Good-byes Hurt

When I started homeschooling my children more than eleven years ago, my goal wasn't to protect them from the outside world, as many homeschoolers seek to do. I was simply responding to the fact that we were in a lousy school district with a lousy classroom teacher, and I never really thought we'd homeschool for more than a year or two.

As the years went by, I realized my kids were being protected from various aspects of pain and frustration in the "outside world," simply because I kept them home. They have had very little experience with peer pressure. While they've had (and do have) peer groups through sports, clubs, and other activities, their main peer group has been our little family of five. Consequently, the "pressure" had been through us - and that's been a good thing we didn't foresee.

So when pain hits our family in the form of school- or peer-related issues, while it's sad and hard for us, it's also surprising. Maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe it's just "real life" we're experiencing. Maybe I'm too close to the situation to even be able to comment on it coherently.

Here's what's happened recently. I wrote a post on my Maine Blog last week about our good friends who are moving to Texas. These are friends we met through Molly's (our 13-year-old) extensive involvement in basketball at the local public school. She became very close with one of her teammates, and I with the mom. We began spending time together as a family - at lunch between games, on the sidelines during games and practice, and on shared car rides to and from tournaments. Soon, we were going out for lunch and having dinners together, completely separate from basketball.

This has all happened just in the last six months. We knew this family was moving, but I think it's safe to say that we were in denial.

Last night, a wonderful family in town threw a going-away party for these departing friends. It was a fun time with lots of people, food, a swimming pool, and tons of laughter. But it was also gut-wrenching. As soon as the first guests began to leave, the tears began. And as my soon-to-leave friend pointed out, watching people cry is like watching people puke - it's contagious. Before long, most of the crowd was in tears off and on. By the end of the evening, everyone was sobbing openly. I have never seen that much crying in one place - even at the many funerals I've attended. It was positively awful - but also positively wonderful. It showed me, my friend, her family, and all the people in attendance that we all share a special love for this special family... and it was reciprocated.

Last night, after the last goodbyes had been said and we got home to dry the first batch of our tears, Molly and I stayed up talking long into the wee hours of the morning. I'm not sure what hurt me more - to lose my friend to a faraway move, to watch her family grieve their own losses, or to watch my youngest child lose one of her best friends. It broke my heart.

This morning, many of us squashed the urge to phone them, text them, or otherwise hang on to their departing car and beg them to stay one more day, one more week, or even forever. Sure, Texas isn't the other side of the world, and in our mobile society, we can visit, as can they. Thanks to email and low cost long distance phoning, we can keep in touch as much if not more than we did when they lived here in town.

But we know the reality. Life will go on for us. A new life awaits them. We will go on with all our other friends. They will make new ones. Our lives have now diverged on two very different paths. Regardless of our love for our friends and their love for us, those paths will continue to move in different directions. Maybe that's what hurts the most. We will all continue making new memories, but so few of them will be shared.

Today, we decided to start our new life without them by going to the beach. I took my daughter and a few of her friends, and as we listened to music during the car ride there, we all found ourselves in tears once again. But we did go on. And our friends are well out of Maine by now and on their way to their new home.

Making and losing friends is one thing from which homeschooling hasn't protected us. But good grief - would we want it to? As C.S. Lewis once said, "The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal."

And that's one of those things that is an education all by itself.

Copyright © 2007 - Paulla Estes