on the departure of ourselves into adulting
I went to my parent's house yesterday to pick up a bag I forgot on their car on Sunday when we drove back from the beach. When me and my wife came into the kitchen, my mom was crying and carrying a deep sadness with her. As we were hugging her, she said that she woke up with her house empty. I knew that it was because my brother left Sunday night to attend Engineering School.
I can relate to her sadness. Much of her life changed in the course of 4 years. I was the first to leave to another city, met my wife and started my career. I wasn't concerned back then, and I bet she wasn't either. The youngster was still there occupying my old room and keeping the youth flowing through the house with his spirit. But now that he moved as well, I am afraid that she is left to face herself and understand who she really is after almost 30 years occupied being our mother.
My host mother faced the same fate this year. The eldest left to Colorado 2 years ago. The middle one met a girl and chose Pennsylvania to be their new home. The youngest got approved in a college in Washington. The family became scattered across the 4 winds (and I was left with 3+ flight tickets to buy to see all of them) while she also got confronted with that same feeling. She called it an empty nest syndrome - a grief experienced by parents when their child leave home to start their own lives.
It is a bittersweet moment. Hasn't my mom made the same move in the 90s, she wouldn't meet my dad and I wouldn't be here typing words on a computer for anyone to read. It's a necessary step in the upcoming of one's adult life and it leaves a complex subject of how we shape our lives into parents and once that duty is done, we may feel empty.
I am not a parent yet but I suffer longly from nostalgia and I think that the feeling could be perhaps the same. The same way I miss the old internet and simpler days, I think she misses when me and my brother were kids fighting over the computer to see who can have more playtime with it.
As hard as it may seem, life is that way. We must go forward in order to progress and craft the life we want. Even though our heart always long to be close to the ones we love, staying in the same place could lead to a much bigger problem later in life, a problem I call what if?
At the end of the day, there is nothing worse ahead of us than what we are leaving behind.