I know we're lucky.

I do.  I tell myself over and over that we're the incredibly fortunate ones.
We are not fleeing anything. We are not returning to a dangerous place.

I teach Elie Wiesel's Night as part of a World Literature class and in the past two years I have seen other refugees ' images and faces as I read the Wiesel's description of the things taken and the things left, the things dropped and stolen, the lives lost.  I read about Syrian refugees and I cry at my desk. I donate money. I email politicians. I worry. I get on with my life. I repeat.

Whenever we go, we will have a place to live and enough to eat and plenty of nice, developed-world things. Wherever we go, our boys will go to a good school and live in safety. Wherever we go, our children end up in university and we end up retiring, unless we get sick and die first. First-world problems.  We will stay developed-world lower-middle-class and we're going to be fine. We have already won the lottery of life, and I know it.

I try to stiffen my spine, to get some perspective, and to stop feeling sorry for myself.
But I am. I am so sorry about this happening to me.

All of these things can be true, and I can still grieve what I am losing here.

I have such lovely friends, and, while they will stay lovely and stay my friends even if we email and facebook instead of sitting on each other's couches or lie on the grass in each other's back yards,  it won't be the same.

It's just hard.