The Folks Need a Bit of Help Too
After talking all this through I realised there’ll be some sense of grief and loss, especially from our parents. It reminded me of a friend telling me about her poor Dad:
Ria is the youngest of four kids and the only one left at home now, but she remembers when the eldest two left home. They both left around the same time. Her older sister was a graduate teacher who had to move to the country to teach in mid-January and her 24-year-old brother was getting married less than a month later.
The two girls remaining at home were then 13 and 17. Ria says the thing she remembers most was the sudden quietness of the house. She and her sister really missed their older brother and sister, but one night just after the wedding really stands out in her memory, when she realised they weren’t the only ones feeling the loss.Her mum had to be away overnight for work. It often happened, and her dad had always been okay.
But this time it meant just Dad and the younger girls were home,and she said her dad was hopeless.He couldn’t leave them.He talked and talked, followed them into whatever room they went into, kept offering them goodies and fussing over them like they were little kids again. When they couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer and told him they had to go to sleep, he just looked at them,devastated.
‘Well, who am I going to talk to now?’ he asked dejectedly. Ria said the girls felt really sorry for him ’cause he looked like this sad little kid—but on the other hand they thought it was really funny, and couldn’t wait to tell their mum when she got back.They all saw the humorous side—their dad too. But the truth is he really was lost. Half his family had left and he just wasn’t coping with that. He really missed those kids—they were (and still are) his friends. He was missing being their everyday dad.
So, if things get a bit tense as moving day gets closer, just remember it’s probably Mum or Dad, or both, getting a bit edgy. They’re really going to miss you—even if you are a pain sometimes.
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