When they say empty nest, do they mean to paint such a sad picture? Is it an abandoned nest? Is it broken, or infested with bugs?

Maybe it is quiet and warm. Pretty, full of colour and spots to lie down and rest. It is quiet though and there are ghosts flitting about, children in all stages of growth and change, flickering. The children are still there, in my mind, in my heart.

When a relationship ends, or a parent dies, or something ends that was a major part of your life, it is a death of an old life. It is unsettling and hard to adjust. When you are deep in the first emotions of mourning you might feel awash with feeling, and that defines your experience. But it is only the beginning of that particular death.

Your reaction to this massive change will not be immediate, it will be slow and gradual. You might think you have figured it out at some point, but you are still moving through space. For example, you may weep when your mom or dad dies, your heart may be broken. But it is not over. Your relationship with your dead parent continues as you keep living. You think of them often, you think of them differently, you have an evolving relationship. It is still growing and changing.

And your lost friend or lost life might feel like a big hole at first, but you adjust to it with time. When my younger brother turned on me during his divorce, I didn’t expect it to last. But now we never see each other. So I don’t have a brother anymore? I’ve loved and cared for this brother since I was four years old. My letters and calls have no strength against his wall of rejection. I accept that this is what he wants but I still love him in my house, in my mind.

Sometimes these days I say, or just feel, ‘inshallah’. If it is meant to be. If God wills it. I acknowledge my powerlessness and I don’t put up any mental resistance.

When a hole appeared in my tights, my little knee showing up pink against my tights, my mom would grab a needle and thread and sew it up before I went to school. She would make an accompanying voice for the hole, as if the hole was talking and losing its voice as she sewed. “Hey, don’t sew me up ! Mmm! Mmph!! Humph”, she would cry out as she nimbly stitched, making me laugh.

Having your nest empty out, slowly and inexorably, is like that. It is slow, and sort of silly, and at times funny. The love is always flowing, the moving boxes, the bills, the phone calls. But as soon as they leave, you know the spell has been broken. It is irrevocable. They are no longer at the edge of the nest, they are flying in the world and the safe loving bubble of childhood has ended.

Obviously there will be more holes. And you will keep sewing, because that is the parent’s job. When I say job, that is wrong. It is a passion, a calling, a directive.

The first summer I knew it was happening, the summer before my last child left for college, I found myself lying on the carpet in the fetus position, crying. I felt completely emptied, finished and without purpose. I had been parenting intensely (that’s how I do things) for thirty years and my job was officially finished.

Life is change so the Buddhists say, and if we cannot acknowledge and accept that change is inevitable, we will be forever yearning and unhappy. Yearning for stability is madness. Don’t live in the past, they say, don’t live in the future. We are supposed to be living in the present and that will make us the most content.

Maybe. But maybe not. How can you mother a child if you don’t live in the past and in the future. What all women know is that we must hold all of it in our arms, and in our minds, at the same time. There is no philosophy created by man that can save you from feeling all the emotions. Let it wash over you. Let it be.

The thing about parenting is that it demands that you live in the moment. Your child needs you right now, and not later, not tomorrow. If they are scared, if they need encouragement, if they need advice, they need it right now. And you will do your best to provide it. Those days of parenting when you feel most overwhelmed, those are the best, the richest, the most important and purposeful days of your life.

I remember nursing one baby while a teen sat beside me playing a game on the computer, or were we editing an essay? Another child was being delivered to his friend’s house. I had my hands full, literally. But I was happy and fulfilled, believe me. My mom was on the phone at that very moment and she said, ‘enjoy these precious days’. I was not irritated to receive that advice, I just said, “I do, I am”!

I have always been good at living in the moment, It is one of my few natural God-given talents. When I was a perky young thing and older people would say, ‘enjoy being young’, I would always cheerfully answer, “I do! I am”!

And I am enjoying this old life too. We look after an adoring and adorable little neighbour child, we look on with compassion when we see young parents struggling with cash flow, moods and tension. We lived that too. We know the daily life is not a dream but very real and full of tests to your best self.

But sometimes my sentimentality about the halcyon days of family life is more existential than personal. When I see a mother and her children walking slowly down a street, or both parents gathering bags and children to gradually move towards a park or a beach, I feel a deep twang in my heart. Like my body is a cello and someone plucked a string and set off a vibration that is pulsing through my heart and my soul.

Am I sad that my time is over? Is it about me? A little. I know that I cannot be that young mother ever again and that delightful part of my life is over. But outside of my personal attachment to my own life, my memories, the passage of time that spells out the arc of my life, I am feeling something bigger about motherhood, something spiritual.

What I am feeling, in that overwhelming wash of emotion, is more than personal. It isn’t about me. When I see a woman holding a baby on her hip, and a toddler by the hand, I see an icon of love and protection.

Is there anything more beautiful? Isn’t this the only thing that matters?