The Last Drop-Off {For Now}
A few weeks ago, I took a picture of my middle son, 17 year old W, as he was getting out of my car at morning drop-off to start his last week of high school. It started off as a picture to remember him at that moment, because this could have been my last time dropping him off … and then it happened. He woke up the next morning and asked if he could drive himself to school, as he recently inherited a truck and got his license and his foot was itching to drive alone. He wasn’t supposed to be going to school on this day so I had an appointment made for the time he’d need me to pick him up … so with great reluctance I let him drive. And then it hit me when I looked back at this picture of him that I had stolen earlier in the week; this was my very last time picking him up from school. His boyhood was ending, a new chapter of life was beginning. He was gaining the independence I have been preparing him for his entire life. But was I preparing myself for the ‘last days?’
When my oldest son J was graduating high school, I had some of these same feelings, but I was approaching the end of my marriage, we were living through COVID, and I was a wreck. I felt like I didn’t get to savor it. I told myself the next time would be different. And somewhere in between those two graduations I realized that nobody had told me I was allowed to grieve this too. As moms, we pour everything into preparing our kids for these transitions, but we rarely stop to acknowledge that we need space to process them as well.
These “last moments” are about us too.
And here we are. I’ve completed W’s last drop-off, and I savored every second. I looked at this young man, at his growth, his maturity, that look of excitement for what’s ahead, and I’m still flooded with emotions I can’t even name. I trust I’ve given him all the love I have and he’s going into this world knowing he is loved. And I’m giving myself permission to feel every single thing that comes with watching him go.
I still have one more to live through many first days, last drop-offs, and teen angst with, and I will be a different, even more whole version of myself at that point too. This chapter of motherhood is closing softly, the way a good book does when you’ve loved every page. And I can’t wait to see what the next one holds.
So to every mom in the thick of these transitions, give yourself the grace to feel it. The pride, the grief, the joy, the bittersweetness of it all. You have earned every single emotion. This next step in your child’s life is also a next step in yours. You deserve the space to process that too.
