Saying Good-bye

The past month has been a season of transitions.  Each member of our family has simultaneously launched themselves into some kind of significant life change.  To summarize; my husband retired, one son became engaged, another bought a house and a third moved west to Colorado.  I, packed up our home of close to twenty years and, with my husband, left suburbia for the city.

We didn’t plan for all these changes to take place at the same time.  But it turns out to be perfect timing, especially in this season of a landmark election.

Each of us is leaving the comfort of familiarity. We face uncertainty along with adventure.   We will need to be assertive and adventurous and solve problems creatively.  Our individual paths will call on us to be more independent while cultivating intentional connections.  Individually, we are saying good-bye to something even as we say hello to another.  Loss and re-creation all marbled together so that it’s hard to know at times which emotion one is experiencing.

I ask myself, “what makes it all OK”?  Perhaps, it’s knowing that as much as we are going through these transitions as individuals we are making them as a family.  In going our own ways, we more solidly understand and support each other.  Maybe it wasn’t such a simultaneous accident after all but an unconscious knowing that the time was right.