It feels exciting--we've been preparing him to leave us one day, and we're almost there. He's so ready. Exciting and rewarding, right? It feels stressful--planning the graduation party, while remembering to enjoy the moment? Anyone? It feels like an out of body experience. Other people go through this stage of life, always other people. So it can't be me. But most of all? The part I keep to myself?
It feels like a year long goodbye.
The last first day of school picture. The last birthday at home. The last cross country meet. The last awards banquet. The last deer hunt. The last Christmas season with him living in our home. The last, the last, the last...
I feel like my heart can only take so many of these, and yet, they stretch out over an entire year. It hurts over and over again. For a year.
Yes, I still have him here. He still sits around the table with us and makes us laugh. I still give him a hug every night and tell him I love him. I don't want to miss this.
But sometimes, when he's out with his friends or away from the house for some reason or another, I'll look at his chair and think, "This is what it will be like all the time next year. Empty." And then I cry. Just a tear or two, because soon he'll be home and I have a family to care for.
The Christmas season has really made these moments come around more often for me. When I unpacked his ornaments I thought, "Next year I'll have to set these aside for him to hang up during Christmas break. Will he be home for Christmas break? He chose a university 900 miles from home, so he'd better be!" I hear a song that he likes and I think of him. And I imagine singing along without him here, and I just don't know how I'm going to carry this hurt.
The year long goodbye. I can't rip you off like a bandaid. I get to endure every single last thing you bring my way all year long, while telling myself to be grateful I still have you. And I am grateful.
My boy is an 18 year old man. He has plans and dreams of his own, and I get a front row seat to it all. This sounds very logical, doesn't it? But here's the thing. Moms hear heartbeats first, and logic second. Like that moment I first heard my son's heartbeat swooshing through the doctor's crackly speaker, I heard love. I did not even for a second hear that heart beating and think anything about the pain of childbirth. The fatigue of sleepless nights. The struggles with discipline, or the pain of letting go.
Likewise, when I walk through these lasts with my son, I think about all that I'm loving, and what I'm about to lose when it's over. I'm really not thinking of the fact that he's ready. And that we've raised him to leave one day. You know, the logical stuff.
When the year long goodbye is over, the new beginnings will start. We'll enter a new season, and life will be different. It will become our new normal. And everything will be all right in the end. It's getting there that's the hard part. The long goodbye.
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| Braylen' with his new car and our Ginger girl |
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| Kaleb bought Braylen's truck. He'll drive the Honda until May. |
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