Sometimes Saying Goodbye Hits Close To Home

You hear it all the time-Washington D.C. is a town of transients. People move in from somewhere else, then move out when their Congressional employer doesn't get re-elected or their company sends them overseas or they head off to graduate school.

All this motion keeps the town interesting, but it's no consolation when it's time to say goodbye to a good friend.

I met my neighbor, Erin, about a month after moving into my Pentagon City apartment. We bumped into each other in the laundry room on a Saturday morning, and she invited me back to her place for coffee.

We had plenty to talk about. We were both almost 30 and facing the D.C. dating scene for the first time in a long time-she had just moved to D.C. after a divorce, and I had just moved across the neighborhood after a separation, clearly headed toward a divorce of my own.

We quickly became more like roommates than just neighbors-meeting for coffee early Saturday mornings to hash over Friday night dates, checking out each other's latest clothing purchase, sharing bottles of wine during Sex and the City episodes, and celebrating birthdays, holidays, and sometimes barely anything at all.

Her apartment was where I ended up one awful night after driving home heartbroken and in tears, and my apartment is where we tried to process the terrifying images from the Pentagon on September 11.

Erin helped guide me through the difficult days leading up to and following my divorce. She had preceded me through the process and knew how it felt. And it was reassuring to see her doing so well in post-divorce phases that I had yet to reach. She was my confirmation that good things were possible down the road.

And so I was thrilled for her when, last November, she reconnected with a guy she'd been talking about non-stop since I met her. He was her high school sweetheart when she was an exchange student in Sweden. And even though I hadn't known her long, it was clear almost immediately by the way she gushed over him that Bjorn was the man she was meant to be with.

They talked about living together in the United States, and Bjorn even came over to stay with her and look for work. But in July, she told me they'd given up on that plan-sooner, rather than later, she'd be moving to Sweden to live there with him.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I found out she was on the fast-track to go. She'd given notice to our landlord and her boss, and she was making shipping arrangements and packing up everything she owned. By this coming Wednesday evening, she'll be gone for good.

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