The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2022 45 along with several thousand more “accompanied evacuations,” where patients were able to fly commercial airlines, usually with a nurse in tow. “Think about it ahead of time. Do you have fam- ily, friends, a certain area you could go back to?” It usually happens more quickly than you’d expect. “Even in Ukraine, it wasn’t sudden, or it shouldn’t have been,” says Ren- deiro. “We knew it was coming, but many people doubted any- thing would happen, so it was still a sudden departure for them.” Evacuations can be triggered by war, civil unrest, local criminal violence or natural disasters. As of mid-April 2022, five major posts were on ordered departure, authorized departure or suspended operations status. Even at the calmest post, you could face a personal medical crisis and have to leave post within a few hours or days. It pays to prepare, nomatter how sleepy your post might seem. The Go Bag Everyone knows you need to have a “go bag,” but what does that actually mean? Laura Gehrenbeck, an FS family member who evacuated from Kyiv ahead of the Russian invasion this year, says her FSO husband David, who stayed behind, made sure they each had copies of all identification documents, COVID-19 vaccine records, banking data, tax forms, school papers, credit card numbers and the family’s entire “encyclopedia of passwords.” “The go bag thing is real,” says Gehrenbeck, but “don’t get too bogged down by lists. Focus on documents/passwords/crucial information (making sure there is a set for each person if you are a couple) and medicines.” If you have children, you’ll want electronic copies of school and vaccination records stored in the cloud. Consider scanning and saving any notes or artwork they’ve made, as well. As Jessica and I sit together in Arlington, she’s less upset about the car and other expensive items she may never see again, but she is devas- tated by the loss of her kids’ artwork. Juliet Johnson, an FS family member who also recently evacu- ated from Kyiv, has thought about special things she wishes she’d packed when she left. If she could go back in time, she com- mented, she would have been more intentional about packing the things that are irreplaceable and hold sentimental value. “We put skis and soccer gear in our UAB [unaccompanied air baggage], which is all just replaceable stuff. But our kids’ bottle cap collection with caps from our posts like Tokyo and Malawi, the handmade bowl we bought in Cordoba, and the potholders my nieces wove are sitting in our apartment in Kyiv. I wish we had put more of our treasures in our luggage.” M y husband is standing in the departures lounge at Kyiv International Airport. The day is Jan. 29, 2022. Our three children are standing close to him. They are all wearing masks that obscure their beautiful faces. We’ve just battled long check-in lines with frazzled airport staff who are struggling to keep up with the frantic pace and demands as too many people try to leave Kyiv on too few flights. In several weeks, this airport will be empty, the sky closed to commercial flights. But right now, it’s a mélange of sweat and panic and exhaus- tion. And it is also where we are saying goodbye to my husband, who will stay behind. I snapped a photograph in these last minutes when we were still together, our family of five. I snapped a photo- graph because that’s what we do as mothers. We capture the little moments that will later be memorialized in our photo albums and on our digital frames. Shared with grandmothers and aunts and uncles. And yet today the act of capturing this moment is discordant. This was not a holiday card or an exotic family vacation. This was hard. This was pain and uncertainty and grief. This was a rupture in all that we had known. Our 12-year- old son stands next to his father with his head pressed against his chest as he sobs. He knows. He knows what lies ahead is filled with sorrow. His eyes are painted with pain. Our younger kids are aloof. Still focused on childhood concerns like the next snack and getting a window seat. Months into this evacuation and this war, I often think about that photograph. I think about that moment when we had the privilege to leave before our neighborhood was shelled. I think about how little we knew about the horrors that would befall this city we came to love. How little we knew about the sleepless nights and unanswered questions that were yet to be asked. How little we knew about how strong we would need to be. For ourselves. For our families. For Ukraine. —Jessica Hayden What We Left Behind I snapped a photograph in these last minutes when we were still together, our family of five.