loss

I don’t take the word loss lightly.  And I know it means different things for different people.  The only significant loss I’ve personally felt, up until this point in my life at least, was when my youngest sister died 15 years ago – she was only 26 years old, and we were extremely close.  She had Down Syndrome and the specialness of these humans is unexplainable. For me, this made losing her that much harder, because even though she was 26, she was always our “baby” sister and always exemplified such a pure and innocent presence in our life. I know that being her big sister shaped so much of who I am today. Every day I wish she was still here – she would have so much to teach Dylan, just as she taught me.  She died suddenly the day after my 30th birthday and I felt so lucky that I had talked to her the night before.

Even before Dylan had made the decision to join the military, I proactively began preparing myself for life as an “empty nester”.  By the way, this term is dumb – I’m on a mission to find a new one, and I am all ears for suggestions!  I had already been pretty good at self-care and making time for myself (I had to – job stress would have gotten the better of me), but I definitely stepped it up.  Started investing more time in personal interests & hobbies – music mostly, lots of concerts, reading, taking more walks, exercise and self-care.

As his ship date neared, I thought, perfect – I can dive into helping him get “ready” to leave.  I love things like this – I’m an exceptionally organized packer, so had started putting together lists of things I thought he would need. If you haven’t experienced sending your kid off to basic training, well, you quickly learn there isn’t much they need.  Legit, just what they can carry in a backpack – that’s it.  And if you bring more than that, your kid will likely get some level of wrath when they arrive. In military terms, it’s called “getting smoked”.   So unfortunately, this outlet for me was short lived.  Resist the urge, new military mamas – Resist!

We did all the usual activities before he left - favorite meals, favorites restaurants, time with family & friends.  And parents – let me interject this now, and I know I will probably reiterate this a few more times.  YES, family is important – and Dylan has known since he was born that his family has his back 100% and that we will always be his biggest supporters.  But PLEASE, don’t make your adult/semi-adult children choose between family and friends – I mean, is there really a difference?  Don’t devalue their friendships because they’re young.  Allow them time to nurture their friendships.  These may not be lifelong friends for Dylan, but he will learn the value of investing in his friendships, and whatever friendships he chooses to maintain, they will be there for him long after we are gone.    

Dylan has been blessed with exceptional friends, and this whole process has shown me just how much strength, confidence, and love can be deposited into our kids through authentic friendships.  More importantly, we should encourage our kids to equally invest in relationships where they see value.  I would see the encouraging and supportive texts between he and his core friends; their comments on each other’s Instagram posts, supporting one another’s goals and interests; Jack would always run drills with Dylan at the park or go to the gym with him when he was losing weight, pushing him every step of the way; they showed up to going away parties, forced to hang out with lame adults and parents they didn’t know. I watched them all cry and hug together in my driveway when they knew this was the last time they would see Dylan before he left.  These kids are there for each other when it counts. Period.  It made me think back to my time as a teen, and I honestly don’t think I could say my friendships were as authentic.  And here it was, a new realization – that my son leaving for the military was putting a fresh perspective and value on the relationships and friendships in my own life.  More to come on that.

I have digressed a bit, but promise I’m not trying to deflect.  There wasn’t anything grand about Dylan’s send off on Halloween – did I mention it was Monday? Worst possible day of the week!  Why not a Friday so I could have had my personal pity-party over the weekend, and then wake up fresh as a daisy on Monday to resume life as usual?  Wishful thinking. Parents have minimal involvement in the military process – you can’t go with them to complete paperwork, you can’t attend their swearing in.  You don’t get to tour the dorms and secretly get excited about trips to the Container Store to help them get organized.  Nothing. You’re completely excluded.  This was no different.  All we had to do was drop him off at his recruiter’s office and that’s it – they would transport him down to San Diego, where he would spend several days finalizing a few things, then he’s on a flight to Fort Jackson, South Carolina where he would attend boot camp for the next 10 weeks.  I knew from the moment I opened my eyes that morning that this day was going to prove more difficult than I could have ever imagined.  And I also knew that I was going to have to be the one to step in and keep the encouraging & positive vibes flowing for all of us – get him there, get him through that door, and then deal with the rest later.  I can only imagine what Dylan was feeling that morning when he woke up.  He says he doesn’t really remember, that it was all a blur.

We got breakfast at a favorite spot before, and once we got to the recruiter’s office, his departure wasn’t anything grand.  We aren’t allowed to go inside and hang out until he left, so we said our goodbyes and squeezed each other tight in the parking lot.  I look back and sometimes think the simplicity of his send-off is what also made it so difficult.

It’s done, my baby has left me.  I didn’t cry in this moment – I needed to give him every ounce of strength and support inside of me so he would have the courage to walk across that parking lot, through those doors, and pursue this dream.  I’m not sure if nnej’s puddle-of-tears would have given him that strength.  I so often must remind myself how young Dylan still is – remember, he had just turned 18.  Still so young emotionally.  I held it together for the car ride home and had made it a point that day to keep my work schedule light and work from my home office.  This day was made even more difficult by the fact, at no one’s fault but my own, that I actually thought I’d be in a head space where I would want to give out Halloween candy to small children at my front door – such a bad idea!  The sight of these moms with their little cuties, dressed in their costumes saying “Trick-or-Treat”, just about did me in.  Luckily, it was a lightly attended year in the neighborhood, so I probably ate more candy than I gave out. 

I truthfully never expected how I was going to feel.  The tears didn’t stop for days.  I had to shut the door to his bedroom, I couldn’t bare to look inside.  I cried more in this first week than I have honestly ever cried in my entire life. I prayed, which I admit, I hadn’t done enough of until recently. At the beginning, Dylan was still in California for several days, so communication with him was still steady. I didn’t want to overwhelm him – the last thing he needed was an over-bearing mom texting him every 5 minutes – I was there if he needed me.  I didn’t want him to know how much I was hurting.

Believe me, I get it – kids leave home every day.  This isn’t some new event for parents, and if you haven’t experienced it yet, I implore you to cherish all the time you have with your babies before your time comes.  I wondered – did my own mom react the same when I left home?  I wasn’t too different from Dylan when I left home – I was 20 years old, living at home, had just graduated 2-year college in May, got married in June, and when we got home from our honeymoon, there was a packed U-Haul in my parent’s driveway, set for us to drive to California to start our new life.  I not once ever thought of how this event might have affected my parents.   I was excited, but I was also scared to death.  And I never talked about it with anyone.   And here I am, having the same experience with my own son, hoping like hell that if he is struggling, he will open up to me about it.

Fortunately I didn’t experience any anxiety of his solo travel across the country - this kid was on a plane for the first time at 6 weeks old, probably qualifying him as a semi-expert traveler. Dylan kept us posted all throughout his flights, when he landed, and that he had arrived safely in South Carolina.  And then that was it.  Complete silence for days.  All we got was one text from him that he was safe, and he included a mailing address.  Now, this wasn’t unexpected, as I had read enough to know that this was normal: “No news is good news” is a common military moto – not a fan of this motto.  It sucks. I ask you to consider this – close your eyes, and sincerely ask yourself how you would feel if the one thing you loved more than anything in the world, just suddenly vanished from your life, physically?  He was there this morning, and now he’s gone, and you don’t know if he’ll ever come back to sleep in that bed again.  No way of reaching him, no response on the other end of that text message.  Maybe it sounds dramatic, but loss was the only word I could put to that emotion at that exact moment. No, he wasn’t dead, and I knew it wouldn’t be forever, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

As days passed, more and more thoughts, questions, and emotions accumulated.  I had so many questions for Dylan – was he ok? Had he met anyone cool? How was the food – did it suck? I wanted to know every. single. detail of his new life at basic training.  I could NOT wait until we could have our first real phone call so we could hear all about it. 

The week inched by, and I decided that I would bite the bullet and complete the dreaded task of opening the door to Dylan’s room and getting it cleaned out.  He left it as he usually did – bed unmade, water bottles lined on the floor, full trash can on the floor with I’m guessing about 25 empty Aloha protein bar wrappers in it – his fav!  I started to tackle it and I’m not sure what happened, but I succumbed to complete despair – I legit face planted on his bed and cried, uncontrollably.  At some point when I stopped, I honestly felt like there were so many thoughts and feelings in my head, that I was having an actual out of body experience – this wasn’t me, this was me watching a different version of me somehow. I just couldn’t mask the clutter in my head – so many thoughts, worries, emotions.  Between trying to catch my breath, I prayed.  Hard.  It was a tipping point for me as a human being where I, normally, would have just powered through, quickly implementing typical high-performer self talk.  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine in a few weeks”, “Get over it”.  Not to mention all the other usual deflecting anecdotes I would have told myself.  But I didn’t.  I decided, feel it.  Use it. 

I needed change so I could clear space in my head.  A good start was by dialing back my social media use – I muted just about everyone and everything that wasn’t positive or generally relative to my life.  No more influencers or products, no more dumb sh*t, no celebrities.  Started following more accounts that offered advice, different approaches to thinking, positive affirmations, emotional enlightenment.  Look, I’m NOT saying that I don’t use social media – sure, I love Instagram and the connection it allows us to have to people and the outside world. I still post from time to time when something fancies me, and you can bet I’m the first one to laugh at funny reels and memes.  But I didn’t realize how mind-numbing the perpetual scrolling had become, until I stopped.  I coined a new term for it - doom scrolling. I actually can’t take full credit for this term, as it’s actually the name of a rock song I just happened to discover during this time. But it was fitting - I felt doomed to feeling chronically dull and uninspired if I didn’t improve the quality of the online content I was viewing. Nonetheless, I gently nudge all of you to give it a shot – I promise, you won’t miss anything important, and you’ll gain oh so much more.

I had realized as long as Dylan is in the Army, the amount of communication I’m going to have with him is going to be more limited than other parent/child situations – egocentric drill sergeants limiting phone time, and eventually different time zones in various parts of the world. I wanted to have a clear head so I could handle our conversations as best possible.  If I was going to be this newly found sap, I needed to exercise my brain to be ready for these constant feelings and emotions.  I also wanted to be emotionally available for him, if and when he needed me – I was so dang excited for that first call from him!

All we do now is wait.  Impatiently.