Delayed "Sad"ification

     Today our youngest left home to move to Billings and I feel embarrassingly sad about it. He is 30 years old, and I should have gone through this withdrawal years ago, but I didn't have to. He did not go away to college, so I missed the major mourning I experienced with his siblings. He moved out of our house years ago, but was never far from home. Typical for a youngest child, he is very attached to home. And typical for a mother, my youngest is always my baby in my heart. His G.I. Joes are still in a box in the basement. But a lot of the problem is that he has lived with us for the past year. Shortly after he was discharged from Rimrock last October for health concerns, he moved back in with us. Two surgeries later and one adrenal gland short, a year had passed. I enjoyed having another mouth to feed. Reed enjoyed working with him out at the airport. And although we hated the relapses that turned us from being his parents into his sober police, after years of worry, we finally knew when he was safe and sober at night. Our nest was no longer empty.
     It was good for us, but we knew he needed more than an alcohol free zone and to spend all his time with his parents. He needed sobriety he could maintain outside of our home and sober friends to spend time with. He is returning to live in sober housing and attend IOP, intensive outpatient treatment, to continue the progress he made at Rimrock. He is doing exactly what he needs to do and what both we and his counselor wanted to happen. He is the one moving into a house full of strangers and leaving all that is familiar, including his dogs, behind. Tracy has a hard time leaving Kalispell for a day trip to Missoula, I knew this would be hard for him, but how can I convince my sad mother's heart to listen to my logical head. I am feeling the sorrow I would have felt years ago if Tracy had moved for school or marriage like his siblings, what our parents felt when we left. I am just feeling it on the delay cycle. I might envy those parents whose kids never leave their hometown, but distance is not always geographical, and the other kind is much harder to fix.
     So the good news is, my guest room will be just the way I like it, our grocery budget will be smaller, and we can retire as sober police. The bad news is--everything else. Our nest is empty. And so, for a time, is that final third of my heart that had been waiting for mourning.