Thank you for this lovely piece. I write as an 85 year old woman preparing to (eventually but not immanently) leave my daughters who are 62 and 65. Many of their behaviors towards me echo your careful choices about how much is enough contact, disclosure, confidences? What is the balance they need to strike now that I am old and theyrre in late middle-age.
This is a different time, of course and your mother didn't live in a world with death doulas and the knowledge of grief that you write about so well. Ours was amore inchoate time to figure out how to die and leave your beloveds. Now there is information, resources, groups everything to help the novice leaver to leave well.
I too wept when my girls went off to college. It was a profound ending of how we were together. But over these intervening forty years, there have been other endings, other ways of being together. I think I have concluded that endings are folded into every part of our relationships with our daughters. Mothering. Grandmothering. Navigating their mid-life fears, menopause, deaths of their contemporaries. Everything they need their mothers for. It keeps changing, morphing.
I promised I wasn't going to cry. Who was I kidding? This is the sentence that undid me. You put into words exactly what I've been feeling with these sentences: "I miss her every day. I miss my old job of taking care of her. Being her everything when she was little and her guide as she grew already feels like a memory I could have made up. " Thank you.
There is so much unexpected loss in motherhood if the bonds are close. The strangest of gifts to miss your daughter so much. I loved and related to so much in this piece.
Thank you for putting voice beautifully to these complex emotions. It took me ages to realize/accept what I was (am) actually going through—the ache is so real.
I cried so hard as I read this. I had a similar ache (and negotiation with myself on how frequently to reach out) when my oldest went off to college. Now he is 24 and on his own on the other side of the country! The spider thread connecting me to him is so thin and yet, I like to believe, still strong. My youngest is a senior in high school, impatient to leave. More crying awaits. Thank you for sharing this double edged state of joy and grief. It makes me feel less alone.
I read this beautiful essay with tears in my eyes. My oldest daughter is leaving for college in August and I’m trying to prepare for the impending grief. Thank you for your honesty and clarity about your process, and the wise place of healing you come to at the end. I’d love to see an anthology of mother-grief / empty nest writing
Such a moving story. Thanks for sharing, as they say. Your own experience of your daughter’s leave taking was colored by your early loss -- mine wasn’t that, but I related strongly to what you said about that second year of their being away being, in some way, harder than the first. When my son went off to college, he was my youngest, so the nest was well and truly empty. The first year was, wow, life is easy, this is kind of nice. When he went back for the second year, it hit me. This is for real. He’s gone. The sadness was crushing and totally unexpected. He did come back, of course, for extended periods a couple of times and I felt the old closeness. But now he’s gotten married and moved to another state and it feels like he’s drifted away again. It ebbs and flows, I guess. As long as the bedrock is there.
Ann, thank you for this beautiful piece. My mother has been gone for many, many years, too, and I don't think I've ever really explored the complexities of our relationship. You have nudged me to do so.
I read this essay and I am feeling so grateful for every word. I have been through all of those feelings, and I have recently lost one of my daughters forever. The grief is so new,, and so very different than anything I ever experienced, ever wanted to experience, and I am looking back with unbearable sadness at mothering her from the beginning, through childhood, adolescence, and finally adulthood. I am in the land of the lost right now, and grabbing at every opportunity to understand a way to move through these days. Thank You. I may need a grief counselor.
Beautifully written. I have a daughter who is also a sophomore in college, and she is similarly finding her own way this year (finally!). She is close to home, though, so we’ve had a nice, gradual transition.
"Now it's time to weave a new cloth, as the old one comes apart in my hands." Goosepimpling!
I'm not, nor will be, a mother, but I have one, and she's amazing. Thank you for bringing me to think about what it must have been like - I know she felt like this.
I’m a motherless daughter with an eldest daughter in her freshman year of college. Your piece spoke to exactly what I’m suffering. I’ve recently returned to therapy to address trauma that I’ve failed to move beyond yet powered through for most of my life. It’s not surprising that the biggest trigger for so many of my buried losses was the most obvious - the departure of my daughter. I have behaved in a similar manner as you have with curated texts and handwritten letters to her. I haven’t been able to write about any of this yet but your shared experience challenges me to face my grief. Thank you.
What a beautifully written piece! I remember feeling profoundly bereft after moving my oldest into college...and for several weeks after. Life was so challenging for our family and for this kid growing up as the sibling of another with all encompassing developmental special needs(autism's the 'easiest' of their challenges;-).) I felt like I missed out on so much with my oldest because of the intensity of the situation with their sibling. It compounded the regular ol' bittersweetness of a college drop off (if one is so fortunate to have the experience) with guilt & wishing things had been different (a surefire way to feel down and depleted!) I remember feeling so alone in my grief because none of the other moms I knew seemed to feel it. Though this kid has since graduated, it's a comfort to read another person's similar experience of that time. I've got another kid up in Vermont, too!
Beautiful, thank you. I have a freshman in college and miss her as well. I never thought about writing letters, but I think I will now because of this.
Thank you for this lovely piece. I write as an 85 year old woman preparing to (eventually but not immanently) leave my daughters who are 62 and 65. Many of their behaviors towards me echo your careful choices about how much is enough contact, disclosure, confidences? What is the balance they need to strike now that I am old and theyrre in late middle-age.
This is a different time, of course and your mother didn't live in a world with death doulas and the knowledge of grief that you write about so well. Ours was amore inchoate time to figure out how to die and leave your beloveds. Now there is information, resources, groups everything to help the novice leaver to leave well.
I too wept when my girls went off to college. It was a profound ending of how we were together. But over these intervening forty years, there have been other endings, other ways of being together. I think I have concluded that endings are folded into every part of our relationships with our daughters. Mothering. Grandmothering. Navigating their mid-life fears, menopause, deaths of their contemporaries. Everything they need their mothers for. It keeps changing, morphing.
May you cherish the unfolding.
I promised I wasn't going to cry. Who was I kidding? This is the sentence that undid me. You put into words exactly what I've been feeling with these sentences: "I miss her every day. I miss my old job of taking care of her. Being her everything when she was little and her guide as she grew already feels like a memory I could have made up. " Thank you.
There is so much unexpected loss in motherhood if the bonds are close. The strangest of gifts to miss your daughter so much. I loved and related to so much in this piece.
Thank you for putting voice beautifully to these complex emotions. It took me ages to realize/accept what I was (am) actually going through—the ache is so real.
I cried so hard as I read this. I had a similar ache (and negotiation with myself on how frequently to reach out) when my oldest went off to college. Now he is 24 and on his own on the other side of the country! The spider thread connecting me to him is so thin and yet, I like to believe, still strong. My youngest is a senior in high school, impatient to leave. More crying awaits. Thank you for sharing this double edged state of joy and grief. It makes me feel less alone.
I read this beautiful essay with tears in my eyes. My oldest daughter is leaving for college in August and I’m trying to prepare for the impending grief. Thank you for your honesty and clarity about your process, and the wise place of healing you come to at the end. I’d love to see an anthology of mother-grief / empty nest writing
Such a moving story. Thanks for sharing, as they say. Your own experience of your daughter’s leave taking was colored by your early loss -- mine wasn’t that, but I related strongly to what you said about that second year of their being away being, in some way, harder than the first. When my son went off to college, he was my youngest, so the nest was well and truly empty. The first year was, wow, life is easy, this is kind of nice. When he went back for the second year, it hit me. This is for real. He’s gone. The sadness was crushing and totally unexpected. He did come back, of course, for extended periods a couple of times and I felt the old closeness. But now he’s gotten married and moved to another state and it feels like he’s drifted away again. It ebbs and flows, I guess. As long as the bedrock is there.
About to have my first kid leave home. This was a beautiful read.
Ann, thank you for this beautiful piece. My mother has been gone for many, many years, too, and I don't think I've ever really explored the complexities of our relationship. You have nudged me to do so.
I read this essay and I am feeling so grateful for every word. I have been through all of those feelings, and I have recently lost one of my daughters forever. The grief is so new,, and so very different than anything I ever experienced, ever wanted to experience, and I am looking back with unbearable sadness at mothering her from the beginning, through childhood, adolescence, and finally adulthood. I am in the land of the lost right now, and grabbing at every opportunity to understand a way to move through these days. Thank You. I may need a grief counselor.
In the top photo of you and your daughter she looks like she is blissful in being near you. It's such a beautiful photo.
Beautifully written. I have a daughter who is also a sophomore in college, and she is similarly finding her own way this year (finally!). She is close to home, though, so we’ve had a nice, gradual transition.
So beautiful, Ann. thank you so much.
"Now it's time to weave a new cloth, as the old one comes apart in my hands." Goosepimpling!
I'm not, nor will be, a mother, but I have one, and she's amazing. Thank you for bringing me to think about what it must have been like - I know she felt like this.
I’m a motherless daughter with an eldest daughter in her freshman year of college. Your piece spoke to exactly what I’m suffering. I’ve recently returned to therapy to address trauma that I’ve failed to move beyond yet powered through for most of my life. It’s not surprising that the biggest trigger for so many of my buried losses was the most obvious - the departure of my daughter. I have behaved in a similar manner as you have with curated texts and handwritten letters to her. I haven’t been able to write about any of this yet but your shared experience challenges me to face my grief. Thank you.
What a beautifully written piece! I remember feeling profoundly bereft after moving my oldest into college...and for several weeks after. Life was so challenging for our family and for this kid growing up as the sibling of another with all encompassing developmental special needs(autism's the 'easiest' of their challenges;-).) I felt like I missed out on so much with my oldest because of the intensity of the situation with their sibling. It compounded the regular ol' bittersweetness of a college drop off (if one is so fortunate to have the experience) with guilt & wishing things had been different (a surefire way to feel down and depleted!) I remember feeling so alone in my grief because none of the other moms I knew seemed to feel it. Though this kid has since graduated, it's a comfort to read another person's similar experience of that time. I've got another kid up in Vermont, too!
Beautiful, thank you. I have a freshman in college and miss her as well. I never thought about writing letters, but I think I will now because of this.