Closing Doors - Welcome Home, Son

"It's not a death. And it's not a tragedy. But it's not nothing, either..."💔
"I wasn't wrong about their leaving. People kept telling me I was. That it wasn't the end of the world.  But it was the end of something.

I was the sun and they were the planets. And there was life on those planets, whirling, non stop plans and parties and friends coming and going, and ideas and dreams and the phone ringing and doors slamming.

And I got to beam down on them. To watch. To glow.

And then they were gone, one after the other.

"They'll be back," people said. And they were right. They came back. But they were wrong, too, because they came back for intervals -- not for always, not planets anymore, making their predictable orbits, but unpredictable, like shooting stars.

"A chapter ends. Another chapter begins."

"One door closes and another door opens."

"The best thing a parent can give his child is wings."

I read all these things when my children left home and thought then what I think now: What do these words mean?

Eighteen years isn't a chapter in anyone's life. It's a whole book, and that book is ending and what comes next is connected to, but different from, everything that has gone before.

Before was an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Before was feeding and changing and teaching and comforting and guiding and disciplining, everything hands-on. Now?

As for a door closing? Would that you could close a door and forget for even a minute your children and your love for them and your fear for them, too. And would that they occupied just a single room in your head. But they're in every room in your head and in your heart.

As for the wings analogy? It's sweet. But children are not birds. Parents don't let them go and build another nest and have all new offspring next year.

Saying goodbye to your children and their childhood is much harder than all the pithy sayings make it seem.

It's not a death. And it's not a tragedy.

But it's not nothing, either.

The drive home without them is the worst. And the first few days. But then it gets better. Life does go on.

I miss them, still, all these years later, the children they were, at the dinner table, beside me on the couch, talking on the phone, sleeping in their rooms, safe, home, mine...."

- Beverly Beckham