'What will you feel when you have no children left to wave goodbye to?'

Children are about to take their final school exams and leave the nest. Nicci Gerrard recalls tears when themoment arrived – andthe chance to turn a time of loss into a newsense of liberation The family together, from left: Anna, Nicci Gerrard, Edgar, Hadley, Molly Sean French on holiday Nicci Gerrard About a year ago, a few months before she left sixth-form college, my youngest daughter asked cheerily: "What will you feel when you have no one left to wave goodbye to in the morning?" And as if someone had pressed a button, I burst into snorting floods of tears. It felt like a sea of sorrow; I didn't know how I would ever stop. I didn't even know why I was weeping with such abandon: because shewas leaving; because the other three had already left; because Imissed them so; because I missed the person I was when they were all young; because their childhoods were over and had been happy; because I couldn't recover those days when I knew I could make them safe and protect them from the world; because I was scared of who I would be without them… And now, all over the country, teenagers are about to take their A-levels and so begins the goodbye, and all over the country parents like me are appalled by anevent they must always have known would come. We don't want them to stay; it'sshockingly painful to let go. I sometimes think I'm like scaffolding erected around a building and now the building has gone andjust the scaffolding is left. Although I have always worked, since September 1987 whenmy son was born, the shape of my life has been dictated by my children, their needs and moods (there's a saying that's like a curse: "you're only ashappy as your least happy child"). Sleepless nights, early mornings, bottles and bibs, nappies, potty-training, the small thrashing body in your bed, night terrors, dirty clothes,hot, cross, overcrowded cars, mashed-up meals, buggies, bath time, first days at nursery,scraped knees, tantrums, a warm hand in yours, nits, German measles and colds on a loop, sandcastles, school concerts and parents'evenings, childcare and the regular collapse of childcare, the call at work to saythey're ill, reading to them at bedtime, shouting to them in the supermarket, helping them with homework, lunch boxes, reports, exams, friendship problems, lost socks, lost PE kit, lost coursework, lost everything, banging doors, bedrooms that throb with mess, late-night calls askingto be collected, beer cans on the lawn, vodka bottles on the lawn, first romances, first holidays away from you, first festivals, first heartbreak, the gradual realisation that they have secrets, the gradual sense that you can nolonger make everything all right, the endless juggle that is called parenthood and that you only realise whenit's over is also, perhaps, called happiness. And then, if things go the way you want, if you're lucky, they leave. I have been lucky and they've left – and like a machine evolved to process the daily churn of their needs, I continuespinning uselessly in their absence. I have been quite taken aback by the strength of my missing, but also by how so many of my friends feel exactly the same, and how physical it is. Missing hurts. We talk about going into the empty bedrooms – the room whose mess we used to complain about – and about the days that were for years crammed with thankless domestic tasks and now have akind of spaciousness about them. I have thetime I longed for; I canread books, go for walks, see friends, grow chilli plants, paint badly, think about learning a language – but my mind hasn't grasped my new freedom yet. When a tiny child callsfor its mother, I still turn round. The hearttakes time to catch upwith change that feelslike a cinematic jump-cut. You're young and starting out and, all of a sudden, you're middle-aged: a crumpled, creased, pouchy face gazes in startled outrage from the mirror. The problem is not that they go; it's that you stay behind, in a life that suddenly feels the wrong shape. The terrible story of Georgie Fame's wife, Nicolette Powell, who in 1993 jumped to her death from Clifton Suspension Bridge after her children left,is an extreme example of how for many parents, particularly mothers, the transition can feellike a bereavement, aredundancy, a suddenloss of purpose and worth. How to turn such loss into adventure and liberation? I know a couple who built a house together when their last child went; others who have gone on long trips, changed jobs, taken up new passions and learned new skills. It feels important to be reckless, selfish and young again – open to change. For myself, I've been learning how to throw pots on a wheel and last year I trained to become a humanist celebrant. I can now conduct funerals, ritualising farewells, trying to help people to say goodbye to those they have loved. ®™ RNK