The ticking of the wall clock slowly calls me from my sleep. I can feel the sun and hear the birds through the open window. I resist opening my eyes. Something deep in my consciousness shouts that I don’t want to face this day.

Before sleep can return my heart starts racing with feelings of impending doom and all hope of sleep slips away. Slowly, it penetrates my consciousness. This is The Last Day.

Less than two weeks ago, I was in Arizona for my son’s graduation. I smiled, and laughed and celebrated his accomplishments. He’d earned his MBA. I was proud of what he’d accomplished and proud of the man he’s become.

I was relishing the time with him, keenly aware of how rare and precious these times have become. Then my phone rang. It was the first indication that there was tremor in the force, that my world was about to be shaken. Again.

My daughter, Anna, full of excitement and energy declared that she’d decided to get an apartment. She was moving out, just days after I return. What?!? I’d only been gone three days and she was making decisions that would change my life.

I knew this was coming. Eventually. It was inevitable and ultimately good, but like a punch in the stomach it took my breath away and I struggled to stay calm.

We’ve talked about this day, but it was supposed to be that day in the future. Next year, when she’d graduated from college, then she would move. I’ve started purchasing things I thought she’d want when she sets up a home of her own. But I thought I had a year. A year to prepare myself, to figure out how to do this with something that resembles composure. This feels too soon.

Still, here we are. The Last Day. The year of preparation, vanished like the mirage that it was. As I write, she’s still in bed. Soon, she will rise and finish her packing. We’ll load my pick-up with the last of her things. For now, I let her sleep. Her last night at home, in her bed, under my roof. I don’t want it to end. So I tip toe around the house, careful not to make noise that would wake her.

When you talk about the pain of kids leaving home, some will look completely and utterly puzzled. They simply can not understand the sadness. Some celebrate. One couple dropped their last child at college, turned and gave each other high fives. They’d done it. Finished. They’d raised their children. No sadness. No nostalgia. Just joy at a job well done.

I wish I were more like that. I want to be better at this. I want to walk through it with poise, strength and grace. It’s really nothing remarkable, kids leaving home. It’s comes with the territory. Somehow, knowing this does not make it any easier for me.

So I grieve. Where I want poise, I feel panic. When I reach for strength I find weakness. Instead of grace, there are tears.

Perhaps, with time and distance, in a half a dozen years or so, when all of the kids have left and I’ve had time to adjust, to create a new life, a new home, I will have words of wisdom to share. Perhaps, when the loss isn’t so new and the pain so fresh I will have something different to write, something with which to comfort parents who, like me, are smack dab in the middle of this season of life. Perhaps.

But today, I grieve. And the vulnerability feels scary and feels too much like weakness.  I’d prefer to stuff it in a dark corner of my heart, shackled and gagged, silenced and forgotten. I’m more comfortable wearing a mask of strength than this raw, reality of grief.

I’d ignore it if I could, even though I know that only by forcing myself to acknowledge the grief, to look it square in the face and feel it can I know the personal growth that follows.

Someday I will analyze this process of letting go. Today however, I will content myself with making a few observations.

1. It hurts.

For many of us, when our kids leave home, we are filled with grief. Yes, we are proud of our kids. We  know this is inevitable, even right. Of course  we are happy for them. We see their excitement and enthusiasm and we want to rejoice with them. But the thing is, it hurts.

We know that the life we’ve spent decades building is slipping away. It’s changing. We will no longer share the silly little day to day things. We will no longer wash our faces and brush our teeth together as we get ready for bed at night. I won’t hear her car pull into the drive at the predictable times, or jump at the scream from the other room as she encounters a tiny spider. A thousand other simple, seemingly unimportant little things will change, things I used to take for granted.

It’s not that it won’t be good, but it will be different. Gradually, Anna became my friend. For twenty-one years she’s has lived under my roof and I will miss her fiercely. Tonight, when I go to bed and walk past her empty room, I will know a season has passed, never to return.

It hurts.

2. Comparing my sadness to other’s does not help.

I know mothers who have lost children, spouses who have lost wives, parents dealing with addictions and mental illness. I know my situation pales in comparison. I know this. In my head. But my heart, that’s a different story. Reminding myself that someone else’s pain is greater should lessen my mine, but somehow it doesn’t work that way.

3. Their presence lingers.

In her article on empty nests, Susan Bonifant put it like this:

“When the kids leave, they leave that behind – a feel and rhythm in the house that took years to evolve. The sting of empty nest is sharpest when that feel still exists after the activity from which it evolved is over.

Know that it isn’t just a change in what you do and who you see that will move you back to the center. It’s the new feel and rhythm that will grow around you.”

Hmmmm. It’s not something we can just get busy and fix. I’m not good at waiting. I’m a fixer, but this takes time.

It doesn’t happen overnight, nor once and for all. When the first, then the second left the nest, it took time for our family to evolve, to feel normal again, to find a new rhythm. This time is no different and remembering that brings me tremendous comfort.

4. I haven’t lost them. 

The relationships are different, but not lost. They are still my kids. I am still their mom. I can still love them, enjoy them and know them. Every once in a while they might even still need me.

Raising these kids is the single greatest joy, honor and challenge of my life. It utterly astounds me. These children were entrusted to me. Me!!  I was given the magnificent privilege of knowing them, of loving them, and that privilege remains. Love does not have an address.

5. I will be ok.

I’m still a couple of years away from an empty nest. Age has taught me that two years will come and go in the blink of an eye. Tonight I will go to bed keenly aware of the room sitting empty next to mine. One by one the others too will leave.  They will build their own lives and make their own marks on the world.  It will be hard. There will be tears, but I will be ok.

I won’t try to avoid the grieving process. I will allow myself to feel all of the feelings. When the silence becomes loud and oppressive, I’ll listen for the echos of the family that once was.

I’ll breathe deeply. I’ll count my blessings. I’ll reflect on the chapters of our life and family. I’ll rejoice in the family we still have, even though it’s different than it once was. I will find a new rhythm, a new feel and I will be ok. Better than ok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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