On the day our youngest leaves home, the person I end up thinking of most often is my mum. As usual, these are mixed feelings. First, I have the recurring thought that comes whenever there is news about one of the kids: “Oh, I must ring Mu…” before I am stopped in my tracks once again by the realisation that I can’t. How is it possible that I still keep forgetting, this many years after her death, that I can’t call her with news?
My second thought is a realisation that has come to me only recently: my leaving home for university must have been, for her, the exact same experience that I am currently having. I was the youngest, so my departure emptied the nest, and I can’t help wondering now something I never wondered at the time – what it was like for her.
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