Turning the page

My oldest son is getting married, and I'm not dealing with it particularly well.  The impending nuptials have sent me into an emotional tailspin.  It isn't that I don't want to be happy and excited.  I do.  But there's this dull aching that I just can't seem to get over.


At the request of his future mother-in-law (yet another woman I am going to have to share him with), I went on an expedition to gather photographs of his growing up years.  As I poured over pictures of the past twenty years...pictures documenting virtually every noteworthy moment of his life from sporting conquests to his first dance...from carefree moments of childhood play to crossing the stage at his high school graduation...from annual shots of he and his brothers in front the family Christmas tree to my personal favorite of all the men in my life piled in our bed acting goofy and just enjoying being together...I was painfully aware of just how quickly the time had slipped away.


In the day to day, while there was a tight schedule to keep and chores to be done and an  overwhelming sense of never getting through it all, well, it felt like it would go on forever.  I remember thinking they would always be little.  It would always be hectic.  There would always be chaos and clamor and busyness.  I remember thinking there would never be enough hours in the days to do everything we wanted or enough hours in the night to recover from it all.  I remember thinking this was my life...my whole life... being a mom.  


So what becomes of a woman who is at the root of herself a mom, when her children no longer need mothered?  What becomes of me when who I have been is no longer who I can be?  When my house is quiet and my calendar is clear...when the hampers aren't full and the sink is empty...when no one needs me to take them anywhere or help them with anything...what then do I do about getting on with having a life of my own?


I hadn't really given this moment a bit of thought before now.  It wasn't that I didn't know it was coming.  I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly.  Twenty years went by like a tick of the clock.  The next few will go by even faster, I can only suspect.  And then what?  Who will I become when I'm no longer mommy...when there's no longer a child in this house to fill up my life?  Will there just be emptiness...vacuous, echoing space that haunts me?  When this phase of my life is over, will the next find me brooding and anguished over the one I've had to let go?  


I don't know if I'm supposed to grieve over this.  I've never been here before.  Perhaps tomorrow I can find a way to be happy about it all, but today, I just feel like I want to cry...so I am.  In this moment, I feel like I'm losing a piece of myself I will never be able to get back.  But who knows, maybe as the page turns, I can find a new me in the ashes of the old one.