“You have now successfully completed elementary school studies and are officially Middle Schoolers.” And so begins another goodbye in a mother’s life. What started as being excited about the last day at school, I’m not sitting and trying to wrap my mind around the last day of elementary school for him - ever.
I still see the innocence on his face, I get choked up when he asks to sit for the rest of the last day in a teacher’s room. I realize that, like me, he’s in a slow and sad process of saying goodbye. I see his quiet confidence at this change and know that he’s being brave and not thinking about how he feels leaving his friends and teachers of the past 6 years. I am that brave, I’ve been saying the long goodbye for 11 years now.
When we give birth to these precious gifts in our lives, we start our own long and steady process of saying goodbye. God’s way of preparing us for life, making us stronger with each milestone they hit in their lives, becase we, as mothers, now have to say goodbye to that piece they joyfully leave behind. Today I said goodbye to that Kindergardner in my mind as my son walked out the doors of Elementary School for the last time..
As mothers, we understand that pain comes with the job, pain in letting them go, pain in watching them make bad choices, pain in watching them grow up. We feel pain when dropping them off for school on that first day, wishing we could tuck them under our arm and run away. The pain comes back, in bigger doses with each new step, teaching us to understand that goodbyes are not short, or simple - there’s different degrees, different intesities, different types of ache you feel when you know you should be glad but just can’t seem to get there.
These small goodbyes help us learn to cope for the big ones that come along. What starts as reassuring a child that they’ll be OK on that first day of school is a little goodbye that prepares us for the big one. Sitting by the hospital bed, holding a hand saying, “It’s going to be all right.” Simple when it’s a child walking through the school doors for the first time, with more meaning and harder when it’s a parent staring back with the eyes of a scared child.
Goodbyes help us to learn to let go of the things we cannot change. We can’t go and make the kids in the class like them, we have to explain that it’s beyond our control that we work on ourselves and damn the rest of them. Then we go and look at that person in our lives that we cannot control and listening to our own lesson, we let them go.
How did I get old and he grew up? What happened to those 6 years? I can reach back into the memories and see different parts of his travel down these halls. The funny kids I took to Funigans from the 2nd grade for his birthday, how he asked me to write a story for his friends in the 4th grade, each time I see him in the school I see that little boy walking through the front door saying, “I’m OK Mom. I want to go alone.” I’ll tuck those aches away and put a smile on my face and be excited about the new chapter in his life.
Not only am I saying goodbye to my elementary school child, but I am saying goodbye to that part of myself, that part of being a Mom to him. I think I’ll miss her.
Congratulations Son, one door is closing and another is opening.
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