Dealing with a Bruised Heart

Today is just one of those shitty days you have when you have children. And no -- I'm not complaining about anything terrible that happened. Today is just one of those days where I feel like my heart is bruised. To explain ...

I have three adult children -- two girls and a boy. The middle child is my son, Rick, who recently turned 31. Rick has had many challenges in life. A major one was 15 years ago when we found out that he had a rare form of salivary gland cancer. Thankfully, he was treated by a specialist at the Mayo Clinic. He has been cancer free ever since. After high school graduation, he went to the community college where I worked for his first year in college. He also had some AP credit from high school and had even taken a college course in Russian while in high school. After one year, he transferred to the University of Illinois as a Math & Computer Science major, moving out of our house to live in an apartment near campus. What was never medically diagnosed but was evident to me was that he was dealing with PTSD from his cancer incident. Although he was gifted with a brilliant mind (likely genius or near-genius level), he messed up tremendously at UIUC. To the credit of UIUC decision makers, he was allowed to continue several times. To this day, I do not know how badly and have never seen his Illinois transcript, which I'm sure would horrify me as I graduated summa cum laude and went on to receive a Master's degree before I burned out on school.

When he finished at UIUC, his programming knowledge meant there were no shortage of places interested in him.  He accepted a job at a small company in Seattle and moved there -- a mere 2000+ miles away. He worked for a few different places, then settled in working as a programming engineer for Best Buy. Unfortunately, the company was cutting back and began laying off people. Rick survived to the final cut, but had to leave. At about the same time, he broke up with the woman he had been living with for eight years. He was devastated and started spiraling downward, hiding how bad he was from his parents. When we realized how badly he was hurting, we begged him to move in with us. Last year at the end of November, my wife flew to Seattle and moved him and a van full of possessions to Phoenix. He got a job at a local business to put a few dollars in his pocket. However, the unfortunate part is that he hates Phoenix! He has been trying to get a professional job in Seattle, a task made more difficult while living 1,400 miles away. Despite a ton of support form myself and my wife, he was miserable here. The three of us had a meeting and established a plan to move him back to Seattle. He will live with one friend, and has another friend who owns a business and will hire him part time while he continues to look for a full-time professional job.

This all sounds good, but there is one part that is terribly unsettling: he is again leaving us, living a good distance away. Except for a few random weeks, Rick had not lived with us for over 12 years. We had been empty nesters for four years before he moved to Phoenix. It was truly a blessing to have the past eight months with an adult child living with us. We all actually got along pretty well as my wife and I bent over backwards to help him to heal and feel comfortable. But man, he just hated living in Phoenix. He hated the hot weather, lack of green landscape, lack of an ocean, ...

Well, today is moving day. My wife, our resident moving expert, based on dozens of moves in her lifetime, headed out with Rick this morning to make the long drive to Seattle. And while I am extremely thankful that I got this time to reconnect in a great way, I feel pretty frigging devastated right now. However, I keep in mind that two friends in town have had to deal with much worse things. One had an adult son who passed away earlier this year from cancer, and another whose son took his own life two years ago. I can't even begin to imagine the pain they felt.

One nice thing about the past eight months was that Rick and I were able to do many things together. We went to a cactus league game (Seattle Mariners - his team), a Cubs/Diamondbacks game, and three Phoenix Suns games, along with numerous restaurant trips since he is a foodie. We shot hoops together, kicked around a soccer ball -- lots of things that the retired dad could do vs the guy who worked a lot when Rick last lived with us.

So right now, the house feels very empty and lonely. Thank goodness that we have two dogs and a cat to keep me company this week. I'll busy myself with volunteer work the next few days to pass the time. I imagine that my mistress, poker, will sooth me me a couple of nights until my wife returns at the end of the week. And in ten days, I will be heading to Las Vegas to play some poker with friends, which I am really looking forward to. In the meantime, I'll deal with some hurt, but remember to be thankful for the gift my wife and I were given for the past eight months.

Comments are appreciated. Thanks for reading!