When my son left for college, I wallowed in the fetal position for three days. The tears fell like a summer storm, sheets of aggressive tears in unpredictable waves. I wailed in pain like an animal. It felt like a piece of my heart was cut away.
Six months later, I am no longer curled on the couch, and my son is thriving. He has 13 friends who are just as nerdy as he is, and he’s killing Organic Chemistry. He’s making coffee and lunch dates and hosting Survivor parties in his dorm. I am bursting with pride.
But that pain, that grief, is still in my body, concentrated into a corner of my heart. I carry it with me now, like a stone. It’s primordial, a mother’s ache to be with her child. I fear this longing will never go away. I will just live with it, like a lost love.
I feel him pulling away, the phone calls and the daily details dwindling as he finds his independence. It’s perfectly healthy and developmentally on point; he’s charting his own path. I think of all the many adventures in front of him, the valleys and the summits.
It gives me a sense of nostalgia, that mid-life urge to channel into the past and glimpse all the ups and downs that I have travelled. I pull myself back to the present and throw myself into parenting my sixteen-year-old daughter, who is a beautiful light. She literally glows. I try to enjoy the moments with her, knowing my close-up time with her is dwindling.
Another goodbye is coming, another piece of my heart cut away, another stone to carry. And she will thrive and bloom too, and it will make my heart burst with both joy and grief. The two weaving together, impossibly: joy and grief dancing inseparably.
I have a sense of being in between worlds, like a sunset is happening, and I want to pull the sun back up on the horizon, take my thumbs and peel that sunshine back into my life. But it is dipping and dimming, and I am not ready for the sun to set on this day, this mothering phase of life.
Such is life, and it motors on, the wheels turning, and I too have to keep moving. I have to find a way to take these spinning threads of joy and grief and weave them into my next chapter. Now is the time to put myself back on centerstage and rediscover the parts of me that have been dormant.
But, truly, this seems impossible, like a hill I am too exhausted to climb. I’m embarrassed that I am faltering and fumbling through this transition, wallowing still in this grief. I’ve got to pull myself through this darkness. I’m convinced there is a light at the other side.
emily guerrero 