This week, I have friends who have watched their kids leave for college and I have friends who are watching their kids start their last year of high school this year. I still remember this time of my life in vivid detail, probably always will.
When DD was a senior, we had a delightful exchange student. We did have a good year and it ended with her parents coming for graduation and then a tearful goodbye. DD left to find herself and our other girl left and I found myself in an unfamiliar place with a unfamiliar future and few resources.
Somehow in the midst of trying to figure out what to do next, I ran across Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses. I was 39 years old and was starting to feel the effects of Empty Nest Syndrome. My entire life had revolved around taking care of Somebody and I knew nothing else. I have a job but I had long abandoned the value of it being anymore than a paycheck. The subtitle of NL was, The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow.. For me, I had to look back to move forward. It took a while but it has been a turning point in my life, and I have not looked back since.
Losses are necessary, not only in the life changing moments of our life but perhaps, in the everyday. If we agree that growing up is a life long process, then it just makes sense that there will be many losses. Some we have control over and most, we do not. A dear friend of mine has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has elected not to pursue treatment. She wants to join her daughter in heaven and as of last Saturday, her daughter is there - waiting. I understand that thought process. I have long said, if my babies are in heaven, I am on my way. You guys take care of those left behind - I will go with the one taken too soon. It is not natural in our minds for a child to die before its parents. I think about Robert Manwill's father every day. Robert was not the only child this father had lost. He has a four year old boy killed by his first wife and now to lose another child at the hands of its mother is unthinkable to me. Few of us will suffer like this man has. Those are losses we can't imagine until they happen to us.
So that leaves us with the losses we can imagine, Those that are necessary for us to grow and to let those around us grow.
When we think of loss, we think of the loss through death of the people we love. But loss is far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety - and the loss of our own younger self...
It is a pivotal time in our lives. A time that we can move forward or not. Your life will never been the same, no matter how hard you try. Keaton will be in junior high next year. I can already see the winds shifting. He is leaving babyhood behind and heading toward manhood. I want to help him him get there. I already pray for the woman he will spend his life with. I love praying for the generations that I will never meet but I know will be. It is a wild experience where the unknown becomes the familiar and since I have so much time on my hands... might as well put is to good use.
No matter where you find yourself today, you have some necessary losses to face. They may be small, naked to the human eye but you know they are there. Your heart might be breaking and you know the losses are necessary but can't go there today. That's ok, just aim in the direction and as you grow, you will know...you will know.
