Five Insights for the Empty Nester

A lot of parents have been posting teardrops as they leave kids on university campuses. My empty nest is ten years old this month. As heart-wrenching as it had been to leave my firstborn in his dorm three years earlier, leaving my baby girl in hers was even harder. When we left her, we drove home to face the new normal of an empty nest. Some of our tears were of worry for them. But some tears were more about us and the messy change our nest was undergoing.

Change is hard. Nest change is harder. I’ve put together my top five insights for the new empty nesters.

1)             Don’t feel guilty for enjoying your empty nest. At some point, you may start to love your empty nest. When you do, don’t feel guilty about it. You’ve worked hard sliding worms into those wide mouths day after day. Now you can go to the grocery store and buy the kind of worms YOU like! Relish the idea of putting something away in a drawer, and going back to use it the next time to find it exactly where you put it. Enjoy the quiet or enjoy listening to YOUR music. Enjoying life doesn’t mean you love them less.

2)             Let them fly. Once they have left the nest, leave them alone enough to get some flying practice in. You no longer need to know what they have eaten today. Or if their alarm is waking them up. Or if they are thinking about you. When my son went to university, I set a goal to not call him more than once per week. I didn’t want to be a hovering mom. If he called me, yes, it made my day! With my daughter, I let myself communicate more often, but still tried to leave it more on her terms. It’s normal to wonder if they are doing ok. You’ll find out later that sometimes they were ok and sometimes they weren’t. Let them work stuff out on their own and call you when they need help.

3)             It takes time for the nest to empty. If your nest has more than one chick, the emptying comes in stages. Plus there tends to be periods when they come back home for a summer or while they are getting on their feet with new jobs. I have two pieces of advice for these times. If you can afford it, rent a storage unit, so you don’t have all their stuff back in your nest. And don’t make things too comfortable for them. Your house, your rules. Keep the perks low. I realize sometimes parents find themselves starring in a “Failure to Launch” movie. I’m not here to judge you for that. Some circumstances require extra support and extra time. You know the difference.

4)             Get your own life. One of the most common complaints from friends who aren’t adjusting well to their empty nest is how much they miss their kids’ activities. Get your own! Remember all those hobbies you had before babies? Resume some of them. Do something spontaneous on Tuesday night because you can. Schedule a trip. Get a dog. Help a neighbor. Get fit. Re-decorate your nest. Busyness can be a distraction from your loneliness. But if a large part of your identity was being a parent, it may help you figure out who else you are.

5)             Get under His feathers. When I was six years old, my Sunday School teacher, doubling as my mom, taught a lesson with a visual of a mother hen protecting her chicks under her wings. She likened it to being cared for under the shelter of God’s wings. I assume it was inspired from this scripture:

He will cover you with his feathers.

He will shelter you with his wings.

His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

[Psalm 91:4 NLT]

The empty nest feels less scary whenever you crawl under the feathers of God’s love and protection. He will comfort you when you’re lonely. He will give you peace when you worry.  Snuggle up under His feathers! You and your babies will never have to leave His nest.

Beyond the Lesson Plans

The start of another academic year marks time with the consistency of my grandmother’s cuckoo clock.

The reminders aren’t subtle. Stores stock extra aisles of school supplies and friends bombard social media with cute first day of school photos. I love the reminders. I love the freshness of new tablets and pencils. I love the wonder of learning something new. I love remembering the impact of great teachers.

The teachers with long lasting impact taught me things that were not in their lesson plans.

Mrs. Koch was my first grade teacher. I loved her even before she moved me to the blue birds reading group with the best readers of the class. Our classroom was in the heat of south Texas in the mid 1960’s before public schools were air conditioned. A whirring fan oscillated connected to an extension cord that ran across the floor from the teacher’s desk to the side of the room. A few weeks into the school year, Mrs. Koch called the names of each child to walk up to her desk and collect a paper she had graded. When I heard my name, I walked to her desk with squared shoulders, anticipating the good grade that would be on my paper. “I JUST told you NOT to walk over that power cord!” Her reprimand reached deep into the corners of my emotional being which already craved approval of authority figures. I was not listening when she gave that safety precaution. I didn’t care about the safety lesson and Mrs. Koch may have even felt a twinge of guilt for yelling when she saw my crushed spirit. But she never knew the lesson on the importance of listening that I learned that day.

In seventh grade, I was at the peak of my knowledge. Yes, I knew everything. So at lunch one sunny day, my friend, Lisa, and I decided we didn’t need to attend afternoon classes. In those days, we were allowed to leave campus to go home for lunch.  Sometimes we went home and sometimes we went to the corner store to spend our lunch money on chips and candy. On this day, we rode our bikes downtown to go shopping at a local clothing store named “Topper’s.” We laughed as we took clothes into the dressing room to try on, without speculation that we might be missed back in Mrs. Huge’s homeroom class. Imagine my surprise when my mom came home from work and asked me where I had spent the afternoon. My lesson from playing hooky in seventh grade was simple. I don’t know it all.

Fast forward to my senior year in high school. I had a weird mix of classes. My Math and English classes were for university bound students. But I had not yet decided to go to college and I wanted to manage more hours at my part-time job. So I signed up for the school’s work program to get credit for working. Enter Mr. Harold Womble, teacher of the work study class and expert on how to do life. Mr. Womble introduced me to the cash envelope method of budgeting. I used it as an 18 year old bride a week out of high school. It helped us get through our college years on our two part-time jobs. As life grew more comfortable, I let go of the cash envelope method and began electronic tracking of our spending. But I would bring the envelope method back when I struggled to stay within a particular budget category. In my 40’s I tended to need it for “Home Décor” and I’m currently using it for “Dining Out.” Seeing my cash slip away makes me think harder before spending. Thank you, Mr. Womble, for that envelope wisdom.

I love the proverb that promises

Start children off on the way they should go,

and even when they are old

they will not turn from it. [Proverbs 22:6 NIV]

The writer was advising parents to teach their children to love God and His commandments. I think this scripture also describes well the pattern of teachers with their students.

So all you teachers out there, I know you work hard to prepare and teach the material of your subject areas. But know that there are thousands of other little pushes in the right direction that you give your students every year. And some of these little lessons will stick forever like mine have.

1.              Listen up.

2.              Don’t think you know it all.

3.        Stop spending when the envelope is empty.

When Dementia Gets Personal

It got a little personal to say the final good-bye to Glen Campbell this week. Remembering his journey with Alzheimer’s disease took me back down the road of my dad’s last few years living with vascular dementia. I re-watched the transparent documentary that the Campbell family made to raise awareness. Then I perused an e-mail folder of notes with my brothers during Dad’s illness.

I smiled. I laughed. I cried. And I divided the stages of his dementia progression into categories more descriptive to me than the ones the doctors used.

Stage 1: Who is this visitor, anyway? Our dad was living independently, going to the gym 3x per week, and still driving his car when this visitor named ‘dementia’ started sneaking around. It began with occasional irrational thoughts or fears that became more frequent. The visitor was like a bad influence that wandered in and out, turning our dad into someone else for a few seconds at a time. He was frustrated. We were frightened.

Stage 2: Don’t worry, we have this. Then Dad started having trouble daily living. He needed help with his showers and laundry and check writing. He sometimes phoned my brother who lived nearby in the middle of the night, because he couldn’t remember how to get back to bed. Glen Campbell’s daughter sings a touching song that says “Daddy, don’t you worry. I’ll do the remembering.” So my brother began to take daily tasks over for him one by one. We were grateful Dad didn’t fight our help as he began to lose independence. He was relieved. We were anxious.

A few months into this phase, we moved Dad from Cincinnati to Houston into an assisted living facility near me. It was on day three when I realized we had begun our role reversal. I hinted of it in an e-mail to my brothers.

I went by after work intending to stay 30-45 mins and stayed 1.5 hrs. He kind of gets into stall tactics like when the kids were little at bedtime! He was sharp one minute and saying something in left field the next. He wanted to find the nurse because he was concerned she had forgotten his evening meds. I let him handle it on his own and stood behind him. He was so clear, the new night nurse thought he was a family member asking about another resident! As soon as we turned around from her, he started talking about his tongue "which you know is not my original tongue." 

The result of “Don’t worry, we have this” can be a heartwrenching change with a spouse or a sibling and almost always brings a role reversal with parents. I found myself under the same ‘working mom’ stress as when my own kids were growing up. Feeling guilty if I worked too late and didn’t get by to see him, scheduling doctors’ appointments, worrying if his care was ok, and being alarmed when he said something strange about his tongue.

Stage 3: I’ll come into your world. Over time, dementia’s visits to Dad’s mind lingered. He spent more time in another world and less in mine. It was then that I received the best advice from a colleague. “Stop trying to get him back into your world; just go into his world.” This changed everything. It became another new normal. When Dad said he had just gotten back from working in the field, I commented on how hot that must have been. When he said “Hello, Jo Marie,” calling me by my deceased mother’s name, I returned her familiar “Well, hello, good lookin’!” When he wanted to fix the toilet, I said ‘ok let’s go work on it.’ Then we walked around the hallways until he forgot about it. He felt validated. I felt less stressed.

Stage 4: When dementia doesn’t leave anymore. At some point dementia took up residence and seldom left. He had repeated falls and mini strokes. He moved to a memory care unit where he could receive more care. We no longer picked him up for church or took him home for a meal. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He was comfortable with his routine and structure. The odd thing now was that if the dementia housemate did leave for even a brief moment, Dad would feel the frustration of things not being right. But the more constant it stayed, the more he felt settled. Those were sweet times. There wasn’t much conversation, but I cherished holding his hand in silence. The amazing thing was even on the days he couldn’t put a sentence together, he could sing an old song, not missing a word. If we asked him to pray, he prayed with clarity, as if his spiritual muscle memory just kicked in. He was content. I was grateful.

Stage 5: He’s still here, but gone. By now the changes came like summer storms. I cried the week his dining room menu changed. The update to my brothers read like this:

Well, we've reached a new stage this week.  I had mentioned to you a couple weeks ago that Dad had started to hold food in his cheeks. Today I stopped by at breakfast and they were feeding him puréed food.  A bowl of light yellow mush and a bowl of grayish brown.... His eggs and sausage.  Was so sad for me, but he was eating it well and finished both bowls.  These "firsts" feel much like when you experience "firsts" with your babies, only in reverse, and not as joyous. 

This was a grieving stage for me. My dad’s body was still here, but he had slipped away already. Only two tasks remained for him. He slept and ate. The basics of life had come full circle. I trusted that God still had a purpose to leave Dad on this earth, but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t question, but I wondered. Just like Glen’s song “I’m not gonna miss you” I knew that Dad no longer wished for his old life or missed us. He was just waiting. We, too, were waiting. But how we missed him already!

This is where hope enters my story. We waited with hope. As believers in Christ, we are not exempt from suffering on this earth. Yet we have hope of a new eternal life with Him.

And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. [Romans 8:23]

If you are a sojourner, loving someone through dementia, I pray for your strength. Strength to accept, to cope, to enjoy the sweet moments, and to wait. May you find that eager hope of glory in your wait.

The Sunday Night Funk

I don’t have research data, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person on earth to have experienced the Sunday night funk.

For most of the years that I worked, I spent the first part of Sundays in worship and then split the afternoon between rest and errands. When the evening set in, so did my funk. Here’s how it worked.

It’s Sunday night and the funk begins to edge its way in while I review the week’s calendar, finding the kinks in our collective schedules that needed special handling. “You need to pick up the kids from daycare on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.” “Thursday night, you go to meet the teacher night and I’ll make the track meet.”

The funk grows as I think about the more difficult meetings and stressful deadlines in the coming week. That pressure motivates me to open my inbox to see what new problems landed on my platter over the weekend. Maybe I can knock out a few replies, so Monday morning will be easier. Now the funk has become a heavy fog.

This would be about the time in the process that I get up and walk into the pantry. I stand there and begin my grazing. A few crackers. A handful of cereal straight out of the box. A few spoonfuls of peanut butter right out of the jar. Next I move to the refrigerator. Standing in the open doors, I begin to cool off as I eat some string cheese, surveying the leftover selection.

Now that I’ve fed the hungry funk, I can go back to the couch and work on some more emails or polish up that presentation. Except for the guilty feeling that I’m not paying enough attention to my family. Does it count as family time if we’re in the same room watching TV together while I work?

This may be a good time to mention that the Sunday night funk often infected multiple family members who weren’t ready for the weekend to end. Even the dogs seemed to sense the fun was over.

I would love to say that I conquered the Sunday night funk long before I retired. But the truth is I just found a few ways to cope with it. And here they are:

1)  Name it – by recognizing the pattern of my Sunday night bad mood, I began to call it “the Sunday night funk.”  Naming it kept me from wondering what was wrong with me.

2)   Intercept it – when I felt it creeping in, I would stop and find something different to do. Take a walk. Have a cup of a tea. Read a chapter of a book. This kept it from growing as fast.

3)   Allow it – if I fought the funk, it escalated. If I allowed it in, it dissipated. I knew it was temporary, so I could wait it out easier than fight it.

4)   Give it away – the most powerful thing I could do was live out some advice in one of Peter’s letters

Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. [I Peter 5:7 NLT]

Had I been able to give all my cares to the Lord, I could have eliminated the weekly visit of the Sunday night funk. But like a child holding on to a load too heavy for her, I only gave Him part of my worries. I think the reason we don’t give Him all our cares is we think we should be more responsible than that. We err to think that we shouldn’t bother Him with the small stuff. He loves to carry our small stuff for us, because he cares about us. But He doesn’t do it unless we let Him. If I were working again, I would try harder to let Him have my Sunday night funk.