When Our Children Are Disappointed
By the time we reach mid-life we come to understand that life is full of change. Yet, it seems that no matter how much change we go through, it can still feel scary. Our mind wants to take over and control the situation. That’s why even when change is the good kind, we doubt our good luck or fortune because it’s our human condition to be hard wired toward safety and security.
No matter how much change we’ve been through, when that life altering change involves our children and the death of a parent, our fears can easily overwhelm us.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t take the call when I received it. Tim and I were out of town enjoying the last day of a weekend away with friends and I was at lunch. I knew the call involved their dad. I felt the familiar pit in my stomach I had felt many times before when we were gone and plans went awry.
Before I had even learned the news, my immediate reaction was anger. Angr at their dad. Angry at how yet another trip had been ruined by him. Most of all I was angry at how the disease of alcoholism had drobbed my children of their father for the last several years of his life. And later I was angry at how it would now be serving them up the ultimate form of disappointment with his death.
Once we returned to the house, I went outside and made the call. After hearing the news, I sat on the deck, immovable for an hour or so. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go home and be the one to deliver the final blow of disappointment from their father.
On the ride home my stomach was in knots. I doubted if I was up to the task. I felt a familiar heaviness descend as I braced myself to be strong. It seemed like most of the last 5 -10 years of their life I had been going through this routine and trying unsuccessfully to shield them from disappointment. This felt like God’s final pronouncement that it wasn’t my job. I was actually not in charge of their lives.
As I emerged from the haze of the days and weeks immediately following his death, I began to realize that while the job of allowing our children to be disappointed is far harder than shielding them, it is also liberating.
Our desire to shield our kids is instinctual. So much so that I didn’t even realize the degree to which almost every aspect of my life since they were born had been about doing precisely that, and the cost at which that comes. We can’t truly be present to our own lives when we are trying to manage another’s.
The truth is that I didn’t have a choice whether to let go. Eamon, my oldest, started college in Dublin, Ireland in early September. God, Life, the Universe, it seems had something to teach me.
The lesson I received was this: when our children suffer the most unimaginable pain, the only thing we can do is hold space. Holding space for our children means letting them be with their emotions, without judgment while patiently waiting for when they need us. That’s where I’m at today.
When people ask me how they are doing, I answer honestly --- I don’t know.
What I do know is they are currently loved and cared for. I know that I’m grateful when I speak to Eamon on the phone in Dublin and learn about the new friends he is making and how despite my worst fears and nightmares he is not only surviving but slowly beginning to thrive.
The truth is we can’t know why our when our children have to learn the lessons they do.
We want to protect our children from all manner of hurt, whether it’s a stubbed toe or a broken heart.. But the truth is we can’t. It’s actually not our job.
The real reason that Change is scary is because it changes and shapes us in ways we can’t always see or understand right away
When we try to control and protect every aspect of our kids lives, they end up not having a life that is theirs. And when disappointment comes calling and we are not there, they are much more fragile because we may have robbed them of the experiences they are meant to have to fulfill their unique purpose here---because we all have one.