My son is at college. He is doing something, somewhere, and I don’t know what.
I shouldn’t know. I wish I did know. I am glad I don’t know.
Losing your child while gaining an adult son is confusing and clarifying. It is confusing to any attempt to cling to old ways and clarifying to the better self that loves God’s ways of organic growth and change.
L.D. is doing well and his story is no longer a subset of his parent’s lives. We are now a subset, our dominant role a past chapter, in his story. How glad we are that this is so despite the pain of his empty bed, his pile of discarded possessions still in the center of his floor, and toys still in the closet that, truthfully, we cannot yet bring ourselves to throw away.
It is not rational to feel this way; it is just the way we feel.
He made good choices growing up and is now at Torrey Honors orientation at Biola University. My days being his father will never end, but the days of telling him what to do are over. My feelings are not complicated, there are just a great many of them.
I am happy that he is independent, thinks for himself, and is making good choices. I am sad because I miss our little boy.
But that is not quite true either since I would lose the thoughtful young man if the blue-eyed boy returned. It is better the way it is. Time is cruel and kind. It takes away and gives.
Big events, I have discovered, produce feelings so basic that writing about them honestly churns out trite prose from me since I lack the great talent of making the commonplace uncommon. These are events where Hallmark greeting cards say what needs to be said, because what needs to be said about my commonplace feelings must be plain and middlebrow.
Why blog such nothings? My hope is that by posting this father’s Hallmark moment, somebody else will see that the ache and the pride and the love and the joy and the loneliness are shared.
The hurts are the good pain preparing me for paradise. They are learning to love letting go of the beloved so that he can thrive. Hope and I wanted a son who could love us and yet not need us. Our success cuts at our selfishness, but it also threatens to overwhelm us in waves of nostalgia.
The joy is the medicine that is preparing us for paradise. We are proud of someone else and are happy in his accomplishments with no thought of what it will mean to us or bring to us. We are, in this rare instance, not selfish and better still actually loving someone more than ourselves.
But the remembering is almost too great to write anything else . . .
Remember?
When L.D. said . . .
Remember?
What L.D. did . . .
Remember?
Where was L.D. when . . .
Remember?
How old was L.D. when he. . .
We recollect it all.
I want to draw lessons from this event with my head, feel what needs to be felt in my heart, and do what needs to be done still for my son with my hands, but the event freezes me in the moment. He is not here and that rouses the instinct to find him and see that he is fine . . . but the impulse is wrong and the desire to help must be resisted. I can overcome the bad idea to hover over him like the infamous helicopter parents I have watched over the years, but by the time the bad desire is beaten back there is no energy left for reflection.
We are at a faculty conference with the other three children having a good time. Part of me wants to do nothing here but talk to my other children to try to save up every moment with them against the other goodbyes I know are coming.
I want to experience every minute I have left with them, because I love them and I regret bitterly every moment that I chose anything over L.D. Yet smothering the other children will not help them or me or bring back the past. It would not have helped him either.
Honestly, best we knew how, Hope and I spent all the time we could with our son. We did what we could and more would have not been better, just stultifying to his soul. The dialectic of the great conversation we started with him from the time he learned to talk must change. All good conversations must change . . . but I don’t like it.
I love the old ways and the house that was full of him and his stuff. I want the old order, but the old order has to change and give way to the new. Our first-born is off to adventures and we are left behind. It must be, and if it must be, then it must be better so.
My son need have no regrets in his glorious boyhood and how he left for college. He is a gentleman, deeply intuitive, and extraordinarily thoughtful. L.D. is also witty. He honored us in his decisions and in his independence.
Good-bye my lad.
Hello, young man. Let’s talk, dialog a bit more, as time goes by.