SITTING WITH TEARS
I expected the sadness, but not this.
The disorientation, the lack of direction, the aimless wandering of thoughts.
It’s as if the ground has shaken and my hands have been ripped free from their steadying grip. My arms flail in darkness for something to grab onto but nothing can be found. My mind knows the reason, but my heart struggles to comprehend.
He left for college just weeks ago.
My first born, my son, the one whose presence fills a room.
I stood in the driveway as he waved and drove away, my body melting into the concrete as soon as he rounded the corner out of view. My watch flashed the tracking alert seen so many times but never before carrying so much weight:
He has left home.
I am so happy for him, so excited at the life adventures headed his way. This is as it was always meant to be, his head held high, his mind filled with possibility, his feet headed boldly into a life he will call his own.
But still, many tears fall.
I knew this would be hard, at least the way one knows something in theory, unable to grasp the full impact until experienced in reality. I knew there would be mourning, grief at the end of a season that has dominated eighteen years of my life.
I expected the sadness, but I did not expect to feel lost.
Lost when I grab four plates for dinner instead of three. Lost when I fold that piece of clothing that got left behind, returning it to the room he no longer calls his home. Lost when I stand over a pineapple in the grocery store, realizing I only buy them because they’re his favorite.
I didn’t expect to feel so lost.
A friend recently described it to me as if playing the game where you look for the differences between two nearly identical pictures - you just keep searching for what else is missing.
It feels like so much is missing.
These days I’m reminded that loss is often the cost of love, the letting go so difficult because you had something so beautiful to hold onto.
Despite the busyness I long to fall into, I know the only way to the other side of mourning is to actually mourn. Despite the aimless movement I catch myself in, I know physical motion cannot actually keep me from falling into the hole left behind.
Right now to be brave is to stop and be willing to feel.
And so I sit with my tears.
As each one falls it speaks proof to the gift of raising a child, each drop declaring that love is worth the price of letting go. I know sadness will one day give way to the joy of watching him step into a life of his own. I know with time grief will turn into waves of pride and celebration.
But for now I’ll be brave.
And continue to sit with my tears.