The Longest Goodbye (and the Longest Flight)

The last few days before I left the U.S. were a blur. A lot of getting rid of everything I own. Sold my lovely little car, gave my bed to a coworker, countless trips to drop off at the thrift store, and carrying load after load to the dumpster. My Sunday disappeared into cleaning and frantic last-minute packing. By Monday morning, I was still shoving things in bags when my dad and stepmom pulled up. They helped me haul the last loads to the dumpster, while my dad quietly worried that I would be late for my flight. (Spoiler: I was there over two hours early, I think. In Richmond, that is basically unheard of.)

Goodbyes are not really our thing, so we kept it short. Before I knew it, I was past security, on the phone with Kym, and staring down my first hop: Richmond to Dallas. Smooth, easy, no tears in the terminal.

Dallas: Four Hours of Barbecue, Beer, and Boredom

Dallas gave me a four and a half hour layover, which I spent circling the international terminal like a mall walker. I impulse-bought Bluetooth headphones, convinced that my AirPods would betray my ears halfway over the Pacific. Then I rewarded myself with barbecue and a beer. It was all pleasantly uneventful, just how you want a layover before the big one.

When my Qantas plane finally rolled up to the gate, it hit me: seventeen hours. My longest flight before this was eight.

17 Hours, 0 Pages Read

I had visions of being that put-together traveler who reads a serious novel midair. I even bought Demon Copperhead for the occasion. Instead, I did not crack the spine once.

Instead, I binged the entire new season of Yellowjackets, drifted in and out of shallow airplane sleep, and alternated podcasts and audiobooks as background noise. Every time I glanced at the flight tracker, the hours mocked me. Twelve more to go. Ten. Eight. An eternity.

Meals were fine. Snacks went untouched. My aisle seat became my personal stretching station. Honestly, it was not as bad as I feared, it was just long.

A Smooth Landing, A Hard Call

We landed early in Sydney, just after sunrise. Immigration was a quick passport scan. My bags appeared together, right on cue. Customs waved me through without a word, so much for my paranoid visions of being grilled on Border Security.

But then came the message from my dad: Call me when you land. Never a good sign. He told me my grandmother had passed away while I was in the air. I had just seen her days earlier, at nearly 99 years old, still excited for the letters I promised to send from Australia. Peaceful, unexpected, and somehow perfectly timed, yet still hard to process while standing in a customs line on the other side of the world.

Finally, Here

And then, just like that, I walked through the exit doors. There was Kym, waiting. I spotted her before she saw me, which made the moment even sweeter.

After months of planning, packing, goodbyes, and that marathon of a flight, I was here. Australia. Sunshine. Wollongong in the distance. We even stopped at a lookout and later wandered the beach, my adrenaline keeping me upright when jet lag should have knocked me flat.

It was surreal and smooth all at once. Everything that could have gone wrong did not. The goodbyes were messy, the flight was long, but the arrival was perfect.

Expat Takeaway

Seventeen hours is survivable, airplane food is not that bad, and sometimes the universe smooths out the logistics even when life delivers the hard stuff.

Lethal Aussie Wildlife Encounters: 0