Why Is it So Hard to Say Goodbye?
 
– By Haley Edmonds –

What I didn’t tell my son as he waved to me from the train that September morning and left me, literally, watching from the station, was that I was overwhelmed with a wave of grief. The kind I felt after my mother died.
When my son was born I couldn’t imagine him growing up and assumed I would have him as a little boy forever. When he was in high school we were far too preoccupied with grades and getting into college. Now that he was actually leaving, I was stunned. (I’m aware that I am over-dramatizing everything: neither of us is dying nor going to war, but it is hard nonetheless.)
I keep wondering what I had forgotten to tell him, to teach him. This is how my mother felt, only much more intensely of course, when she found out she only had a couple of days left to live. She had been living with a death sentence for two years but still thought she’d have more time. We spent those last days together and she tried to remember everything she wanted to be sure she had told me. Of course she already had, but I listened anyway and even tried to humor her by taking notes. When she was through, she died.
What I didn’t tell my son was that after he left all I saw were 14-year-old boys — those adorably gangly, still carefree, lanky not-quite-men who are not too interested in girls or too worried about their futures.
I saw them everywhere, doing what he and I used to — skipping stones on the ocean, riding bikes, enduring annual back-to-school shopping trips.
Why am I missing him so much as a 14-year-old? Why not 3, 6 or 10? He hasn’t been 14 for a while — why is it suddenly hitting me that he will never be that age again? I have never had trouble grasping that he was growing up, evolving. Why then suddenly do I feel these unpredictable waves of grief over his passed childhood?
In June he and I discussed how we were not going to fall into the trap of arguing and deliberate distancing before he went off to college. Rather, we consciously decided to be cool and separate gracefully, like grown-ups. Maybe this was our mistake: maybe we skipped a necessary phase of development.
So I didn’t let him see me cry from the train, and didn’t tell him how I made it as far as the kitchen table before I put my head down and wept.
Older mothers assure me that my bittersweet pangs will be replaced by pride at his independence, and that he and I will forge a new relationship as two adults. They tell me I have no inkling of the joy I will feel when he has his own son.
I am sure this is true. But I loved our old relationship, as mother and boy, and I miss it. We were so lucky, so happy, so carefree. Now what I must remember to tell him — quoting a favorite book, “The Giver”— is: thank you for your childhood.