I’m writing this four years after I dropped my son off at college. I want to start there, with where I am now, because it changes everything about what I’m about to tell you about where I was then.
We were unpacking his dorm room together. I was trying to make the bed nice one last time before I left, smoothing the sheets just so. “It’s fine, Mom, I can do it,” he said. I wanted to do it anyway. I knew once I drove away, those sheets probably weren’t getting changed again for a while, so I wanted us to start off nice, at least.
Both of my sons were genuinely ready to go. No hesitation in either of them, no dread in their eyes the way there was in mine. When it came time for that last hug, I held on longer than I should have. It felt like my purpose was being sliced away in that exact moment, even though I knew, somewhere underneath the feeling, that wasn’t really true at all.
A Memory That Came Back to Me
That moment took me straight back to my own college drop off, decades earlier. I’m pretty sure I’m on record as the daughter who moved in with the most stuff, and the most snacks, of anyone in that dorm. My parents drove away, and I sobbed in a phone booth in the hallway for what felt like twenty four straight hours, until someone finally dragged me out to a party. I was fine after that, eventually, and made the most special friends and memories from that day on. But standing in my son’s dorm room all those years later, I understood my own mother in a way I never had before.
The Adjustment Nobody Quite Names
If you’re searching for how to cope when your last child goes to college, here’s the honest truth before anything else. There’s an attachment built over eighteen years, to the things you do for them, the things you do with them, and then suddenly, they’re gone. Time does help, the way it helps with every transition. But I’ve learned something through this and through other losses in my life. We don’t really move forward from these moments. We move along with them, carrying everything we’ve felt right alongside whatever comes next. I wrote more about where that idea came from in Dear Mel Robbins.
This last goodbye, the one when there’s no more children left in the house, leaves a particular kind of hole. Not one you get over, exactly, but one you slowly learn how to fill back in.
If you’re standing in that hole right now, When A Season Ends was written for exactly this kind of transition, the ones that don’t come with a clean before and after. You can grab it here.
What Actually Helped
For us, it was games. My boys were athletes, so our calendar filled itself back in with weekends built around watching them play. That structure mattered more than I expected it to. If sports aren’t part of your story, I’d still say the same underlying thing helped, having something fixed on the calendar to look forward to, a visit, a short break, anything concrete enough to hold onto when the house feels too quiet.
The Part That Catches You Off Guard
The other thing nobody fully prepares you for is the way your whole life with that child seems to flash by all at once in that moment. Infant. First day of preschool. Grade school. Practices and recitals. And suddenly, there they are, ready to walk into a dorm room without you. It’s like watching years compress into a blink. I’m still not sure there’s anything that makes that part easier. I just know the feeling is real, and natural, and worth talking about instead of keeping it inside.
If you’re navigating the harder days of this stretch, It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine has been one of the books that’s helped me put language to grief that doesn’t look like grief from the outside. I keep it close for exactly these moments.
What I Know Now, Four Years Later
Here’s what I didn’t know standing in that dorm room. The void I felt so sure would just sit there empty got filled, slowly, with things I never could have planned for. His games. New friendships. Memories I still smile about now. That hard, sliced open start somehow turned into one of the fullest seasons either of us had.
And then, just as quickly, that season ended too. I was sad all over again when it did, which surprised me. I thought I’d already done my grieving back at drop off. Turns out you grieve every ending in this stage of parenting, even the good ones.
Now he’s home. His appetite, his laundry, that smile walking through the door. I couldn’t be happier, and somehow I also miss what we built while he was away. Both true. Always both.
That’s the part nobody tells you about this whole stretch of years. You don’t move forward and leave one version behind for the next. You move along with all of it, the goodbye, the fullness that follows, the next goodbye, the return. Carrying it all together is exactly what makes it feel like a life instead of a series of losses.
If today is your hard day, Your Plan For Today might help you find just one small thing worth doing right now, nothing more than that.
