A leaving card for a job is easy. They are going somewhere else on Monday and you will see them at a wedding in two years.
A card for someone emigrating is harder, because both of you know the honest answer to "when will we see each other" is "genuinely not sure", and the entire British instinct is to pretend otherwise.
The good cards do not pretend.
Say the true thing about distance
- "I am not going to say this will not change anything, because it will. I am going to say it will not change the important part."
- "Very happy for you. Also selfishly gutted. Both are allowed."
- "I will be terrible at texting and I will still be here. Those two facts have always coexisted."
- "You are allowed to love it there and miss it here at the same time. Most people do."
That last one is worth more than it looks. Almost everyone who emigrates spends the first year feeling guilty for being happy, or guilty for not being happy enough. A card that gives them permission for both is a card they keep.
If they are excited and it is a good move
Match the energy. Do not be the one person making it sad.
- "Go and have the enormous life. We will be following it from the group chat."
- "Nobody has ever deserved a balcony more."
- "Send photographs of the flat, the food and absolutely nothing else."
- "This is the best decision you have made since you stopped cutting your own hair."
If it is not entirely their choice
A partner's job, a visa, family. Different card.
- "Whatever this turns into, you will make it work. You always have."
- "Give it a year before you decide anything. That is the only advice I have."
- "It is a long way. It is not the end of anything."
Do not offer optimism about the move itself if they have not. Offer certainty about you.
If it is family, and permanent
The hardest one, usually written by a parent or a grandparent, usually rewritten three times.
- "Go. Properly go. Do not spend it worrying about us."
- "We did not raise you to stay nearby. Annoyingly, it worked."
- "The spare room stays the spare room."
- "I am extremely proud and extremely sad and those have never been opposites."
What to avoid
"Don't forget about us." Everyone writes it and it is a small weight to carry onto a plane. They will not forget. Say something that costs them nothing instead.
A long list of visit plans. Enthusiastic, and it turns into an obligation neither of you can honour. One open line beats five specific ones: "the offer of a sofa is permanent and unconditional."
"You'll be back within a year." Said fondly, heard as a prediction of failure.
Anything about time zones being fine. They are not fine and both of you know it.
The practical bit nobody mentions
Do not put anything heavy, framed or breakable in a leaving gift for someone who is about to pay per kilogram. It is a genuinely thoughtless gift at exactly the wrong moment, and they will have to choose between binning it and paying for it.
A card is the right weight. A photograph is the right weight.
Staying in touch, realistically
The friendships that survive emigration are the ones with a low-effort default, not the ones with grand promises. A standing monthly voice note beats an agreed video call that both of you start dreading.
Birthdays are the ones that slip first, because posting internationally is slow and expensive enough that people quietly stop. That is worth solving deliberately rather than by accident. Sending a birthday card from abroad covers the timings in both directions, and a digital card lands on the actual day regardless of which continent either of you is on.
If you want the card itself to carry a photograph of the two of you before they go, you can upload one and describe the scene. A printed copy posted to your address means you can hand it over in person rather than trusting it to a move.
More across every occasion.