This is life
We dropped our baby at college last week, officially making us empty nesters now. So far, I’m not very happy about it.
We’ve already done this twice before, with our older boys. The first time was extremely difficult as well. With our oldest, we made a family trip out of it. I would have thought driving home with two kids still in tow would soften the blow, but unfortunately, it still hit us all hard. There were tears in the car the whole way home. After finishing a silent dinner, someone suggested that we leave the dirty dishes on the table and go outside for a walk to clear our heads.
We hadn’t gotten far when we bumped into friends who had also returned from dropping their son at college, their only child. We assumed we would commiserate over this shared experience, but instead, they seemed relatively unmoved by the separation. I honestly think they were wondering what in the world had happened to us.
This time, the experience felt even more final, much more like the end of something. Not so much for Lucy, obviously, as this is really the beginning of something very special for her. But for her mother and me, it decisively marks the end of this phase of parenting. Lucy will be back for holidays and summers for a couple more years, but if we’re being honest, it’s the end of her childhood.
Empty nest syndrome is characterized by feelings of grief and loneliness that parents may feel when their children move out to live on their own or to attend college. It can result in depression and a loss of purpose for parents as we adjust the daily rhythms of our lives to this new situation. Apparently, it’s more common among mothers, especially ones who were the primary caregivers, but of course, fathers can feel these symptoms too. This obviously affects parents differently, but all of us necessarily need to establish a new kind of relationship with our children — and with each other.
It can be comforting if you have your partner to share these feelings with, but it can also be a challenge to fill this new void. “Gray divorce” is on the rise; divorce rates among Baby Boomers have doubled since the 1990s. In my own marriage, the odds seem to favor us staying together. Gen X divorce rates are the lowest among the generations. New York (and the Northeast generally) has the lowest divorce rates in the country. Our incomes, our education, and the age we married also improve our odds. But the risks are clear. This is an extremely difficult transition.
At the beginning of the summer, my dad died. He had been struggling with Parkinson’s, but his death was nonetheless sudden and surprising. He died in his sleep, at home. In recent months, he had grown weary of his medications and his limitations. He had always told me that he never expected to live to old age. It was strange for me to hear anyone say something like this, especially my own father. For as long as I can remember, I have always expected to live to 100.
As my dad aged, it became clear that aging wasn’t being kind to him. A man who had muscled his way through life had been severely diminished in size, stature, stamina, and strength. He didn’t like it and struggled to make peace with his circumstances. He focused on the degenerative aspects of his disease as opposed to the ways in which he might slow its progression. It was frustrating for our family to watch, but I had to remind myself not to judge. I couldn’t really know what it was like. And I can’t really know how I will handle my own aging or an illness like Parkinson’s.
I’ve been listening to Anderson Cooper’s podcast All There Is about grief and loss. Cooper, whose mother died last year, lost his father at ten years old, and his 23-year-old brother took his own life when Cooper was just 21. When I lost my college roommate Chris three years ago, it seemed especially painful because it was so out of the natural order of things. But now having lost my dad, I can see that even the natural order can bring unexpected pain.
Cooper’s guests talk about their experiences with grief, some after unspeakable loss. Stephen Colbert lost his father and two of his brothers in a plane crash when he was just ten. Since that time, Colbert has come to the understanding that “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. But if you are grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it.”
Another guest, Dr. BJ Miller, a triple amputee and palliative care physician whose sister Lisa died by suicide, says, “A full life includes sorrows. A full life includes things that you can’t change. And it’s a lot to learn, to sit with things that you can’t change in this life.”
How ever you feel now is likely to shift and change if you let it. You can keep writing this story. You can drop the story altogether. But one way or another, this is life. This is your life. This isn’t a detour from life. This is life. — Dr. BJ Miller
Others in the series have experienced similar losses of parents, siblings, life partners. This acceptance of death and change as part of life got me thinking in fresh ways about my dad, and even about Lucy. It may seem like the height of arrogance to compare your children leaving home to the death of someone you love, but having experienced both, I don’t think so.
Composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson, who lost her husband singer-songwriter Lou Reed ten years ago, told Cooper, “Death is so often about regret or guilt…. It’s more about you than the person who died…. But finally, I saw it, the connection between love and death, and that the purpose of death is the release of love.”
The purpose of death is the release of love. — Laurie Anderson
Anderson says the Buddhists teach that it’s important to feel sadness without being sad. This idea resonated with me. Leaving Lucy at school, the most natural of life’s transitions, was devastating. But if I think about it, what I was feeling wasn’t sadness exactly. It was painful and overwhelming, and it took my breath away, literally, but I think it was love. And when I think about the people in my life who have died, it hurts and it can stop me in my tracks, but I know it’s love. It’s the love that they gave and the love that I felt — and it’s still with me.
My wife and I finally went to see Barbie, which also gave me new perspective on what I’ve been feeling. In Barbie’s attempts to reconcile her existence in Barbieland with what she now understands about the real world, she’s overwhelmed. “It’s not possible, I wanted everything to stay exactly as it was.” Gloria, the real world heroine of the film, explains, “That’s life. It keeps changing.” Barbie resists, “This is scary. I do not want it. Not in my life. No thanks. No, I don’t want that.”
I’m with you, Barbie.
I didn’t ask for this. It’s definitely going to take time to grieve the end of this period of my life, but I have enough self-awareness to see that this pain I feel is as much about facing my own mortality as it is about the sadness of my daughter leaving home. I would keep my kids with me forever, if only to make time stand still. This change is an undeniable sign of my own aging. I’ve often said that having children makes it impossible to deny the passage of time. They grow up right in front of you. People without children just don’t have these unavoidable reminders of their age.
Being a father has been the most rewarding and fulfilling experience of my life. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to summarize my memories of those years with my children at home, but Lucy shared one small memory recently that really got to me.
Family dinners were an important ritual of those years. Every night, I stopped at the market before coming home, getting out of my work clothes, and preparing dinner. After dinner, and after cleaning up and loading the dishwasher, I’d bring myself to the sofa to finally unwind in front of the television. Lucy told me that she associated the sound of my heavy exhale as I fell into the couch each evening as a call for the kids to come out of their rooms — for Glee or New Girl or Parenthood or whatever show we were watching together. I loved hearing this memory of hers. I didn’t know I was calling them, but they knew.
Her sharing this memory with me was a gift, and I am so grateful for it. It’s now my memory, too, and it comes to me every day after cleaning up dinner when I sink into the sofa to relax. Even though Lucy’s no longer there to hear my sigh, it connects me to her just the same. And I know she hears me calling her.
Life is full of change. Much of it is hard. And some of it is unwelcome. Like Barbie though, I don’t really have a choice other than to accept it. And I will choose to believe that this transition will eventually become less painful — and that this next phase isn’t something to dread.
Just tonight, it feels like we got a glimpse of the other side. We received a call from Lucy. Her face lit up as she shared stories of her new adventures. My heart was unexpectedly so full. I was so happy for her and proud of her and excited for her. Although I’m still grieving her absence, I can see that the love I released when we said goodbye is already coming back to me in ways I couldn’t have imagined a week ago.
