I can’t stop crying. There, I said it, and I’m not going to apologize for being emotional.
On August 1st, we took our daughter back to college for her third year. I thought that would prepare me somehow for what came next.
It didn’t. In fact, every year we have dropped her off, it has been just as hard as the first time.
Two days ago, we took our son to college for his freshman year.
And then we came home.
Now, it’s just the two of us in a very quiet house.
For the first time in more than two decades, our children don’t live under our roof.
We are officially empty nesters.
I’ve known this was coming. Of course I have. There were college applications and acceptance letters. Deposits and orientations. Shopping lists and dorm supplies. Conversations about classes and schedules and everything they would need.
The date was marked on the calendar… MOVE IN!
I knew. But knowing something is coming doesn’t mean you know how it will feel when it arrives. And I wasn’t prepared for the quiet.
I wasn’t prepared to walk past both of their bedrooms and know they wouldn’t be coming home at night.
I wasn’t prepared for the little things to suddenly become the things I would give anything to do or hear again.
- Getting up extra early to make their lunches for school.
- Ironing my son’s clothes every morning, even though I bought him is own iron.
- Goodbye hugs every time they left the house.
- Someone asking what’s for dinner.
- Shoes left somewhere they don’t belong.
- The refrigerator opening for the hundredth time.
- Voices coming from another room.
- A car pulling into the driveway.
- A random conversation in the kitchen that I didn’t know would someday become a memory.
I wasn’t prepared for how much I would miss the ordinary.
And I have cried. A lot.
I’ve cried staring into their rooms. I’ve cried just sitting on the couch. I’ve cried over things that probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone else.
And part of me wondered if I should be handling this better.
After all, this is what we wanted, isn’t it?
We raised them to leave. We raised them to be independent. We raised them to be brave enough to walk into the world without us holding their hands.
We wanted them to dream big enough that eventually those dreams would take them beyond our front door.
And they did.
So why does something so right hurt so much?
Then I realized something. The tragedy wouldn’t be that I’m crying. The tragedy would be if I wasn’t. Because these tears mean there was something here worth missing.
We built a life worth grieving when it changed.
We created a home our children filled with noise and laughter and arguments and slammed doors and Christmas mornings and homework and late-night conversations and inside jokes and ordinary Tuesdays.
We built traditions. We made memories. We watched two tiny human beings become people.
There were scraped knees and bedtime stories. First days of school and last days of school. Halloween costumes. School projects. Sports and activities and friendships and heartbreaks. Driving lessons. Graduations.
There were hard days, too. Days when parenting was exhausting. Days when I wondered if I was doing any of it right. Days when I wanted five minutes of silence.
And now I have silence, and I don’t want it any more.
It’s funny how life does that. The things we once wished would slow down eventually become the things we wish we could have back for just one more day.
Just one ordinary day.
Not a vacation. Not Christmas. Not some milestone birthday.
I’d take a random Wednesday.
Everyone home. Dinner on the table. Someone complaining about something. Someone asking where something is even though it’s exactly where I told them it was.
Just one more completely unremarkable day when I didn’t yet understand how remarkable it really was.
But that’s the cruel little secret of life. We almost never know we’re living the “good old days” while we’re living them. We only recognize them when they’re gone.
So yes, I’m sad. Deeply sad. Depressed even.
But underneath the sadness is more gratitude than words can say.
I know how incredibly lucky I am to have had something so wonderful that its changing hurts this much!
I know how lucky I am to have people I love enough to miss this fiercely!
I know how lucky I am that my children have become young adults capable of walking away from the safety of home and toward lives of their own!
That is what we were raising them to do all along. Maybe parenting is one long lesson, teaching both parents and children how to let go.
First, they let go of your hand to take their first steps.
Then they walk into kindergarten without you.
Then they stop needing you to tuck them in.
They drive away alone for the first time.
They graduate.
And eventually, you stand in a dorm room surrounded by boxes and bedding and all the things you bought at Target and on Amazon trying desperately to memorize their face while pretending you’re perfectly fine.
Then you hug them. You tell them you love them. You tell them you’re proud of them. Then, you leave.
Because that’s the job.
We spend years teaching them how to live without us, never realizing that somewhere along the way, we also have to learn how to live without them.
At least, without them in the same way. That’s the part I know I have to learn now.
I’m not stupid, I know they haven’t disappeared from my life. I’m still their mom. They still need me. Our family hasn’t ended. It has just reshaped itself.
But I need to give myself permission to mourn the shape it used to have.
I don’t want to rush through this sadness. I need to feel it.
I don’t want to tell myself to “get over it.”
I don’t want to pretend I’m not heartbroken simply because I’m also proud. I can be both.
I can be incredibly excited for the lives they are building and desperately miss the life we had.
I can want them to fly and still wish, sometimes, that they’d come back to the nest.
I can celebrate their independence while crying in the kitchen, the bathroom, their bedrooms, and in my husband’s arms.
Grief and gratitude can co-exist.
Maybe that’s what this season of life is all about. It isn’t an empty nest. Maybe that’s the wrong way to describe it, because our home isn’t empty. It’s full.
- Full of photographs.
- Full of stories.
- Full of fingerprints on things I probably once complained about cleaning.
- Full of Christmas ornaments they made when they were little.
- Full of bedrooms that still somehow feel like them.
- Full of memories tucked into corners I don’t even notice until one suddenly catches me off guard.
- Full of a marriage that existed before children and now has to discover what comes next.
- Full of plans we haven’t made yet.
- Full of phone calls that will come.
- Full of summers together between school years.
- Full of holidays when everyone will return and the house will be loud again.
- Full of futures that are just beginning.
- And most of all, full of love.
So, I’m going to cry for a while. I’m going to miss them. I’m going to walk past their rooms and feel that ache in my chest. I’m going to learn who I am in this new season, just as they are learning who they are in theirs. And I’m going to remind myself that these tears aren’t something to be ashamed of. They’re evidence that my family showed up, loved deeply, and that somewhere between the sleepless nights of infancy and the boxes we carried into college dorm rooms and apartments, we built something extraordinary out of thousands of very ordinary days.
We built a family. We built a home. We built a life worth missing.
And if saying goodbye to this chapter hurts, then maybe that’s not the tragedy. Maybe the tragedy would have been reaching this moment and having nothing worth crying over.
So today, I’ll let the tears come. Because my children are exactly where they’re supposed to be. They’re beginning their next chapters. And, whether I’m ready or not… I suppose it’s time for me to begin mine too.
Dedicated to Sydney & Ethan – I love you both with all my heart and soul!
Nina Soden 