and looms above, threatening to swallow you if you stand still and dwell on it for too long. Some parts of our country are understanding and accommodating of this process; some employers show grace, some schools extend cut off dates and accommodate unusual requests and some businesses are all too happy to help out where they can, but the rest are yet to get on board and this makes posting season a nightmare for some families whose multiple age children require different schools with relevant facilities and whose non-serving member must once again say farewell to their place of work and begin the long, arduous process of finding another.
We’ve been based in our current location for less than twelve months and still, it’s become home. It’s familiar, safe and holds cherished memories for our family; memories of a baby learning to crawl and then walk, memories of a toddler turning into a graceful and capable big girl and memories of an oldest child going off to school for the first time and learning to make friends, to read and to ride a bicycle.
I am completely thrown by the array of emotions I feel now as I walk my oldest to school each morning. Navigating once quiet streets, where just days ago kids played basketball or rode their bikes, now lined with removal vans, shipping containers and fluoro clad removalists wielding industrial size rolls of packing tape and enough butcher’s paper to spark a new environmental revolution.
It’s truly strange to watch our neighbours' lives reduced to a pile of cartons in the garage - knowing it’s our turn next - and sad to think of saying goodbye. We like to tell ourselves we’ll bump into each other again one day, but realistically, the current posting is typically all the time we have with those around us - few of us will have friends wherever in the country we are sent. Defence life demands that we repeatedly take ourselves outside of our comfort zone; explore new locations, find new friends and manage to make someone else’s home feel like our own.
We posted to this location just ten months ago and I can assure you that coming and going within the same twelve months is darn hard! We spent our first three months here fighting to make this house and community feel like home and our last three will be spent saying our goodbyes. It’s a strange mixture of sadness and exhilaration, to be planning a move so soon after arriving. But I’m going to practice what I preach to my kids every day: home is not a house - it’s wherever we are together.
The last few years have been the most intense of my life, but if they have taught me anything, it’s to hold on to every single moment we have together and to rest easy knowing that if we’re together: we’re safe, we’re happy and we have more than enough time.
