My lovely bride finds great joy in making me really, really sad. That sounds terrible, I know, so let me explain. Kelly and I are the proud parents of three amazing kids, the oldest of whom now spends two-thirds of the year in a city 1,400 miles away from us. My wife, the adoring mother of said oldest child, likes to read posts from the “Grown and Flown” community on Facebook, a group that’s intended to offer support and sympathy to parents of college (and high school) kids. Kelly finds great comfort in these posts, and then breaks my heart by sharing them with me.
Here are a couple of examples:
- “But when I hugged my daughter good-bye and watched her walk down the city street, away from us, her family, her protectors, it was like watching her walk straight out of her childhood.”
- “Being a college parent means learning to say goodbye again and again and again.”
Do you see what she does to me? Since we’ve been fortunate enough not to face the death of a child, I would have to say that the initial college drop-off, when we first left our son in Phoenix and headed back to Spokane, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a parent. It’s a dirty trick, this business of raising a child and being around them all the time, only to have them leave you.
Since we’re coming fresh off the Thanksgiving holiday, when our son was home with us for a week after being gone for three months, we had to say goodbye again (and we’ll keep having to do that again and again and again). These “see you later” moments are getting slightly more tolerable, but they’re still a far cry from anything remotely enjoyable. And then there’s that wife of mine, sending me reminders of the emotional wreck that I am when our son is not here with us (and especially when he leaves again).
Okay, enough whining. My bride is in fact lovely and she does not in fact find great joy in making me really, really sad. We’re partners; we’re in this together. In fact, we are one. We share everything, including the great joys of life and the great challenges as well. She’s not glad when I’m sad, she just wants me to be sad with her. 4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).
Or, to quote a much less important source: “You know I can’t smile without you / I can’t laugh and I can’t sing / I’m finding it hard to do anything / You see I feel sad when you’re sad / I feel glad when you’re glad / If you only knew what I’m going through / I just can’t smile without you” (Barry Manilow). There’s no other person in the world I want to be sad with, or glad with, or laugh with, or sing with… or anything else for that matter.
Troy Burns