What I call ‘pre-grieving’ began a year ago. The moment my daughter Isobel started year 13 (upper sixth in my day) and started talking excitedly about university.
Until then, I hadn’t quite foreseen a time when my children would leave home and live their own lives. The realization that this was imminent hit me like a football in the stomach.
It may be the only thing I have in common with the beautiful, rich, uber-successful advocate of ‘conscious uncoupling’ Gwyneth Paltrow, who described daughter Apple’s recent departure from college as a feeling ‘as deep as giving birth’.
Over the following months, when I passed by Isobel’s bedroom to see the entire contents of her wardrobe on the floor, my initial irritation was tempered by painful forebodings of how I would feel when she had packed up and left.
Helen Carroll with her daughter Isobel. Helen says she began to “mourn” her daughter’s departure “at the moment [she] began year 13…’
It was only after the dreaded day of her departure that I understood the underlying reason for the intensity of my feelings. Although it may sound extreme, the prospect of Isobel leaving somehow evoked the intense feelings of loss I had experienced when my sister, Jane, died in a car accident decades earlier, when I was nine and she was eight .
We were cruising home from school one April afternoon when a car failed to stop, hitting Jane and missing me by inches even though I had been holding her hand. Born just 11 months apart, we had shared a bedroom and spent almost every moment together, so her loss was painful beyond words.
I was also to suffer further sudden losses. Shortly after I left home for journalism college, aged 19, my previously healthy father died of a heart attack, aged 56, and just before my youngest child’s first birthday, my mother died, also suddenly, although at the time she was in her early years. The 80s.
On the other hand, my husband and I have been together since I was 19 and he was 20, so I don’t have the experience of loved ones leaving my life in non-catastrophic circumstances.
This means that I have no real frame of reference to cope with the kind of absence that comes with having a child go to university. Grief is a common feeling for parents when children leave home, according to Celia Dodd, author of The Empty Nest: Your Changing Family, Your New Direction.
I was so panicked I was struggling to catch my breath completely
“This intense grief is natural because a parent’s life has been intimately entangled with their child’s for so many years and in so many different ways – since they were actually in the womb,” she says. ‘So it’s common to experience an almost physical sense of loss; many mothers say they feel like they’ve lost a part of themselves.
‘It’s associated with anxiety and even fear, not only about how your child will cope without you, but about how you will cope without them.’
In my case, this is compounded by the tragedies of my past. My parents and four older siblings were unable to support me through my grief after Jane died.
Since it was the late 1970s, no one mentioned counseling, either for the trauma of being the only person with my sister as she lay dying, or the crippling sadness that followed, so I became left to find their own way through it. I cried myself to sleep every night for years.
Helen says it was only after the day Isobel (pictured) left that she ‘understood the underlying reason for the intensity of [her] emotions’
Much later, after my father’s sudden death, my mother, unable to be alone in the family home, sold it and moved into a one-bedroom apartment, where she lived for a year before remarrying.
This meant that unlike most teenagers and 20-somethings, many of whom boomerang back for years, I never had a home to return to.
This further reinforced my negative associations with what is, after all, a perfectly normal stage of development.
The sudden absence of a loved one had meant a devastating loss for me until now. I’ve read enough about psychology to know that our primal brain – whose main function is to ensure survival – has an unpleasant habit of taking over at times like these, preparing for and, crucially, trying to protect us from perceived threats.
I count myself lucky that in 2020 my eldest, Daniel, 20, chose to work for a homeless charity instead of going to university, giving me a reprieve from this particular form of parental grief. His salary does not yet extend to afford the London rent, so he still lives at home.
However, Isobel, 18, was enthusiastic about the social interaction and shared life during the university years. A selfish part of me couldn’t help but fantasize about her failing her grades and having to stay home an extra year to retake.
But all her hard work paid off and reality dawned: Isobel was going to university to study sociology.
As she wept with joy and hugged me and her father, Dillon, who is an academic, every motherly emotion—pride, relief, dread, anxiety, dread, and a sense of impending loss—vieed for space in my mind and body. Her start date was only four weeks away and there were lots of practical things to do, from making sure her housing and student finances were in place to helping her choose modules.
Isobel’s face lit up at the prospect of her newfound independence as she picked out mugs at Ikea. Although I was excited for her, the image of my daughter reaching into an unfamiliar cabinet for a cup to make her morning coffee made me cringe.
I woke up the morning of her departure with the tightest knot of anxiety in my stomach. I went for a walk to release the tension. As Cat Stevens’ Wild World – which I know isn’t about his daughter leaving home, but could easily be – played through my headphones, tears ran down my face.
The two-hour drive, even though the car was filled with all of Isobel’s worldly goods and half of Ikea, felt like any other family car trip – our youngest, Christian, 14, with whom she has a close bond, came along for the ride . We had two hours to unpack, then it was time for the moment I had dreaded for so long.
Isobel said she wouldn’t be able to handle my tears so I managed to hold them back as we hugged and kissed goodbye with promises to call, FaceTime and visit.
‘Isobel (pictured) said she wouldn’t be able to handle my tears,’ writes Helen. ‘So I managed to hold them in as we hugged and kissed goodbye with promises to call, FaceTime and visit’
Instead, I sobbed silently on the drive back. It was dark when we got home, which made everything feel bleaker. As we walked through the door, I felt so panicked that I was struggling to catch my breath.
After giving myself a moment alone in her bedroom, where all surfaces had been cleared but her sweet smell lingered, I poured myself a glass of wine (something I wouldn’t normally allow myself on a Sunday) and snuggled into the sofa with Christian in front of the television. He is a thoughtful, loving boy and I was glad he was there, but the experience was bittersweet.
I held back my tears…then sobbed on the way home
Isobel used to be snuggled up on the couch with us, and when I asked how Christian was feeling, he said he didn’t feel able to ‘dive’ into his feelings about her leaving ‘right now’.
Somehow, rather than the purgatory I had feared, the ten days since we delivered Isobel have been easier than the 12 months leading up to it.
We’ve been chatting, mostly on FaceTime, every day and I can tell she’s enjoying herself. I’ve also been getting text messages and ‘Uber family’ alerts at 04.00 – she’s clearly made the most of freshers’ week – to tell me she was ‘home’.
Even though the word associated with a place other than our house feels like a dagger in my heart, I appreciate her letting me know she’s safe.
Something is finished. The little girl whose hand I held on her first day of kindergarten as she ran for the gate in terror is all grown up. But unlike my sister Jane – Isobel’s middle name by the way – I know I haven’t lost her. She is just embarking on what I’m sure will be a wonderful adult life.
I’m looking forward to hearing all about it and of course playing as much in it as she wants me to.