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Illustration by Alex Siklos
You love, you grieve. That’s the bargain and it’s non-negotiable. They can’t be separated. Nothing lasts forever and the ensuing pain afterward is like the bill coming due.
I’m paraphrasing musician Nick Cave and his words have provided me not just comfort but some understanding through times of grief.
It can come in all forms. Having lost both parents, one too early. The other too late, where death feels a relief to all involved. Yet the pain is a common thread.
Practice does not make perfect when it comes to grieving and loss. There may be more awareness and recognition of what is happening but that makes it no easier. You see the “Five Horsemen” – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – advancing but you still have no defence against them.
This fall, I found myself in familiar state of grief yet for something I had never encountered before: The move of my first-born child, headed away to attend university.
It had the strange familiar feeling of having a parent who is in their 90s. You know the outcome is inevitable.
But perhaps there will be an appealing school near where we live, and a few extra years together bought.
Even so, the obligatory campus tours commenced earlier in the year to look at alternatives. Most were discarded as credible options for a variety of reasons. Yet one remained.
The tour was electric. Everything about it resonated perfectly for our son. The space, the curriculum, the student body. It was like a suit, bespoke tailored to the interests, abilities and ambitions he had. There was an excitement and longing absent from the others, including our “home” school. It was undeniable that this university – some 150 kilometres away – was properly where he belonged. His mother returned ashen, the obligatory “just check out your options ” was leading down an inevitable path.
For us, his parents, it felt like he’d been diagnosed with an incurable, degenerative ailment. He had contracted adulthood.
Hope remained, of course. Just because he had a desired choice, didn’t mean that would be reciprocated. Alas, this long shot hope did not materialize.
I will have none of it when people trivialize our grief as a family. The “no big deal, it happens to everyone” crowd, the “it’s just a natural part of growing up” observation. Of course it is, as is all loss. That doesn’t make the pain of it any less real, the void any less noticeable.
My pride in our son is massive. As is the excitement for the adventure that lays ahead. I can vaguely recall when I played his role. The sadness of being dropped by my own parents, and being aware that things would never be the same again. An hour after I was at a quad party. The next week, I was happily vacuuming up knowledge and new acquaintances, some of whom are in my life 37 years later.
I’m not sure how my parents felt about me leaving for university and I have no way to ask. I’m slightly embarrassed I gave it so little thought.
After the first of my parents died I actively reached out to friends who had gone through this before me. I apologized for my lack of support and understanding. There are some things you can’t empathize with until you have experienced it yourself. Watching my son leave for school reminds me of that. The grief is not as immense but it is on the same spectrum. I failed to understand what so many before me had already felt, and their accumulated experiences offered me no solace.
The acceptance stage came quickly. In the months before he left, we examined course calendars, meal plans and residence choices with the appropriate level of optimism and wonder. We discussed family road trips to campus, co-op terms back home.
One day at breakfast his younger brother began to get watery eyed. He said simply, “I just didn’t know time would move so fast.” Amen. I now hear them gaming online together many evenings, as if they were never separated. Together, without having to share the same bedroom.
After Labour Day weekend the grief, eventually, became normal. We became stronger, yet will forever miss what we have lost.
He will visit home (is that an oxymoron?) on Thanksgiving weekend. The void will temporarily be filled. Yet his adulthood will show to be incurable and degenerative. Worse, potentially contagious as he shares his experiences with younger siblings. The genie does not get back into the bottle yet his prognosis is impossibly excellent.
Perhaps I will get better at grieving, but if that’s the price for love, so be it.
Tom Kehoe lives in Toronto.