"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 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
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