Loss of Presence

Our youngest is off to college, joining her brother who moved to campus several years ago. This ends our twenty-one years of living together as a family. My mind bounces off that reality like a glass of water off a brick wall. I tell myself (and anyone else who will listen) that we’re going back to the way it was for the decade and a half before the kids, but of course that’s only barely true.

There’s an energy that grows between people living together. It’s fueled as much by the little interactions as the big dramas. Picking up ice cream late at night, browsing through a bookstore, talking about movies, throwing a football. It’s the energy of presence. Just hearing your children in the house—talking on the phone, playing a video game, grumbling in frustration over homework—is enough to generate presence. It’s subtle, but ubiquitous, and, like the best things in life, you rarely even notice it until it’s gone.

When a child leaves home, your love for them remains, as does the pride and joy you feel at their independence, but their absence diminishes presence. The absence hurts, of course, but in a curious way. It’s an emotional suffering that you’re almost happy to feel. Children are meant to move on and become adults. This is the way of things, and you can continue to love them from afar. The absence is painful, yes, but it’s the loss of presence that’s a knife in your soul.

Presence keeps you tethered to the people you love, and without it you feel them slipping away. You fear they will become unfamiliar, and you will become forgotten. The empty rooms, the uneaten cereal, the chores left undone become unavoidable reminders of what you’ve lost. The simple intimacy of a quick hug before school—once the easiest thing in the world—becomes an aching memory. The grief of that broken tether leaves you wondering what comes after presence is lost?