It is Autumn, when a new batch of teenagers go away to college and a new batch of “empty-nester” parents learn to live a childless life, one no longer consumed by the ticking clock of responsibility for another human being.

What do you do when a role that has kept you busy for 18 years, and that you have loved, suddenly disappears?

When my last teenager went off to college, I grieved the loss not only of her companionship, but of this major role in my life: mothering a child.

When I shared my feelings of disorientation and loss with my own mother, she told me that my children would always need me, only in different ways. She assured me that my girls and I had many wonderful times out ahead of us, better than I could dream of now.

Her words gave me hope, but they did not take away the pain and the feeling of great disorientation that I went through that fall.

There is a saying that when God closes one door, He opens another, but that it can hurt like hell in the passageway between.

My experience is that grief is a passageway. We enter it in pain, blindly, not knowing where the exit will be. Then one day, we find that we have somehow moved through the passageway and are in a different place, with gifts that we never would have gained in any other fashion.

Here is part of a poem I wrote that Autumn my last child left for college. I was in the passageway of grief then myself; trying to be true to both the emptiness I felt and the hope I had for the future.

A Crater in My Life

When my first daughter left for college,

She left an empty room,

And a hole in my heart.

When my second daughter left for college,

She left an empty house,

And a crater in my life.

Like childbirth, this pain

Is ripping my life apart

Forcing me to go to places I have never been

And am afraid that I won’t like.

In the night, my stomach hurts….

And I, I cling to the rim of a crater,

Peering down into a hole that used to be my heart

And once again am terrified.

Once again, I have been forcibly propelled into a future

That I am afraid I will not be able to master.

There is no crying infant here, to wake me in the night…

Nevertheless, I cannot sleep,

And love and laughter seem as distant as the morning sun.

Yet this I know…

that under this night sky, thick with stars,

this empty shell I lie in is a boat

the size of a hand,

God’s hand,

and I am safe within it (just as my daughters were safe, years ago, when I held their hands as we crossed the street).

This I know…

That I float across an alien sea

But am held in safety,

And even though these are unknown stars, overhead,

And my old maps are useless here,

The Current is taking me to where I need to go.

And so, in this dark night, I put aside my maps,

Lie back,

And look at the stars…

Remembering

That though babies cry when they are born

And mothers cry when babies leave,

Mothers also cry when they become first-time mothers,

Thinking “What have I gotten myself into?” and “How will I possibly survive this?”

And I think that maybe this pain in my stomach is just birth pangs

And when the sun comes up and my boat lands on a new shore,

I will arrive in a larger world

And find myself

At Home.

P.S. My Mom was right.  Our family came through that journey of sadness into a brighter, fuller place.