Since he's been gone

I remember back to last year at this time.  She’s going through it now.  I just had lunch with a friend the other day and we talked all about it.  She wanted to know, through her glistening eyes, if what she was feeling was normal.  The beginning of the end.  The last few months with our sons.  I told her the only thing I could.  I have no idea if it’s normal.  All I know is I was going through the exact same thing last year about this time.

I couldn’t help but chalk up every family experience as one of our last.  I don’t know why I started grieving at such a strange time.  Maybe after the cresting of our last holiday season as a family, I couldn’t help but notice how quickly the wave was about to break on shore.  The days we planned to drive him to college and say goodbye were like the people on the beach, so distant and blurry we hardly paid attention before.  But now they were looming larger, coming into focus so quickly we could no longer pretend we didn’t see them.  I recognized how fast the past 17 years had gone and I knew I just had a blink of a ride left.  I had no previous experience to go on.  All I knew was what a broken heart felt like.  What it felt like to lose someone I loved.   What it felt like to move to a new phase.  So I knew it would be hard.  And it would hurt.  I was already sad for what would inevitably come in a matter of months.

But somehow the anticipation was harder than actually hugging him goodbye.  Last spring was a teary time as I looked ahead to life without him.  I think maybe I grieved the loss before the loss.

And now I can hardly believe it was a whole year ago, that he’s been at college since August, that we hardly ever see him any more, that neither one of us really anticipates living under the same roof ever again.  But for whatever reason I’m not broken up about it.

I think because it’s like saying goodbye to bottles but hello to sippy cups, goodbye to the crib and hello to a big boy bed, goodbye to long days at home with just each other and hello to preschool, farewell to needing help with buttons and peanut butter and the bike.  Hello to talks about the government and music groups and God.  As hard as it is to pack all the memories into four sturdy boxes and a few photo books and move on, our lives haven’t come to a screeching halt after all.  Just as a wise friend’s doctor taught her as a nesting soon-to-be-mother, there is still life after the baby comes, and I’m seeing that we will still have a life together even after he goes to college.  I knew that.  We all know that logically.  It just feels at the time that you might never recover from the heartbreak.  Because you can’t fathom what might be Better.

It seems that the hole his absence created has been filling in a bit.  There’s a new hierachy at home, we’ve shuffled the chores and seating arrangements around, we’re an even number now.  We still don’t quite have a plan, even after all these months, for Mondays, his assigned day for family prayers.  So we kind of muddle through and take turns, but otherwise his room was taken over while his mattress pad was seemingly still warm.  His belongings are relegated to the storage room.  Maybe that all sounds cold, unfeeling.  But to us it’s just a matter of practicality, what with a family of seven and only so many bedrooms.  I’m not even talking about the logistics really when I suggest we’ve gotten used to him being gone.  It’s been a walk down memory lane to have him live in exactly the same spot we did.  To be experiencing so much of what we did as freshmen.  I think what has helped is seeing him grow and mature and learn.  In ways you can’t maybe do at home with parents. I feel like he could only learn so much staying here with us.  It was time, as with most transitions, to stretch and step into the dark a bit, into a new phase of life.  And so all the lessons he’s sharing with us, all the friendships he’s made and all the new and exciting things he’s been able to do just thrill me.  Nothing makes a mom happier than to have her kids happy.  Except when they are happy and learning.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not perfect.  I hate that we can’t be physically with him to hug him and to just sit and talk in person.  I miss his laugh and funny ways he was with all of us.  I miss his presence late at night when he’d come to our room to talk, to tell us about his biking or snowboarding or knives, what they talked about in class, what he wanted to be when he grew up.  Of course.  I wish we could look into his eyes and see how he’s really doing.  I hate not knowing.

I miss hearing him working in his garage.  That is maybe the deepest hole of all because we haven’t found a big enough drop cloth to cover his workshop.  Knowing that it will never be our reality again really does make me sort of nostalgic and sad.  Strange what affects you, isn’t it?

But the gaping hole I felt expanding in my heart last spring no longer has raw edges.  Obviously I wish we had a few more days at the splash park, a few more days lugging home over-stuffed bags of picture books from the library.  Of course I long for more nights all in the same tent.  For my sweaty, tow-headed four year-old curled up on my lap looking at books with me.  There’s no question that I have an insatiable longing in my heart where those days used to live.

But at the same time, I’m not one to wallow and pine for things that just aren’t possible.  I hate to waste good energy on wishes that just can’t come true.  And so I look ahead and around, taking note of what’s decidedly good about this phase of his and our life.  And, as always happens when you look for the good, you find it.

I love that we’re friends.  That we talk several times a week.  That he’ll email me and ask hard questions.  That he’s scooping ice cream and studying for hours at a time.  That he’s met some of the greatest people in the world.  That it’s been hard.  That he’s sick of cleaning up after people and doing dishes.  That he’s seeing that life is expensive.  That he’s making bread and stir-fry and cookies and roast.  I love that we’re close.  That even though life is tough sometimes, he knows where to look for answers.  I love that he’s testing what he’s been taught. I love having a son who’s grown up to become one of our very best friends.

So, yes, of course, I miss the old days.  But I continue to look ahead because looking back still makes me a little misty-eyed.  Life will never be the same.  How cliche.  But when has life ever stayed the same?  And would we really want to go back and hang out at a given point, no matter how great it was?  I’d linger for sure.  A little longer in the elementary school days.  I’d sail through a few others.  But I wouldn’t set up camp.  Because since he’s been gone, I know now that we will be fine.  That the future is brighter than even the past.  That no matter how good we knew life to be, there is still so much good ahead.