This Is The Last Song

Remember that song? It was by Edward Bear. This is the last song I’ll ever write for you.

Kinda cheesy, but that is what was going through my head when I started writing this post.

We’re leaving next week for the beach. Randy and I are taking Joey and two of his friends to the panhandle where we will eat too much, drink too much, and hopefully not get annoyed by three teenage boys.

Joey will be 18 years old soon. My baby.

He’s going to leave. He will leave and begin his grownup life. This incredibly kind, talented, and funny as fuck human will no longer be a part of of my every day life. I’ll begin the empty nest part of my life.

I’m excited about living the next part of my life. It’s been so long since I’ve not had a child living me. Over 28 years now. I remember bits and pieces of the “me” I was back when I was still childless. I think other than being horribly neurotic and on the brink of being crippled by anxiety, I was pretty fucking awesome. I’m looking forward to meeting her again. I can’t wait to teach her what I know.

That being said, the breathtaking sadness I feel at the thought of my baby boy moving away is just crouched down in the bottom of my chest. I feel it. I feel it waiting and I know that there is absolutely nothing I can do to stave it off. There aren’t enough episodes of The Walking Dead. There is not enough bourbon. I will feel this empty nest.

This trip we are taking is likely the last one we take as a family.

There is an outside chance of an “out West” trip next summer but that is too far away to count on. You never know when the car will reject it’s current transmission system. That’s how we should measure the cost of a new transmission. One lost trip.

So this trip might be the last one. All the other trips still had more than one left and that is the same as infinite.

The last trip isn’t infinite. It feels transparent and whispy and smoky. Something you can’t hold on to.

—————————————————————————————————————

And now the trip is over.

I wrote the beginning of this post a few days before we left for Florida’s panhandle at 3:00 am Tuesday morning.

Here’s the thing I learned about being prepared to live through a “last” event.

Vacations don’t give a fuck if the moment is poignant. We don’t get a break just because we are desperately gripping on to this last family vacation and counting on it to be covered in fairy glitter and filled with milkshakes and laughter and sunshine.

We had to deal with a rental car company clerk who forced us to stand there and wait while she filed her silver glitter tipped gel nails. Then she rented us a vehicle that was missing a small, but essential part.

The oil cap.

We discovered this in Birmingham about 7 hours into our trip.

Okay, so it was a less that auspicious beginning. It’s really hard to live out the perfect family vacation when it starts out in a Whataburger parking lot with smoke pouring out from under the hood of the rental car.

I called the rental place and rejected their solution, which was to send a new car to us from Nashville, Tennessee. We would have been sitting there for hours waiting. We checked the oil (a quart low), found a Jeep dealership, and bought a shiny new oil cap. We added 90 minutes to our trip, but we were back on the road with a new anxiety to keep me company. For all that is fucking holy, don’t let this engine blow. 

No big deal, we were on vacation. It would be great! We would bond with Joey and his friends and this last vacation that we took together would be amazing.

By the time we got to the beach, Randy and I were so exhausted that we couldn’t even be bothered to have our normal “We made it to our destination, now let’s fight” moment.

The boys didn’t want to have dinner with us, they wanted to stay in the condo and order a pizza.

I stood on the balcony and looked at the ocean. We caught the end of a gorgeous sunset, but I didn’t make it down to the beach. Randy and I had dinner together and were back and in bed asleep before 8 pm.

The weather was perfect all week. Mostly, we sat on our balcony and watched Joey and his friends swim and toss a football around. They were content spending their time in the sand. The girls in bikinis were a draw as well.

Mostly, when we went out to eat, Joey and his friends opted to sit at their own table.

The point is, nothing really stood out from this vacation. Last vacation or not, it played out like a normal vacation. We ate too much. We tried to sleep in and couldn’t. We went to bed ridiculously early every night.

Joey and his friends had fun, but they had fun on their terms.

I don’t think Joey saw this trip as the “last” of anything. He loved this trip. He loved spending time with his buddies.DSC_0063-001

It took me most of the trip to understand that needing this trip to hold some kind of special meaning wasn’t helpful. Trying to force it to be special wasn’t making me happy.

We sat in the sun.

We took a boat ride.

We listened to Joey and his friends talk. They were funny and vulgar and alternately insightful and short sighted. The way young adults are.

He’s a young adult. No sense in pretending he’s still a child.

I don’t know that I have to let go of anything. Life is what it is. Life moves forward whether I’m ready or not.

I don’t have to keep track of life’s “lasts”. It gains me nothing.

Especially when I still have so many “firsts” to look forward to.

 

 

 

38 Thoughts.

  1. Serendipity? Acceptance? Ppbblltt….

    I hate when I build something up and then find out I might as well have just ‘gone along for the ride.’

    I used to take pictures of EVERYTHING! My oldest son had 3 full albums before his next brother was born (oh, yeah, the other ones have noticed that all COMBINED, they made the next album 🙂 and I had 4 babies in 4 years…

    But, that was before cell phones and you actually had to have the pictures printed and then put them in an album…or shoebox…or just leave them in the envelope they came in.

    My Baby Boy gets to go through the envelopes.

    It’s like I didn’t even look at his pictures.

    Did you get good pictures? With your phone?

    Will you make an album or post to FB?

    That’s what vacations are made of. The memories and snapshots in your head and the pictures you print and share for others to enjoy.

    And bad rental car companies…(Social Media will fix them right up…love the online review section!!) or bad waitresses in expensive restaurants, or noisy hotel rooms at 2 in the morning….

    Camaraderie components for families on vacations that Mom’s declare will be ‘…the best fucking vacation ever even if I have to beat it into you!’

    Did you say that? See? Now you can THANK that rental car company for keeping you from threatening your peeps with bodily harm…you had other crap to worry about and there’s nothing better to keep the good feelings for each other going: Someone else to pick on!

    Glad you made it home safe with plenty of memories to wax nostalgic with on those cold winter nights coming up :):)

    And a son who’s still willing to ride in the car with you 🙂

    • Thank you, thank you…yes we did make it home safe. After driving the last six hours at night in the pouring rain..it was harrowing. All in all..it was a great trip.

  2. Way to hit me in the feels on a Tuesday morning. I have nothing to offer but a long-distance hug and the assurance that your gorgeous writing will help keep your heart and your nest full after your youngest has broken free. You have so many firsts to chase. And so many people rooting you on.

  3. Don’t we all do that? We place some special significance on events and in the end, we realize that the most special events in our life just “happen”. We can’t force “special” or “magical”. My heart aches for you though, because I have gone through this with my Samantha. She is 26 now and a beautiful, smart, funny and thriving young woman. Newly engaged, no less! But, I sometimes ache for the old days, when she was learning to ride a bike or when I’d take her to the beach, decked out in her goggles, snorkel and huge flippers. (sigh) Life truly does move forward whether we are ready for it or not. Life doesn’t give a shit! HAHA! But, I think we should all get together to form our own club, whereby we pull the young women back out of us that WE were all those years ago and do what you suggested—use our present day selves to teach our old selves a thing or two. How great would that be? We could all go out and get silver glitter tipped gel nails! Or, like, NOT. ;D You will get through this next chapter of your life, Michelle. You will. Because you will write your way through it and we will be here to lend support. XO

    • We have three adult children..Joey is the youngest by 11 years…I really am looking forward to seeing what life is like without kids in the house, but I am profoundly sad as well..

  4. Its terribly hard when they leave, I stopped eating properly, but then cereal for dinner has always been my favourite dinner time treat, it took some time before I started to ‘find’ myself. It was fabulous after a while, I was forced to go out and do other things to occupy myself. I loved it… then he came home….
    Hope you have lots of wonderful firsts to look forward to

  5. Totally true! That’s great advice for us all, Michelle to not think of anything as our ‘last’ chance. There will be many more vacations in many shapes and forms. What was the car rental company you used? I want to make sure we don’t book through them for our trip in February.

    p.s. empty nest isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Lots of great things about it. 🙂

  6. Thank you for the final sentence. It is just the perspective I need right now.
    We too are planning our ‘final’ family vacation. It is sooner than we had hoped it would be. While our oldest is leaving for university in the fall, we had hoped to still have many more years of vacations with our youngest two. Suddenly there is only a ‘youngest one’ and it all feels so fleeting…

  7. I went through all the “last times” last year. Now I’m a true empty nester. The others who posted that now there are only “first times” ahead are right. We just had the First Thanksgiving home and it was awesome. But sad because then she left again. It does make me sad to think that we also will probably never have a true family vacation again. Getting the three of them together even for a meal is so hard. I still hold out hope for next summer. I really, really want to win the lottery so I can them to Ireland. That is my business plan for achieving that.

  8. I very much enjoy reading your blog. I have to say though that the pop up subscription window is most annoying. It’s very much like the catch jumping into the middle of your paper when you just got to the good part. I would totally rethink that if it were up to me. Anyway..moving on…
    I love the poignancy of your words and try as I might I could not relate to the empty nest feeling. I have been happy when each child has moved out and began the journey that is life. I hear so many sad stories about the empty nest feeling that I have to wonder if there is something wrong with me that I don’t feel it. We have 5 grown children between us and only one young adult is still with us. I am in no way anxious for him to move on in his life but I will be happy for him when he does. I know there will be things that I will miss of course, but overall just happy. Happy for him and happy for us. I don’t think it feels like an ending to them as much as it feels like a beginning. The last is our youngest and we have had a lot more time to teach him and prepare him for life on his own than we did with the others. I wish you peace and joy in this next part of your life. I wish there was a magic wand that could just take away your sadness. Just know there will be more happy times ahead. 🙂

  9. When Jeff and I took our daughter to Tuscaloosa in the Fall of 2014, we were a mess. We BOTH bawled and squalled the entire drive back. I could not BELIEVE our baby, our only child was gone.
    Then we spent the next 9 months without her living day-to-day with us.
    And she spent the next 9 months without living day-to-day with her parents.
    She came home from the summer…
    And we had gotten used to the “empty nest” and she had gotten used to her independence.
    I love my child more than my own life. I need her happiness more than I need the air I breathe.
    And she COMPLETELY got on my nerves this summer. And not just mine. Towards the end of July, after she stalked out of the room in a huff because I insisted that she take at least 15 of the 17 pairs of shoes back upstairs instead of scattered across the living room, Jeff looked at me and said, “Not gonna be quite so many tears shed when we take her back to college this time, huh?”
    But I know where you’re coming from. Here’s my post from last fall: http://psb1969.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-if.html

    • This is exactly how we were when our only daughter left Australia to go to the US to work for a year which turned into two years and now she is getting married there next month. We bawled our eyes out and it was just awful. She came home in July to get her visa renewed and by the second week she was there we were – Right, ready to take her back to the airport. When she left after that visit, there were no tears – dropped her off, waved once from upstairs and we were out of there !!! Man, we laughed about it on the way home – how different the two experiences were.
      So funny how we think “How will we manage ?” and then afterwards think “Man – how did we manage to all live together in relative peace and harmony ?”
      Always good to hear of others experiencing the same situations as we are !!!!

  10. Obviously it’s your experience, not mine, but I feel wiser in the way that only experience can provide just from having read this. The way you moved from disappointment to acceptance is very powerful.
    Yeah, I wanna say something funny and even profanity-laden, but that’s just not happening here.

  11. I totally hear you on this. I think that maybe when he is older it may change – or maybe it’s different with boys – I don’t actually know !! We thought our days of family vacations were over but when we were in the US and K came travelling with us, we had so much fun and laughed so much, she asked how come we hadn’t done this before !!! We reminded her that we had but that she hadn’t wanted to join us. Her reply “Well that was a bit silly wasn’t it?” – and we all cracked up laughing again !!!
    Well, the news I got yesterday may have seen the end to our family vacations – she is getting married – next month !!! So now I am frantically trying to get prices for flights and car hire for mid-January – and what am I going to wear in Chicago – in winter – for my only child’s wedding ????????? I told her that her planning sucked – how was I going to lose 30kgs in 7 weeks with Christmas in the middle without amputating one or two limbs. She told me she didn’t care about the extra-kilos and that she loved me and was soooooooooooooooooooooo happy and excited that we were going to try to get there. So, next month I will be back in the same time zone as you are !!!!

      • Geez – thanks for that warning !!! I knew it would be cold but I didn’t realise it would be that cold. May spend the whole time I’m there under the doona – except for the wedding – I’ll go out for that !!!! PMSL
        Flights all booked – the finance gods are watching over us and organised a great price for us. Car hire we will sort out when we get there because it’s heaps cheaper than if we do it from here and new SIL will let us use his jeep and we will hire something smaller for him. Accommodation ? We are staying with new in-laws who just love K, so I’m sure we will get on just fine with them. Talk about doing a holiday on the cheap – not that it will be much of a holiday – more fly in, recover, go to ceremony, fly home !!!!

  12. The beauty is, that as long as they are breathing, they are still our kids. Don’t think of it as the last. My parents still vacation with my 50+ year old brothers and I occasionally. It’s different now, but just as rewarding.

  13. I’ll never truly know how that feels, as my nest has always been empty. I do know how it feels to desperately want an event that means something to me to be special and memorable and the more I’ve built it up in my mind to be that, the greater the disappointment has always been. I try to go with the flow now and not get my expectations up for anything but I still do it to myself, every single time!
    🙂
    Sorry that your trip to and from Florida was such a nightmare. Glad you made it in one piece!

  14. It’s hard to say goodbye to a grown up child — especially when you really love having them around. My therapist told me the other day that I am “too enmeshed” with my son because I told her I was fine with him living at home until he finished college (she thinks I’m putting my life on hold). I told her I didn’t really give a fuck what she thought in that regard (that’s one of the reasons I go to her — because she encourages me to call bullshit).

    • I would call bullshit on that as well…there is nothing wrong with a kid living at home while they go to college…it makes sense. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a life.

  15. I keep waiting for my empty nest. I know that sounds terrible. When it finally comes definitively, I’m sure I’ll feel like you. Its a transition to another stage of life and they’re always poignant.

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