Whatever he needs, he has or doesn’t
have it now.
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do. -Sharon Olds
Years ago, my wife (left) wrote a poem about our son, our eldest child, and how he was beginning to leave us. I think she wrote it on the occasion of his departure for camp. But it could have been any number of other occasions because, from very early in their lives, our children begin to leave us, don’t they?
My wife’s poem began, "Goodbye, you who are always leaving me…" That opening line has stayed with me through all the leave-takings of my life…
When I was a child myself, thirteen to be exact, I noticed a thoughtful set of lines that were printed on the inside page of all report cards sent out from my school. It was written by Kahlil Gibran and it read, "Your children are not your children/ They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…"
In the eighth grade, I found these lines enchanting but confusing. Why would anyone tell parents that their children were not there children and how could children be expressions of "Life’s longing for itself?"
Life teaches how wise Gibran was. Still, we have so much trouble letting go. Perhaps this is partly because we use the possessive in referring not only to our spouses and our children but in describing our patients as well. Doctors, nurses, social workers often say "my" patients, or "my" clients. Equally disturbing is the tendency of some leaders in charity to refer to staff as "my" employees instead of recalling that they work for the organization, not for a person.
If, even subconsciously, we think we own other people we have made the process of separation from others even more difficult. Every day’s news holds reports of spouses who have murdered their wives rather than face the prospect of divorce. In some cases, children are murdered by people who think they own the life of another. Sometimes, these are even suicide missions, as in the recent case of a man who flew off in his private plane with his offspring on board and intentionally crashed the plane killing them both, apparently because he feared losing custody of "his" child.
These are the extreme examples. But the rest of us have our own struggles with separation.
There is a healthy reflection in all of this. Separations are hard. Anyone who cares for another, independent of a sense of "ownership", will need to grieve. There seems to be a difference between tears of sadness over a person leaving us and tears of resentment over the same event. In the first case, we hurt because we know we will miss the departed. In the second case, we need to ask if our resentment arises from the false belief that the other person doesn’t have a right to leave us.
This may all seem very academic – especially if you are now in the midst of a separation from someone for whom you care deeply. The use of cognitive thinking often feels aggravating when it is used to address matters of the heart. Still, all of us, especially caregivers, need to come to the deepest kind of understanding about what loving another person means.
When we do, we will discover that relationships are precious, perhaps the most precious thing there is in life. And that to love another sometimes means a letting go.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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