Farewell messages for a friend

Six messages you could actually send

Continue writing opens that message in the card with the words already in it, so all that is left is to change a word and send it. The last message is the longest of the six, and it is the only one you have to copy across yourself.

1. All the best with the move. I'm not going to pretend I'm pleased about it, but you'd have regretted not going, and this friendship has survived a great deal worse than a few hours of time difference.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. Good luck. Same friendship, worse timezone. Ring me when the flat is finally empty and the whole thing suddenly feels strange, because it will, probably around nine in the evening.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. Go and be brilliant somewhere else for a while. Then come back for a week and be entirely here, phone off, nothing planned. That's the arrangement, and I'm holding you to every part of it.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. All the best. I'm not doing a speech at the airport, partly because I'd make a mess of it and partly because you'd never let me hear the end of it. So here it is in writing instead.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. This city is going to be measurably duller and I resent it on principle. Go anyway. You've been talking about this for three years, and I'd much rather miss you than watch you not do it.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. All the best with the move. I'm not going to pretend I'm pleased about it, because you'd see straight through that, but you'd have regretted not going and we both know it. Ring me when the flat is empty and the whole thing suddenly feels strange. It will, and I'll pick up.

   Copy

Writing your own

Say the honest thing about the timing, not just the good wishes. I am not pleased about it but you would have regretted not going is truer than a clean congratulation, and truer is what a close friend actually wants to read on the way to the airport.

Name the first hard moment and offer to be there for it. The empty flat, the first Sunday, the first festival away — call me when the flat is empty is a specific, useful offer, and it is the moment a new city is genuinely lonely.