A country, just like a single old-left-foot-house-slipper can be metonymous.  This-for that, quid-pro-quo, how-did-I-ever-lose-you?-metonymous. Hit me at 2 am, sharp intake of breath too hard to connect it all with proper punctuation metonymous.  I once accidentally cut your hand in a car window metonymous.  When I met you I thought you were the crazy one metonymous. Lost in Pittsburgh a million years ago metonymous.  With you the reason for years of silence had to be different metonymous.  

The countries I have lost all have proper names, stable addresses, no missing slippers.  Us-and-them, before-and-after countries cheerfully conventional, intentionally respectful, naturally leery of the once-familiar mendicant whose metonymic wholes have been for good or ill

Irrevocably set free.