Grieving the Empty Nest

Yesterday I took #3 child for a special day, just she and I.  For Christmas, I bought both of us gift cards for a local spa, thinking it would be great fun to spend a day together, pampering ourselves.  As it worked out, we used the cards at the last moment...a final time together before she embarks for her first year of college in New York.  For the first time in her life, she had a massage, and I couldn't help but think of it as a fitting rite of passage from youth to adulthood.

For the last week or so, I've been in an almost-obsessive contemplative mood.  There is a perfect storm brewing in my life; I've known it was on the way, and I've been trying to figure out how to diffuse it for it for months, but somehow in my heart I understand that when you're planning for the big one, you are almost inevitably going to come up short.  August 30^th is the one-year anniversary of my mother's death from the metastatic cancer that left her paraplegic from a spinal tumor for the last six months of her life.  As fate would have it, it is also my daughter's first day of college.  And give or take a few days or a couple of weeks, it will mark the finalization of my divorce.  At this point, I'm not sure yet whether the divorce will include having to move from the home I've lived in for the last fifteen years, or perhaps require that I sell the home-based business I have worked hard to establish for the last seven years, or both.  Change has been furiously swirling around me for the last two years, and I've managed to keep my head above water.  While I know that by definition, life is change, I long for respite from the intensity.

And so, on the special day I spent with my daughter, I tried to quiet the inner turmoil that I am struggling against on a daily basis.  I managed to not fret aloud too much about my personal issues with change, although I think I was only successful because my blessed massage therapist, instead, listened to the recitation of my life story.  But I found myself compulsively sharing "words of wisdom" with my daughter, as if disaster would strike if I didn't repeat the lessons I've been teaching her for the last eighteen years, just one more time before she heads off to the Big City.  I found myself foolishly thinking, "Oh My God," what if I forgot to tell her, or what if she forgot what I told her, or what if she misunderstood what I told her, or what if she didn't take seriously what I told her....  (Fill in the blank with any and every lesson a mother should teach their child from age 0 to 85.)

Finally, on the drive home, along a stretch of scenery that is easily some of the most beautiful in the country, I glanced over at her, curled up in the front seat, napping as she has hundreds of other times on car rides short and long.  And while she looked so much like my little girl, my baby, I know that she is a grown woman.  Ready to make her own life.  I've given her the best start I could.  She has as much common sense as anyone I know.  She'll do just fine.  While she doesn't quite know where her journey is taking her, she is ready for the ride, excited about the unknown.  But for me, during this time of change in my life, this time of emotional pain and turmoil, I crave some solidity, some definition, some clue as to where I might be four years from now, when my daughter graduates from college. 

I've learned, from my health problems, that while we like to think we are in control of our lives, we really are not.  I didn't anticipate that I would be divorced at fifty-one.  Or that I would lose both of my parents by the time I was fifty.  I did know that my children would grow up and leave home, but I had no idea of how emotionally agonizing that would be for me.  Now, I simply long for the pace of change in my life to slow down.  So I can absorb it all.  And sadly, with child #3 moving across country next week, I will have more "time on my hands."  The irony is so acute it makes my heart ache all the more.

(Note: After reading this through a few times, I realize that I could write it from a very different perspective, with a very different "spin" if you will.  Change can provide an opportunity for positive growth and great joy, as easily as it can cause pain, turmoil and chaos.  But I've made a commitment to writing from my heart, and today my heart is sad and overwhelmed.  In my soul, deep in my core, I know that, in the long term, I will not only survive through this period of grieving, but I will thrive.  Right now though, I'm hurting.  I think that it is important for women to acknowledge the pain of the Empty Nest, the intense sorrow that we feel when we separate from our children.  Having to put on a "Happy Face" doesn't make the sadness go away, and feeling sad doesn't mean that we believe our lives are over.  Sharing our feelings with each other helps us to realize that what we are experiencing is one variation on normal...sharing with each other validates our own feelings.)