Obviously when a child leaves the nest it’s inevitable that you will go through the process of some grieving. Grief. It’s a word, a process, an experience that we all want to avoid. In fact, I’m sure a lot of my readers right now are going, “Okay, time to X out of this page.” My husband likes to say that no one gets to middle age without going through at least one “major biggie.” And most of us have gone through more than one “biggie” by this time in our lives. Grief is an obvious outcome when we lose someone we love deeply or a long term relationship ends. There are a lot of support systems out there to help us with that expected type of grief journey. In fact, even when our aged, grumpy old man of a dog died last year at the ripe old age of at least 15 (he was a rescue, so his age was sort of up in the air), my vet handed us a 20 page booklet on how to deal with the grief of the loss of a pet.
They say that there are five stages of grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. The annoying thing about these stages is that they are not linear; you get to be-bop back and forth between them. Just when you think you are past one of these stages, something sets you back and you feel like you are at the beginning of it all over again. Grief is a lonely emotion. I’m sure that my husband and I are both grieving the fact that our nucleus family will never be the same structure that is has been for the past 22 years, but we are grieving it in different ways and be-bopping through the stages at different paces and tempos. Loving friends and family can empathize and support us through our grief, but their loving energies and prayers are just good sustenance in our backpacks as we travel this road by ourselves, individually.
I used to feel guilty about grieving. A lot of the times, the things that you grieve are also tied into exciting, happy new beginnings. I’m truly thrilled for son’s new opportunities and for the space that has been created in my life because he has moved on with his life. Every time that we moved to a new town, we grieved for our friends and neighbors, our jobs and our homes and the memories that would now be part of our past, but at the same time we were very excited for the newness of a new place, and for the experiences and people that would come with that new place. Grief can be major or minor. Heck, I grieved when my favorite perfume was discontinued and I could no longer even find it even on ebay!
One year one of my children’s yearbooks had a quote that said something to the affect that we grieve our moments in time because there is a deep understanding in us that the person we are right now in this time and place will never be the same person again. Even if we try to duplicate the experience, it can’t be the same because we aren’t the same person anymore. We are constantly changing due to our experiences and growth. So in this sense, we even grieve a former version of our own selves.
Grief is a multi-layered experience. When we are grieving someone or something, we often find old remnants of previous grieving that we thought we had already accepted. What a lovely surprise! Ha! I think the older I get, I have learned to stop labeling things as much as I used to do. Grief just is. We want to think of it is “bad” or “negative”, but it really isn’t either of those things. It’s just one of those aspects of us that proves to ourselves that we are deeply alive. I would definitely rather feel than to be numb. Why would I want to cut off the experience of feeling all of those times of pride, excitement, happiness, joy, peace, contentment, wonder, and mostly deep, deep love to avoid going through the pain of grief?? My son’s venturing out into the world towards his own adult adventures has sparked every emotion in me that I ever knew that I had, and if I accept this process and I allow this process instead of resisting it, I will come out the other end of it stronger and wiser than I have ever been before.