Feeling Shocked
I read these profoundly true lines in a Substack: “Did you know that you can anticipate death for years and still feel shocked by it? It feels fake, like when midnight is a new year. Then it feels so real you cannot take a full breath.”
That perfectly captures all known endings. You see them coming. You know they are going to arrive. Even if you have the date somewhat penciled into the calendar, it is still shocking when it happens and doesn’t feel real.
This applies to some deaths, of course — the writer is talking about a death they knew was coming. But other endings, too. This is how I feel watching us hurtle through AP exams and prom on the way to graduation. We will race through summer, and then our unit will pull apart: Two heading to college. Two staying home.
I knew this was coming. I’ve been dreading it longer than I’ve been writing this blog. I’ve been writing about this moment for a long time. Now it’s here, and as I expected, I feel awful. I feel sad and overwhelmed. I am thrilled for them, proud of them, and excited for them. But I will miss them so much, and the reality is that our little unit will never go back to the same size and shape. It will change, pulling apart and expanding and sometimes crunching again. But so much of that is out of my hands.
I feel very lonely in this because people always meet my words by telling me about how great this next stage of life will be. That I have no clue how great it’s going to get. But it’s not what I need to hear. All it does is make me feel worse.
But finding those sentences above, even if they belong to a different situation, made me feel less alone.
5 comments
You are allowed to grieve the twins going off to college. I can only imagine how hard of a transition this is. Yes, it’s great and exciting and blah blah blah. But that’s not the entirety of it. There is loss. Part of this new phase is really sad. You are allowed to be sad. We don’t always have to look on the bright side or count our blessings. I will sit with you in your hole. I know it’s just an email, but you are welcome to email me with sadness and/or complaints any time. Thinking of you.
I am sorry that you are getting that response. Grrr. Of course you are entitled to grieve and feel sad. I am some years behind you in this but those years are whirring by and I’m frequently doing the math in my head calculating things like the time left before college is less than the time since kindergarten began, etc.
This is not the same thing, but when my father died sometimes I would feel that people expected me to not need to grieve because he was up there in years at 86. And I used to think that it would somehow be easier with an older parent, but it wasn’t. And it was really hard. Finally, I read a book on grieving the death of a parent, and it basically said give yourself permission to grieve, even if they’re old. And that really helped me. But yes, when society expects you to be fine with something or in your situation, even happy about it, that makes your sad feelings even worse.
Change is always inevitable and even if we know change is going to happen, it doesn’t mean we are ready to accept it!
You are entitled to grieve for the changes about to happen… it’s perfectly possible to be proud of your children, their many achievements yet mourn the loss of what once was… life is not always a linear process and neither is grief.
I hope the transition of your beloved children going to college is a gentle one and I hope you too can be gentle with yourself during this process.
It will undoubtedly be a huge change for you. It’s always hard too to be the ones who fell left behind. And it will be intensified for you because you have two going at the same time.
I sincerely hope it goes easier for you than you anticipate. For those of us who mull things over, anticipation is really a form of self-torture. It colours everything. But it will also make you appreciate every minute you have with them now, I know. Precious moments full of love. Sending hugs.
Ha! Everything is always out of your hands! Control is an illusion!
Change is hard. But you’re more flexible than you think you are.