Wow. I’ve dreaded this for 30 years now. We have an empty nest.

Tana and I became parents in 1979. I was the youngest of eight children, so I got to watch each of my seven brothers and sisters drive away for college. I figured out real soon that generally meant they weren’t moving back. I loved my brothers and sisters (although I think that is an argument for my having a “masochist” diagnosis). I cried as each one left and then felt down for weeks and even months after that. Every time one left it changed the mix in our household. A piece was missing.

It was much, much harder when my brother just older than I, Jack, left home. In my whole first 17 years, he and I had been raised like twins and had only been apart four nights, while I was in the hospital in the eighth grade. Then it was just my dad and me. It was arguably the worst year of my entire life.

So, when my oldest Brandon, moved onto campus at UTD, just minutes from our house, I kept a stiff upper lip for his sake, but my heart was just broken. I’d cried the day he drove his car I’d given him off by himself to go to Plano East Senior High for the first time! I wasn’t sad when he moved because I didn’t realize I’d see him more than most parents could imagine. It wasn’t because I wasn’t really glad for him and his big adventure. I lacked no confidence that he’d do awesome out on his own. But, I was sad because I missed having him around. He was my “Todd-Bluebird” (yeah, go ask him). He was practically part of our marriage mix. He was like a twenty-year-old when he was three. I missed making Darth Vader sounds when he’d walk down the stairs in his black bath robe we’d bought him and seeing him try not to smile in his sleepy stupor. I missed hearing him laughing loudly up in his room talking on the phone to his best buddy, Neil, as he often did. I missed him telling me all about his crazy dreams in the morning. My goodness, I even missed his often-all-too-correct analyses, which he freely gave, on what we should really do in parenting the other children!

Then when my second, Kale, moved out to go live on his own with my sister, Joy, and her family, my heart broke again. Differently, but broke nonetheless. He was my Suggie-Dude (yeah, go ask him too). What would I do with my time without him around? How in the world would he know when to go to bed and when to get up and when to do his homework (yeah, right)? What else would I laugh at without having him up in the game room laughing at his favorite reruns of ethnic sitcoms?! How could I get over missing his quirky, funny stuff—“There’s a UFO out there and I’m missing it!” (yeah, ask him that too). The house got quieter and emptier.

Some years after Kale moved out, we were building a new house in Wylie and thus lived in a temporary rent house while waiting for its completion. It was during that time that my little buddy, Casey, moved out. Casey had hung on me much of his life. When he was a baby he wanted me to hold him whenever I was home. He wanted to go to sleep on me at night. He wanted to hang out with me. He was game to do whatever I was doing. He was my buddy that watched Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys football games with me. He was Puggie-Dude and Bigheaded Boy, among many other nicknames I’d given him over the years (yeah, you’ll need to ask him about those too). He had been a sort of glue between all the kids. He was a peacemaker and avoided fights. He could get by with jokingly yelling “Tana” as his mom was trying to discipline him, making her laugh. He got by with murder. And, then he was gone. He wrote us the sweetest note ever upon his leaving and I can still cry tears of joy and longing just thinking about the things he said.