This is from my column I had on Patch/AOL.
(I didn’t select the titles)
Loss and Attachments: The Art of Letting Go
Reflection on growing up as a parent
David O’Roscoe
Even before I woke up this morning even before I opened my eyes this morning, I was very aware of waking up in a house with a mama and a papa, but with no more children.
Mrs. O’Roscoe and I returned late last night from delivering our youngest to college.
I am overcome with these two. I don’t feel that I have been able to finish my part of the process. There are many more books to recommend, more movies to share, more music to play, more wisdom that was given me that was given to me to pass on to her. And then more selfishly, I can see that after 30 years of raising children, this part of my life, maybe the most important thing I have ever done, is over.
Grown children become people you know who you’ve known all their lives. There are people you love deeply. Your family. But they are forever no longer kids. That unique relationship dies. It is replaced by something more deep and more lovely, but still, I greatly miss the words, the affections, the play that filled the world when they were children.
Unlike her older siblings, this youngest O’Roscoe was not quite as in a hurry to get rid of us and start her college life. She wanted us to linger, she wanted to do errands, she didn’t roll her eyes when her mother made her bed, she wanted to walk us back to our car when we said goodbye.
I’ve been thinking of sadness and how it seems to always be connected to loss. The loss here is both, that of losing a child to adulthood and of losing the pleasure of her daily company. One loss bittersweet, the only other bitter. My more cynical son says that this sadness/loss way of looking at things is just a word game. I’m sure it isn’t.
Mrs. O’Roscoe and I who are usually quite chatty in the car, hardly said a word during the hours we drove home.
We stopped off to visit my wonderful relatives in Bakersfield. The compassion and noise and teasing in stories all took away the top of a pain. Mrs. O’Roscoe and I went back to our usual chatting as we drove down the five freeway to Highland Park.
Over the last 30 years, I’ve developed the philosophy, that good parenting is learning the art of knowing when to let go. This last letting go of the youngest, and the finality of it, was so very hard to do, and more painful than I expected.
I know that our experience isn’t unique. Tens of thousands of parents are going through this in these weeks. Tens of billions of parents have seen their babies leave childhood to be adults. But I also know I still have a few more nights of falling asleep with tears in my ears.