Wednesday 12 June 2013

Endings



Sam sits his last exam this morning. Then it's over. His school days are at an end. The end of uniform. The end of school dinners. The end of the school bus. The end of seeing his friends every day. The end of what he has been familiar with for five years.

Sam is like me at that age. Hating endings. Scared of beginnings. What will happen to me now? How will I ever start again, in a new place with new faces?

He was stood waiting to leave this morning. He looked sad. "I don't like to see you so sad, Sam." As a mother there is that deep within urge to make everything alright for our kids. To make sure that they are happy. All. The. Time.

It's a harsh realisation - you know the one. That you can't make them happy. You can create a happy space around them, but you can't make them be happy. That's the truth. It hurts knowing this. Knowing that they will trip and stumble through their life. They will experience happiness. And sadness.

And even knowing that you need the sad to appreciate the happy. And even knowing that deep gut wrenching sadness is a part of the tapestry of our lives. Knowing that the thread of sadness weaves it's way through our life experiences. Even knowing all that, I still want to protect my boys from sadness.

When I was training to be a counsellor, it was the endings that I struggled with. For a person that didn't like endings, it was the hardest part of the counselling relationship for me. The end. The last session. The goodbye. I looked at unsatisfactory endings in  my own life, and how they had affected me. I had run away from endings. Lots of times. I'd not really acknowledged that endings are there for a reason.


"All endings are just beginnings.
 We just don't know this at the time."

 (Mitch Albom- The Five People You Meet In Heaven).



I showed this quote to Sammy this morning, as he was stood there. Tall he may be, but he looked so small today. He read it and smiled. I told him it will be okay. I told him that it was alright to feel the way he was feeling. I left it at that, even though I really wanted to go on and on in an attempt to comfort him (as is my way). I didn't. I allowed him to have his ending in private. I didn't hijack it.

It wil be ok though, wont it?


Leanne xx


5 comments:

  1. Hugs to you guys. I know it's hard. I haven't watched my own child go through such a big ending yet but I've been through enough of them myself and they aren't easy. Do you know that song "Closing Time"? I always liked the line in it, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I think it's pretty profound, actually. I hope Sam's last day is good and that he feels better about this as time goes on. What are his plans next?

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    1. Hopefully he will go on to do A Levels, and I think he would like to read History at University. I know he'd like to go to Bristol University (my home town), but it is a very high calibre one and he needs very good grades!!

      Leanne xx

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  2. It will be ok! You are such a good mum, you really are, and he will be ok and so will you. Tomorrow it will dawn on him that his exams are over and he has a summer stretching ahead of him and new adventures...maybe a part time job, new friends, college, so much fun ahead. It's a magical time, he just doesn't realise it yet. x

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  3. Impossibly hard. Right from the start there are endings. No more breastfeeding. No more playgroup. No more pre-school and afternoons together. On and on and on. I don't like change, and it is so hard to let go. But it will be alright, it will.

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