I’ve just spent an entire weekend alone. My youngest son had a weekend away at a friend’s house, my partner is at a work event all weekend and no friends popped up magically and suggested a date. I’m sure I could have packed my weekend with social activities, but when I looked at the calendar and realized it was bare, I decided I liked it that way and protected it.
It’s Sunday morning, and I’ve barely spoken to anyone but the dog since Friday night. I spent yesterday writing, taking the dog on three walks, watching a movie on Netflix, eating take-out Chinese, bingeing on a new show and doing the Sunday crossword on Saturday night in bed. This morning I’ve been reading the papers and enjoying the sunshine streaming across my living room. I’m sitting at my table and starting at my backyard, which looks bare in the winter, and while all the snow has melted, there are no signs of spring yet. Too early.
I was good with my solitude all day yesterday. I love being in my house, which, after three years of caregiving, loss and recovery, finally feels comfortable and mine again. I’ve reclaimed my space, created a reading nook for myself, and keep everything relatively neat. I’ve learned how to take care of the house tasks that used to belong to my husband, and when I can’t, I know who to call. The dog understands which couches he’s allowed to shed on, and we kept each other happy company for most of the day.
But the night set in, and I found myself feeling lonely and small in this big space. My husband and I built this beautiful home to house our family of five; it was once teeming with children and noise and soccer cleats and basketballs and baseball bats and lacrosse sticks and Barbies and hamsters and multiple meals and teetering piles of laundry and birthday parties and homework and tantrums and hugs. Now, as I take the slow trip down the second semester slide of senior year of high school for the third time and watch my youngest child do all the things his older siblings did – skip classes, act cocky, blow off schoolwork, go to prom, graduate and get scared as his departure becomes imminent – I am hearing echoes in my hallway of the years past and the quiet of the future.
There were supposed to be two adults left standing when this last departure took place. Two of us to drive him to his new home, wave goodbye, have a stiff drink and cry on the road trip home. Two of us to look at each other with wonder and a bit of fear – what on earth are we going to talk about now, now that they’re all gone? Two of us left to rediscover each other, and figure out what the next chapter looks like. And two of us to remember what that youngest child looked like on his first day of school, when he ran down to the bus stop that he had been visiting each morning since he was an infant, watching his big brother and sister go to school, so excited for his turn, and when his turn finally came, bursting into tears and refusing to get on the bus.
There is no one to remember that story now except me. I think this is the hardest part of my widowhood so far. I am now the only family archivist, the only one who holds the stories of my babies, and of our lives together as those babies grew up into the wonderful young people they are today. I don’t always get it right – my storytelling has always left a lot to be desired, which drove my journalist husband crazy. I remember the big picture, the gist, the emotional heft. But I often get the details wrong.
I like being alone. I’ve been anticipating my youngest child’s departure for a long time, thinking about how it will free me to be alone, to spend more time with my partner (who lives far away) to travel, to take on work assignments and to write more freely. All along the track of my youngest son’s life, by the time it came to the third preschool graduation, the third end of the elementary school years, the third bar mitzvah – I was ready for that segment of our childrearing years to be over. That’s the blessing of the third child, for both the child and the parent. The third child is not coddled, no one has the time or energy to focus on his need for attention or minor accomplishments. As a result, that child finds his own path and his own satisfaction. And the parents can be more relaxed with the third child, and simply love and honor their child’s being.
But last night’s solitude made me twitchier than I expected to be. It’s making me feel rather empty to think about my third child’s leaving, which will happen in June, when he takes off for a summer of being a counselor at camp, something he’s been anticipating since he started going to his camp a decade ago. He comes home for a week in August, and then we take the five-hour drive to his new school, the place where he will start his new story.
And my new story will start too. It’s a different story than I had thought I would be telling, but it’s still one hopefully filled with love and adventure and good things. There are some key figures missing –not only my husband, but both my mother and my father, and I wish I could share this new phase of life with all of them by my side. But I have my beloved new partner, my friends, my family and my children to keep me company as I begin the next chapter. And I will continue to embrace my solitude, and listen to the ghosts on the wind at night as I sleep alone in a house that once was home to that boisterous family and soon will house only my quiet heart.
Photo by Steven Cohen
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