I have a problem with farewells. They hurt me too much; maybe because I have had them more often in my life than I could handle; maybe because there have been too many of them through the generations of my family, or both.

My first farewell was with my family when I was six years old. My mom and dad got divorced and I said goodbye to the family I knew up until that age. My mom and I moved in with my grandma; a few years later I made a second farewell when my mom and I moved to our own place. It was also a farewell to the neighborhood I loved and to my friends there. After I graduated from the university in Istanbul, I said farewell to my home country. My intention was to come back after a year, which never happened. The rest of my life has been full of of moving from one country, one city to the other, each time saying goodbye to other neighborhoods that I loved, to friends, colleagues. I told myself and others that I didn’t believe in goodbyes, that we would always be connected and would see us again one day. Deep inside me I knew it wasn’t the truth. I was only trying to make myself believe in it not to feel the pain.

One of the most hurtful farewells was with my ex-husband. I had not chosen it and I knew it was a farewell for ever. The moment he told me he wanted us to go our own ways separately, it felt as if a knife was cutting through my heart; as if I would never be able to breathe again. It took me many years to recover from it.

Then there are the farewells with my mom that we need to make when one or both of us go back home. Airports are not my most favorite place. They are full of farewells and a question mark of whether we will see us again. If there will be a next time. On our way back home, each of us takes the beautiful memories we have had with each other in one of the places I happen to live, currently it is Zurich, and that question mark.

There are also the farewells I never said. I was never given the chance. First one happened when my grandma died. She had been suffering from Alzeihmer’s disease for a long time. At first sight she was no longer able to recognize me, yet deep down I knew she did. She always felt it when I was close to her. We had a very special connection; we had the same birthday. I knew I was going to receive a phone call one day and I was not ready for it. In 2016 one afternoon at work in Munich I received that phone call. She was gone, already buried and I broke down. I took the afternoon off, went home to bed and stayed in the next day, too. I prayed that I would sleep and wake up from this dream to find her alive again. It still hurts.

Unmade farewells are the most heart wrenching. My aunt was my second one. In January during the first year of Covid she closed her eyes at a hospital in Istanbul. Lung cancer. Nobody was allowed to see her except for her husband and daughter shortly. Not even my mom; her sister.I received another dreaded phone call from my mom in the evening that she had left us. Last time I had seen her was one year ago, where we had celebrated the new year’s eve altogether at her home. We had ordered some food as she was no longer able to cook; something she loved to do when she was healthy. She would set the most beautiful tables and serve the most delicious food, just like my grandma.

I have a problem with farewells. They are stuck in my throat, in my stomach even when they come out in my words. I have chosen to tell farewells not knowing they would hurt me this much one day; and I have been told farewells that I didn’t want to hear. Untold farewells are still with me; flowing out in my tears at times. I am learning to embrace both farewells and welcomes as valuable guests in my life for they are like day and night, one does not exist without the other. I have a new language to say farewell to my grandma and my aunt. I look up in the vast blue sky and I know that they are there for me, waving at me from afar. I wave back at them and I smile. I never had their farewell words but I have their hearts in my heart.